Research note: Measuring the globalization of knowledge: The case of community informatics

Authors

  • Kate Williams University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Noah Lenstra University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Shameem Ahmed University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Qiyuan Liu University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v18i8.4347

Keywords:

global knowledge

Abstract

Freely accessible online, with a wide set of authors and a wider readership, First Monday can be seen as striving for global knowledge on the social aspects of the Internet. In a meta-analysis now underway, we found First Monday to be the third most prolific journal on a particular subject: local communities’ uses of information technology. Our study also sheds some light on what constitutes global knowledge. The data suggests that a synthesis of English-language published knowledge is a first step. It points to a bigger agenda: reaching into the world’s local settings in a proportionate and representative way. That would mean publishers outside the U.S. and U.K.; scholars in other countries; and studies in other languages. This is what it would take to learn from all our cultures and countries.

Author Biography

Kate Williams, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Kate Williams is an assistant professor and a co-director of the Community Informatics Research Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

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Published

2013-07-29

How to Cite

Williams, K., Lenstra, N., Ahmed, S., & Liu, Q. (2013). Research note: Measuring the globalization of knowledge: The case of community informatics. First Monday, 18(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v18i8.4347