People of Earth....

Through the Internet people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.

The Cluetrain Manifesto and its 95 theses on powerful global market conversations by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searl and David Weinberger.

Science Blogs

Will you remember 2007 as the year Open Access Publishing arrived?

Explore the top science stories of the past year in Science Blogs.

CitationRank

"Citations are the currency of research", argues Erik Duval in his post on citations in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning.

In this respect he raises the following questions:

• which of your papers has been cited most often?
• who has cited you most often?
• which papers cited a particular publication of yours?
• whether more and more or less and less people are citing you over the years?
• whose citing behavior is close to yours?
• which conference or journal contains most citations of your papers?
• which conference or journal contains your cites most often?

Moreover he discusses some Searching Tools for scientists:

• PubMed


• arXiv


• Web of Science


• DBLP


• Google Scholar


• Bibisonomy


• Citeseer

Cyberscience

"Cyberscience - it is already taking place - will be different from traditional science. "

Michael Nentwich, director of the Institute of Technology Assessment at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, describes and analyses in his book the usage of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in science.

This book not only draws a portrait of "Research in the Age of the Internet", but also assesses the various impacts of the New Media on academic activity and discusses the impacts for future research policies.

So we`ve already got some answers to the questions I posed in my previous article.
But the digital world is a rapidly changing one. Isn`t it? ;-)

Science in a Digital World

In this respect the following questions arise:

• In which ways are scientists influenced by the so-called digital world?

• How do they respond to this digital world in general? Fears and expectations?

• Do they change their modes of communication with other scientists? If so, for what reasons and how?

• Which digital techniques of communication have already become part of their daily routine? Why?

• What do they consider benefits derived from the digital world?

• Do online tools meet their expectations?
  

Weblogs

Jan Schmidt, a German scientist on communication, analyses and discusses various practices of blogging in different areas.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a service provided by Google.

It offers a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources. One can identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

Concerning the ranking of articles Google Scholar aims to sort articles the way researchers do.

Features for ranking articles:

• weighing full text of each article
• author
• publication of appearance of article
• number of citations
  

The most relevant results will appear on the first page.

More on Google Scholar.

I consider Google Scholar as a highly effective searching tool for scientists. But what about scientists who are still prioritizing on non-digital forms of publication? Which "page" will they appear on? Do they have to turn into what I'd call "digital natives" rather than "digital immigrants" in order to keep or gain reputation in the scholarly world?

Google Society

Literature Tip:

This book discusses various aspects on the digital change of knowledge.

Internet and Personality

At the moment I am reading this book on Internet and personality.

It deals with a broad spectrum of issues on personality features and the different types of using the Internet.

A world of connections

Wireless technology is progressing very rapidly. According to Kenneth Cukier, Technology Correspondent of The Economist, it will be tremendously useful that new wireless technologies will link both people and lots of objects. But: it will be tricky getting there.

Wireless communication tools will certainly cause a major change in our daily lives. Are we prepared for such changes? How can we adapt ourselves to this ongoing process?

Technical aspects of multiculturalism

Don't miss this week's issue of The Economist. A highly interesting 14-page special report on the coming wireless revolution is awaiting you.

From my personal perspective the title "When everything connects" involves the merging of cultural diversity as well.

Communication Styles

Interacting and communicating with other people involves different styles of communication.
In general there are three basic styles of communication:

1. aggressive
2. passive
3. assertive
   

Schulz von Thun differs eight communication styles:

1. bedürftig abhängige Stil
2. helfende Stil
3. selbst-lose Stil
4. aggressiv-entwertende Stil
5. sich beweisende Stil
6. bestimmende-kontrollierende Stil
7. sich distanzierende Stil
8. mitteilungsfreudig-dramatisierende Stil
   

Models of Intercultural Communication

I have just finished reading this book on Intercultural Communication. The authors discuss different methods, models and examples of intercultural communication.

Moreover, they demonstrate how different models and methods of communication psychology such as the Kommunikationsquadrat, das Innere Team und das Wertequadrat can be used as an effective tool for intercultural communication issues.