Journals that adopt open peer review (OPR), where review reports of published articles are publicly available, provide an opportunity to study both review content characteristics and quantitative aspects of the overall review process. This study investigates two areas relevant to the quality assessment of manuscript reviews. First, do journal…

A qualitative study of the citing motivations of 12 agricultural economists (faculty and doctoral students) identifies several factors they considered in making citing decisions: the contributions of the document to their research; the criteria they apply to the documents; and metalevel documentation concerns. (Author/AEF)

Identifies several aspects of citing behavior (reasons for citing, criteria used in decision making, and metalevel documentation concerns) by directly questioning researchers about decisions to cite or not to cite specific documents. The results reported are preliminary results related to citing behavior derived from a qualitative, longitudinal…

User's information needs and the tasks they face change over the stages of a research project. In previous research by Peiling Wang, a cognitive model of users' document selection behavior for their research projects was developed. This study looks at the general applicability of Wang's model to subsequent decision-making about items selected…

Describes a study of users' document selection behavior that was conducted to build a tentative cognitive model of document selection behavior to be used in designing intelligent information retrieval systems. Topics addressed include studies of relevance and of decision making; value judgments; and document information elements considered during…