Judit Bar-Ilan ( he, יהודית בר-אילן, 1958–2019) was an Israeli computer scientist known for her research in

informetrics Informetrics is the study of quantitative aspects of information, it is an extension and evolution of traditional bibliometrics and scientometrics. Informetrics uses bibliometrics and scientometrics methods to study mainly the problems of literat ...

and

scientometrics Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academi ...

. She was a professor of Information Science and head of the Department of Information Science at

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, he, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן, ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic i ...

Education and career

Bar-Ilan was born in 1958. She was a student at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1981, an education diploma in 1982, a master's degree in 1983, and a Ph.D. in 1990. Her dissertation, ''Applications of One-Way Functions and Randomization in Security Protocols'', was jointly supervised by

Michael O. Rabin Michael Oser Rabin ( he, מִיכָאֵל עוזר רַבִּין; born September 1, 1931) is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist and a recipient of the Turing Award. Biography Early life and education Rabin was born in 1931 in ...

and Michael Ben-Or. After working for a year as a visiting lecturer at the

University of Haifa The University of Haifa ( he, אוניברסיטת חיפה Arabic: جامعة حيفا) is a university located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel. Founded in 1963, the University of Haifa received full academic accreditation in 1972, becoming Is ...

, Bar-Ilan returned to the Hebrew University as an external teacher and later teaching fellow and teacher in library, archive and information studies. She joined the Bar-Ilan University Department of Information Science in 2002, where she was head of department from 2008 to 2012 and was promoted to full professor in 2010.

Contributions

Bar-Ilan did important work early in her career in the

fault tolerance Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...

, and her dissertation research was in

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

. However, she is best known for her research on

information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...

, and

web search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s. Her interest in these topics stemmed from her work in the early 1990s on applications of distributed computing in

library science Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and ...

. This work led her to perform important studies in the late 1990s on the accuracy, reliability, and stability over time of search engine results, and on the ability of search engines to handle non-English queries. She also used search engine results to study the link structure of the web, and applied methodologies including

content analysis Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...

, user surveys, and user studies in these areas. Later in her career, her interests shifted to

, including

citation analysis Citation analysis is the examination of the frequency, patterns, and graphs of citations in documents. It uses the directed graph of citations — links from one document to another document — to reveal properties of the documents. A t ...

and studies of the

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

as well as

altmetrics In scholarly and scientific publishing, altmetrics are non-traditional bibliometrics proposed as an alternative or complement to more traditional citation impact metrics, such as impact factor and ''h''-index. The term altmetrics was proposed i ...

for measuring scholarly productivity. She also investigated the patterns of politically motivated internet activity.

Recognition

The

International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics The International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics was founded in 1993 in Berlin at the International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics. It is an association for professionals in the field of scientometrics. T ...

gave Bar-Ilan their Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal in 2017, "for her distinguished contribution to the field of scientometrics". The

Association for Information Science and Technology The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is a nonprofit membership organization for information professionals that sponsors an annual conference as well as several serial publications, including the ''Journal of the Associ ...

gave her their Research in Information Science Award in 2018, for "sustained contributions to informetrics, bibliometrics information retrieval, and most recently altmetrics, domains at the core of information science". A special memorial issue dedicated to Judit Bar-Ilan was published in the journal

Scientometrics Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academi ...

in June 2020.

Personal life

Bar-Ilan died on July 16, 2019.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bar-Ilan, Judit 1958 births 2019 deaths Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty Bar-Ilan University faculty Israeli women computer scientists Israeli computer scientists