The Myth of the Paperless Office
The Myth of the Paperless Office
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
Electronic systems which claim to support academic reading and writing practices consider only the descriptive metadata of sources as fields of interest for writers. However, both the relative lack of success of these systems and research in citation practices reveals that the motivation of academics when they use sources in their writing is primarily rhetorical. However, no detailed model for the rhetorical use of citations which could lead to the development of an electronic system utilizing rhetorical metadata has ever been developed. This paper reports on research which led to the development of such a rhetorical model. In this model, the dimension of time as well as the categories of values, relevance and significance are identified based on a combination of quantitative and ethnographic methods. This model is then used to develop the prototype for a rhetorical electronic system to support academic citation practices, kairion. The implications of such a system modeled for the work of individual academics in different stages of their career as well for groups of researchers are also discussed.