Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Knowledge ...

Pavel Bogolyubov
Figure 3: Tag cloud for <strong>the</strong> top forty-five institutions by <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong> hits
It is not clear whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> Anglo-Saxon dominance is a true representation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> state <strong>of</strong> affairs or
ra<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong>re is a bias perhaps due to <strong>the</strong> way non-English articles are handled by ABI, or in a broader
sense, <strong>the</strong> way research carried out in o<strong>the</strong>r languages is published.
The results <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> impact assessment via NCII per hit, by institution, are shown in Table 4. It is
interesting to note that none <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> most active institutions lead <strong>the</strong> impact table (with <strong>the</strong> exceptions
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> University <strong>of</strong> California, University College London and MIT) – in fact, those three excluded, <strong>the</strong>
top fifty NCII institutions have shown an average <strong>of</strong> 2.3 hits each; thus, no correlation is evident
between <strong>the</strong> level <strong>of</strong> activity and <strong>the</strong> impact, and <strong>the</strong> most cited papers are produced by relatively less
active research centres. Similarly, <strong>the</strong> by-country NCII results shown in Table 4 (only countries with
cited papers are included) demonstrate that <strong>the</strong>re is little correlation between <strong>the</strong> activity and <strong>the</strong>
impact: in fact, <strong>the</strong> Anglo-Saxon activity leaders appear outside <strong>the</strong> top ten, whereas, for example,
Iran’s position as number one is explained by two authors partaking in published research, one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
papers being relatively highly impactful.
5. Conclusions
To summarise a few conclusions made on <strong>the</strong> basis <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> analysis described above, it can be said
that Web 2.0 is a developing field that follows some patterns found by o<strong>the</strong>r authors in case <strong>of</strong> KM.
The bulk <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> research activity is concentrated in <strong>the</strong> English-speaking world, however, on average
most impactful articles are produced elsewhere, and similarly, <strong>the</strong> most impactful institutions do not
necessarily appear high on <strong>the</strong> activity list: it seems that research quantity does not correlate at all
with <strong>the</strong> research quality. Fur<strong>the</strong>rmore, despite academia dominating both lists by <strong>the</strong> number <strong>of</strong>
institutions, industry is represented to a notable degree too: IBM, Micros<strong>of</strong>t and Hewlett-Packard are
but three examples <strong>of</strong> commercial firms actively involved in Web 2.0 research.
The keyword analysis shows that a number <strong>of</strong> topics such as <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong> Web 2.0 in KM, libraries and
education stand out as receiving a high proportion <strong>of</strong> attention, <strong>the</strong> most prominent <strong>the</strong>me in KM being
collaboration and knowledge sharing. The common motif <strong>the</strong> reviewed articles share is <strong>the</strong> focus on
<strong>the</strong> “s<strong>of</strong>t” side <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> matter, i.e., such aspects as empowerment, trust and relationship between
personal and collective knowledge; in o<strong>the</strong>r words, <strong>the</strong>re is relatively little attention given to <strong>the</strong>
systems side <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> area, which is an interesting development.
The research could be extended onto o<strong>the</strong>r topics to cover <strong>the</strong> role <strong>of</strong> Web 2.0 in subject areas such
as <strong>the</strong> aforementioned two as well as marketing, R&D and so on; unfortunately, <strong>the</strong> mere size <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>
task and <strong>the</strong> limitations on <strong>the</strong> size <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> paper did not allow me to venture into it this time.
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