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Scientometrics is a research field that deals with the measurement of the outputs of science to evaluate scientists and to understand how disciplines and specialisms grow. The results can be used to allocate research funding and to compare research outputs between countries in order to identify areas of strength and weakness as well as patterns of overall improvement or decline. Scientometrics can therefore provide quantitative evidence of winners and losers in e-science. A related concept is “Webometrics” or Webmetrics, in which hyperlinks can behave like citations. This chapter examines the role of Webometrics in identifying winners and losers in e-science, the advantages of Webometrics, and the methods used in Webometrics.

In large-scale networks such as the World Wide Web, the distribution of hyperlinks appears to follow a “power law,” with a large number of hyperlinks directed toward a small number of websites (known as “in-links”) and very few in-links directed toward the vast majority of sites. According to the preferential attachment model, power laws can be observed in a growing network where new nodes tend to link to existing popular nodes having a high number of in-links. This chapter examines the “economics of superstars,” a concept used to explain why scientific output among a few individuals is concentrated in certain fields such as sport and the arts, while income distribution is strongly skewed and rewards tend to be very large at the top. It argues that the emergence of power laws on the Web and other digital networks can be attributed to the economics of superstars and explains how e-Research might alter the research landscape through research superstars. It also considers the role of cyberinfrastructure in facilitating the emergence of superstar scientists.

This chapter presents digital forms of anthropological restitution developed in the late 1990’s and early 2000 by Barbara Glowczewski with different Aboriginal peoples for their own use and a larger audience. She designed the CD-ROM Dream Trackers (Yapa Art and Knowledge of the Australian Desert published by Unesco) with 51 elders and artists from the Central Australian community of Lajamanu in the Northern Territory. Quest in Aboriginal Land is an interactive DVD based on films by Indigenous filmmaker Wayne Barker, juxtaposing four regions of Australia. Both projects aimed to explore and enhance the cultural foundations of the reticular way in which many Indigenous people in Australia map their knowledge and experience of the world in a geographical virtual web of narratives, images and performances. The relevance of games for anthropological insights is also discussed in the paper. Reticular or network thinking, Glowczewski argues, is a very ancient Indigenous practice but it gains today a striking actuality thanks to the fact that our so-called scientific perception of cognition, virtuality and social performance has changed through the use of new technologies. First published in 2002.

Let's face it: We're all Web journalists now. You might be working for a newspaper or magazine, a television or radio outlet, but your story is still likely to end up on the Web as well as in its original medium. You or your publication may even provide supplemental material that appears only on the Web—say, a behind-the-scenes notebook, an interactive graphic, or a blog. Or you might even be a journalist whose work appears almost exclusively on the Web—like me. I worked at daily newspapers for 19 years before joining MSNBC, a combined Web/television news organization. So I still tend to think of the Web as an online newspaper, with a lot of text, some pictures, and a few extra twists. But with the passage of time, online journalism is gradually coming into its own—just as TV started out as radio with pictures, but soon became a distinct news medium. To my mind, the principles of online journalism—having to do with fairness, accuracy, and completeness—are the same as the principles of off-line journalism. But the medium does shape the message, as well as the qualities that each medium considers most important. Wire-service reporters value getting the story out fast; newspapers value exclusive sources; magazines value in-depth coverage; radio and TV look for sounds and pictures that will help tell the story. All these factors are important for the Web as well, but one thing makes online journalism unique: Web writers are looking for ways to tell the story using software. Let's take a closer look at how one multimedia story unfolded, then get into how the tools and toys of the trade can be used in your own work. News coverage of space shuttle launches and landings usually follows a familiar routine: From MSNBC's West Coast newsroom in Redmond, Washington, I would update the landing-day story continuously, starting with the de-orbit burn, just as a wire service reporter might do. On February 1, 2003, however, the shuttle's landing was scheduled for a Saturday morning, one of the lightest times of the week for Web traffic.

Sign languages use visual modality and they have no written representation that is commonly used among native signers for everyday writing and reading. These facts cause particular problems for the sign language lexicographer. This chapter describes some of the essential differences between dictionaries of sign language and dictionaries of spoken/written language, and the chapter describes how sign language lexicography has gained from exploiting the potential of the electronic medium. Furthermore, it shows how we have tried to accommodate the needs of different categories of users by implementing some innovative features in the Danish Sign Language Dictionary. Finally, the chapter looks at some of the future challenges and perspectives in electronic sign language lexicography.

This chapter examines what people learn from online news and how. It first reviews research that looks into how people learn from the news before discussing how consumption of news found on the Internet affect the way audiences think about politics. It then considers how the Internet affects the online learning process, along with the implications of differential learning for society. It shows that audiences use search functions and topical menus and follow hyperlinks to respond to how the news is presented.