Redundancy
Concept from cybernetics designation the input of more data into a system than are needed for the system to perform a certain function. Redundancy may enable a system to operate properly despite loss of data or failed components. However, redundancy is often superfluous and may increase processing costs, in which cases it should be reduced or eliminated.
Redundancy in
library collections
It is a common demand that scientific publications should be original, meaning
that the scientific publication system should only publish documents, which are
not redundant in relation to existing documents. The exception may be
repacked
literature like anthologies
("readings") or
textbooks. However, many examples of publishing redundant information can be
observed of researchers who publish the same text in slightly edited forms. This
is seen as unwanted why scientific committees often issue rules in this field
(inclusive publishing the same paper in multiple languages).
Cleverdon & Kidd (1976) examined the redundancy in the
scientific literature in the output from
information retrieval. 455 documents about computer control of air traffic
was examined. The conclusion was that overlap exists, but only few cases of
extreme redundancy. On the level of documents the authors found that such
research may not have practical use.
Redundancy in bibliographical records
The same words may appear in different fields of bibliographical records. Such a repetition may or may not represent redundancy. If, for example, title words contain many metaphors, may title words be avoided as search terms. In that case it is necessary to repeat the non-metaphoric words from titles as indexing terms. Such an repetition does not provide redundancy, while mechanical repetitions would.
Literature:
Bornmann, L & Daniel, H.D. (2007). Multiple publication on a single research study: Does it pay? the influence of number of research articles on total citation counts in biomedicine. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Published Online: 23 Apr 2007
Cimino, J. J. (2001). Battling scylla and charybdis: the search for redundancy and ambiguity in the 2001 UMLS metathesaurus. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, S , 120-124.
Cleverdon, C. W. & Kidd,
J. S. (1976). Redundancy in scientific and technical
literature: final administrative report: British Library Research and
Development Department grant SI/G/124. Cranfield (England), Cranfield Institute
of Technology. (BLRD report 5282).
Cleverdon, C. W. & Kidd, J. S. (1976). Redundancy, relevance, and value to the user in the outputs of information retrieval systems. Journal of Documentation, 32(3), 159-173.
Hines, T. C.; Martin, J. & Warren, J. (1978). Elimination of redundancy in keyboarding bibliographic data for computer-based information systems. Journal of Library Automation, 11(1), 71-73.
Martyn, J.
(1964). Unintentional duplication of research. New Scientist, 337,
p. 338.
Xu, H. & Lancaster, F. W. (1998). Redundancy and uniqueness of subject access points in online catalogs. Library Resources & Technical Services, 42(1), 61-66.
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 24-04-2007