Usability Evaluation of Journal Websites in the Field of Knowledge and Information Science based on the Nielsen Model

پژوهشنامه کتابداری و اطلاع رسانی

Article 3, Volume 13, Issue 1 - Serial Number 25, June 2023, Pages 44-61   

Document Type: Original Article

DOI: 10.22067/infosci.2023.79151.1141

Author

Hedayat Behroozfar^*

Assistant Proffesor, University Of Zabol , Zabol, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Websites are platforms through which authors and publishers provide scientific and non-scientific information sources to readers and customers. Therefore, in the digital age and in the world of electronic information, the place and point of connection between creators and readers are most often websites. Scientific journals, as one of the most important sources of reliable scientific information, are available to researchers and enthusiasts through websites, so that the higher the usage and applicability of a scientific journal's website is, the higher the usage and visibility of that publication will be. The purpose of the current research is to investigate and evaluate the usability of the websites of Persian-language scientific journals in the field of knowledge and information science, based on the ten principles of Nielsen, which have obtained A grade in the ranking results of 2021. The review of the background of the research showed that a lot of research has been done in Iran and the world in the field of evaluating the usability of different websites over the past years, so that since the year 2000, many researches have been published, of which a very small part was mentioned. This point can indicate the importance and many applications of the results of this type of research. Another important point is that evaluating the usability of websites can be done in different ways, among which exploratory evaluation has been used in the majority of researches due to its cost-effectiveness and ease and feasibility. As can be seen in the mentioned researches, in order to carry out an exploratory evaluation, evaluators need a checklist, which is generally based on the identified criteria of past research and is presented by researchers in a researcher-made form, among which the ten principles or the Nielsen model are the most used. It has been assigned in the research that this is the proof that Nielsen's ten classic principles are still relevant and applicable, and their universality and comprehensiveness have been proven.
Methodology: The present study is qualitative and applied, which was carried out using the exploratory evaluation method. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire prepared according to Nielsen's ten principles. The content validity method was used to measure the content validity of the checklist. For this purpose, the list was given to four experts in knowledge and information science and their correction comments were used to edit the final checklist. The community of this research was the websites of journals of the first rank in the field of knowledge and information science of Iran. To identify the research community, the portal of scientific and research publications of the country was referred to https://journals.msrt.ir and from the "group" menu, humanities and from the "subgroup" menu, knowledge and information science was selected and then searched. The search result was 7 publications. In order to carry out the evaluation, four experts of knowledge and information science who had the necessary experience and knowledge in this field were used.
Findings: The findings showed that in the components of "compatibility between the website and the real world" (average above 4), "stability and uniformity" (average around 4), "aesthetic aspects and minimal design" (average above 3.66) the status of websites was desirable, and in the components of "website visibility" (numbers between 3 and 3.66), "status of database control by the user and his freedom of action" (average numbers in the range between 2.33 and 3.66), "status of identification and recovery of information" and "flexibility and efficiency" (all average numbers above 2.50) the status of these websites is relatively favorable and in the components of "error prevention/correction status" (average numbers below 2) and "assistance and guidance possibilities" (average numbers lower than 2.33), the status of these websites is unfavorable. Regarding the severity of the problems, the findings indicate that in most of the components and among all the websites, the level of the severity of the problem is minor. In other words, all the numbers are around 2.5 and less than that, and therefore the severity of the problems have been evaluated as a minor problem at most. Meanwhile, the severity of the problems in the "flexibility and efficiency" component in the websites of the library and information publication has been evaluated as a fundamental problem.
Conclusion: The usability of all the websites investigated in the current research were evaluated very close to each other and relatively favorable. As the findings showed, in terms of compliance with Nielsen's ten components in these websites, the differences are very small and insignificant, and all of them are more or less in the same rank. It seems that many of these websites use a common and similar platform, and because of this, the observed differences were very small. It is suggested to take detailed measures to add help and guidance facilities in different parts of the websites to prevent the possibility of errors. Considering that according to the evaluation made in this research, the websites under the research were evaluated as favorable and relatively favorable in many components by expert evaluators, it is necessary to be informed about the opinions of a large number of normal and daily users of these websites and the amount It examined the usability of these websites from this point of view. It is also necessary to consider similar foreign websites for comparison with these websites and evaluate them as well.
 

Keywords

Usability; Nielsen model; Heuristic evaluations; Scientific journal websites

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