The first task of this week's theme was to find a high quality journal relevant to media technology research with an impact factor of 1.0 or above. I had only recently heard of the term "impact factor" maybe one week before this task, in one of my other courses where we were supposed to find relevant research to our work. We did not really get a proper, in-depth explanation of the term however. What I know about the term after this week's theme is that it has to do with how many citations the articles in the journal has gotten in the following two years after the publication of the journal. For a journal, the impact factor is calculated as the total number of citations in the two following years after publication, divided by the number of articles published in the journal.
Continuing on the impact factor, what I learned additionally is that the impact factor for a journal is much easier to find than the impact factor for a single paper, however I guess it is rather easy to just see the number of citations for the article and check that against the publication year to at least get a quick overview of how big of an impact it has done within its research field.
Reflecting on the paper that I chose, I took my time to find one that I actually thought was interesting to read. I only read through it through rather quickly, as I did not have as much time to do so as I would have wanted. The paper was about how using natural language when searching for something on the web is more effective than using keywords. Personally, I believe this is the way to search in the future as it is much easier to find the correct information about a subject you do not know much about, than to try and find the correct keywords before actually finding the information you want.
The second part of this week's assignment started with having to explain what theory is to a first year university student. I remember how it was when I was doing my first year, and reading academic papers was not (still is not) very easy. Therefore, I chose not to just use the words of Sutton and Gregor, but to actually try to explain the content in a very basic way. Hopefully, my explanation was good enough and covered enough of the material to be seen as a "correct" explanation of what theory is and what it is not. At least, I feel that I have gotten a much better understanding of the concept after this week!
Deciding what type of theory was used in the paper I chose was not easy, it was probably the hardest part of this week's assignments. I actually changed my mind a few times before deciding that it was of the type "explanation and prediction". I still do not know for certain if it is the right theory, but I did not get any protests during the seminar so perhaps it was correct after all. Some of the theory types were quite similar and it is not an easy task to make a strong distinction between them for this type of task.
Continuing on the impact factor, what I learned additionally is that the impact factor for a journal is much easier to find than the impact factor for a single paper, however I guess it is rather easy to just see the number of citations for the article and check that against the publication year to at least get a quick overview of how big of an impact it has done within its research field.
Reflecting on the paper that I chose, I took my time to find one that I actually thought was interesting to read. I only read through it through rather quickly, as I did not have as much time to do so as I would have wanted. The paper was about how using natural language when searching for something on the web is more effective than using keywords. Personally, I believe this is the way to search in the future as it is much easier to find the correct information about a subject you do not know much about, than to try and find the correct keywords before actually finding the information you want.
The second part of this week's assignment started with having to explain what theory is to a first year university student. I remember how it was when I was doing my first year, and reading academic papers was not (still is not) very easy. Therefore, I chose not to just use the words of Sutton and Gregor, but to actually try to explain the content in a very basic way. Hopefully, my explanation was good enough and covered enough of the material to be seen as a "correct" explanation of what theory is and what it is not. At least, I feel that I have gotten a much better understanding of the concept after this week!
Deciding what type of theory was used in the paper I chose was not easy, it was probably the hardest part of this week's assignments. I actually changed my mind a few times before deciding that it was of the type "explanation and prediction". I still do not know for certain if it is the right theory, but I did not get any protests during the seminar so perhaps it was correct after all. Some of the theory types were quite similar and it is not an easy task to make a strong distinction between them for this type of task.
I thought the theme of the paper you chose was quite interesting and would rather like to elaborate on that further, however that's not the purpose of this week's theme or this comment, so will leave it for now. I agree with you that this week was quite tricky and that theory is not the easiest concept to grasp, however I would have liked you to elaborate a bit more about what you after the lecture and seminar understand of theory and what you think of it. In your first post you explained that theory is "a way to explain, describe or enhance the understanding of the world using an empirical model", do you still agree with that description? How would you describe what theory is today?
SvaraRaderaHi! Thanks, I found it so useful that you explain an impact factor in detail. Same like you, I had a little bit of trouble finding which type of theory authors used while writing the article. Thus, I believe that many researchers choose to mix different types of theories just to complement each other. Moreover, I believe we just need more practice for reading scientific articles to be able to distinct types of theory. And by reading here I mean critical and attentive reading.
SvaraRaderaThank you for the further explanation about how the impact factor is built. After the last week I knew how to interpret it, but not really how it is measured or where the number was coming from. So thanks for clarifying that. The paper you chose sounds really interesting. I go along with you in the thought that online searches with natural language mostly leads you faster to your desired finding. At the same time you just need to know how to use search engines right to find whatever you search way more effective. Anyway, when I read your reflection on the chosen article I thought immediately about the keywords “semantic web”. Maybe that could also be interesting for you in this field.
SvaraRaderaHi,
SvaraRaderaIt would be interrupting to read whether you idea of theory has changed after the seminar. You wrote in your last post that "Theory is a way to explain, describe or enhance the understanding of the world using an empirical model", I believe this is a rather accurate way of putting it. After all, without the empirical foundation, a theory is merely a hypothesis or groundless idea.
We did not discuss the impact factor and I appreciated your explanation very much. And I comprehend why you think it is difficult to see instantly which theories the authors have applied in some of the papers. It was a very pedagogic way of thinking when you used your own experience when trying to explain what theory is.
SvaraRaderaYour selected paper seems really interesting; it was good that you took your time to choose and instead focusing on finding something motivating. Afterword I believe I chose my paper way to fast, I wanted to start as soon as possible so I took the first best paper. Half way trough I realized that my paper was more about management then technology. I agree that people might not always know the terms needed to find what they search for. Is it the people searching for a specific subject that need get a better understanding or is it the information systems behind that need to bridge the gap? As you say it’s hard to find the right keywords. Thanks for good reflection!
SvaraRaderaHey! Thanks for explaining how the impact factor is calculated. Though a bit off-topic, it was interesting to find out.
SvaraRaderaI would have liked to read your take on the seminar discussion. The definition of theory you have given in your previous blog post is a fair one, I think. It is indeed very difficult to explain. I personally feel that I have a good idea of it in the back of my mind, but that I can't really put it in words. I think it also really depends on the field of research - are we talking about physics or psychology? Thank you for the read!
I think you did pretty well when trying to give a simple yet complete definition of what theory is, using the examples with a rock and an apple.
SvaraRaderaWhen I imagined explaining a theory to a first year student I based my answer on Plato’s concept that “the mind does not overthrow the senses but rather guides them into order” and then an organization happens that attempts to create a link between causation and explanation.
I also assume that you have concluded correctly that your paper is using the explanation and prediction theory judging on the fact how the method used there is analyzing possible future outcomes from the shift of the use of keywords to natural language when browsing the web.
I found the research paper you chose to be really interesting. It can be hard to search for things when you cannot recall the correct name for what you want to find. When I search conceptually, I rarely find what I was looking for as they keywords weren’t correct. The conceptual search could be helpful.
SvaraRaderaI too had difficulty categorizing my paper. I think that some theories can fit multiple models. I think you were correct in both of your assumptions. They use explanation and prediction when they explain the issues with keyword-based search models and then predict how a more efficient model could be made. They propose the idea of an ontology-based information retrieval model and went to design a semantic search model which also fits into theory for design.