A rejoinder to Nicolaisen’s refutation of Hjørland’s relevance definition

Birger Hjørland

A rejoinder to Nicolaisen’s refutation of Hjørland’s relevance definition

Department of Communication

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Abstract

Dr. Nicolaisen (2016) has claimed a refutation of the definition of relevance as provided by the present author. This present paper examines Nicolaisen’s arguments and finds that Nicolaisen has failed to consider the differences between defining the concept of relevance and the measurement instances of it. His arguments are, therefore, misdirected and irrelevant. The epistemological problems as discussed by Nicolaisen are important, but not in relation to the task of defining the concept of relevance. Furthermore, his “refutation” resembles the well-known mythical “proof” that bumblebees cannot fly. As a result, it is concluded that the relevance definition under discussion is still valid and it is the most fruitful one that has been suggested so far.

Original language	English
Article number	colis1628.html
Journal	Information Research
Volume	22
Issue number	1
Number of pages	11
ISSN	1368-1613
Publication status	Published - 24 Mar 2017
Event	Proceedings of CoLIS9 : Conceptions of Library and Information Science - Uppsala, Sweden Duration: 26 Jun 2016 → 29 Jun 2016 Conference number: 9

Conference

Conference	Proceedings of CoLIS9
Number	9
Country/Territory	Sweden
City	Uppsala
Period	26/06/2016 → 29/06/2016

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title = "A rejoinder to Nicolaisen{\textquoteright}s refutation of Hj{\o}rland{\textquoteright}s relevance definition",

abstract = "Dr. Nicolaisen (2016) has claimed a refutation of the definition of relevance as provided by the present author. This present paper examines Nicolaisen{\textquoteright}s arguments and finds that Nicolaisen has failed to consider the differences between defining the concept of relevance and the measurement instances of it. His arguments are, therefore, misdirected and irrelevant. The epistemological problems as discussed by Nicolaisen are important, but not in relation to the task of defining the concept of relevance. Furthermore, his “refutation” resembles the well-known mythical “proof” that bumblebees cannot fly. As a result, it is concluded that the relevance definition under discussion is still valid and it is the most fruitful one that has been suggested so far. ",

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AU - Hjørland, Birger

N1 - Conference code: 9

PY - 2017/3/24

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N2 - Dr. Nicolaisen (2016) has claimed a refutation of the definition of relevance as provided by the present author. This present paper examines Nicolaisen’s arguments and finds that Nicolaisen has failed to consider the differences between defining the concept of relevance and the measurement instances of it. His arguments are, therefore, misdirected and irrelevant. The epistemological problems as discussed by Nicolaisen are important, but not in relation to the task of defining the concept of relevance. Furthermore, his “refutation” resembles the well-known mythical “proof” that bumblebees cannot fly. As a result, it is concluded that the relevance definition under discussion is still valid and it is the most fruitful one that has been suggested so far.

AB - Dr. Nicolaisen (2016) has claimed a refutation of the definition of relevance as provided by the present author. This present paper examines Nicolaisen’s arguments and finds that Nicolaisen has failed to consider the differences between defining the concept of relevance and the measurement instances of it. His arguments are, therefore, misdirected and irrelevant. The epistemological problems as discussed by Nicolaisen are important, but not in relation to the task of defining the concept of relevance. Furthermore, his “refutation” resembles the well-known mythical “proof” that bumblebees cannot fly. As a result, it is concluded that the relevance definition under discussion is still valid and it is the most fruitful one that has been suggested so far.

M3 - Journal article

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JO - Information Research

JF - Information Research

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M1 - colis1628.html

T2 - Proceedings of CoLIS9

Y2 - 26 June 2016 through 29 June 2016

ER -

A rejoinder to Nicolaisen’s refutation of Hjørland’s relevance definition

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