We are in the process of switching the journal management system from OJS version 2, to OJS version 3, and at the same time we are moving the journal files from the server in Lund to a new server in Borås. As a result there may be some delay in dealing with submissions. We hope to have the new system open to submissions in early April, and we will then ask authors to submit their papers to the new system, while continuing to process the existing backlog of papers within version 2. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience the transfer process may cause.

This issue

We have a typically diverse set of papers in this issue, some deal with library issues, others with health information, one concerned with the creation of information, and two with academic repositories. In the health information area Anushia Inthiran discusses the evaluation strategies used by online health information consumers in South East Asia, noting that users were able to assess the trustworthiness of by evaluating the quality of the information, trusting, for example, government Websites, rather than online discussion lists. The same issue of trust is discussed by Shengli Deng and colleagues in a study of online health rumours in China, discovering that the presence of hyperlinks in rumour messages, as well as images, led to increased trust in the rumour. Finally, in this area, Helena Marjukka Känsäkoski and colleagues investigated how Finnish adolescents selected and assessed health information sources. They used the concept of cognitive authority, finding that family and health professionals were regarded as cognitive authorities by adolescents.

The papers on libraries deal with both public and academic libraries: Muhammad Ramzan and his colleagues consider the attitudes of librarians towards application of information technology in academic libraries in Pakistan, which they find to be dependent upon the availability of the technology and the librarians' skills in using it. The papers on public libraries relate to self-directed lifelong learning, in a paper from Japan, and, in one from Norway, the qualification requirements of public libraries, as revealed by job advertisements.

There are two papers on repositories: one from South Korea, analysing use statistics, finding that, on average, each paper in the repository maintained by the Korean Institute of Science and Technology Information was downloaded more than twenty-six times; and another from Spain on the provision of value-added services in scholarly repositories. In the case of the Spanish repositories, Andrés Fernández-Ramos, and Leticia Barrionuevo conclude that, while 70% of repositories provided half of the proposed services, there was great variability, indicating that some were happy simply to provide a storage and access facility.

There are two further papers in this issue: Lo Lee, Melissa G. Ocepek, and Stephann Makri explore information creation in everyday life, finding that lists and digital boards were created by their two groups of respondents, i.e., grocery shoppers, and hobbyists. Suraya Ika Tamrin and colleagues, examine the relationship between cybersecurity behaviour and the decision to share specific content in Facebook.

Bonus book

This issue includes a link to a bonus - a short book on information behaviour, which I have written to pull together the ideas behind my own behavioural theory of information discovery. It is described as a "preliminary" edition, as I don't regard it as "finished". This version has been used by colleagues in Germany, Poland, and South Africa, as a class text, and they have found it useful. I shall be interested to hear from anyone who reads and/or uses the text, pointing out problems, omissions, dead links, etc., etc.

Finally

Our thanks, as usual, to the regional editors who see the papers through the review process, our copy-editors who try to ensure the readability of the texts, to the many reviewers and members of the Editorial Board who help to maintain the quality of the papers published. Without their dedication to the open access ideal, the journal would not exist.


Professor T.D. Wilson
Editor-in-chief
March, 2021.