Frances is a Lecturer in Information Retrieval Systems in the Manchester Metropolitan University iSchool and Co-Director of the iSchool Research Group, Digital Semantics which focuses on use and design of search technologies and digital libraries. Early in her academic life she worked in Artificial Intelligence/ Natural Language Understanding and on projects to develop automatic abstracting systems and conversational interfaces in information seeking and question/answering. Subsequently her work at Manchester Met has been on the frameworks and evaluation tools supporting the user perspective of the effective interface in facilitating information access and discovery. This has been developed in work on externally funded projects (for example, with SERC, British Library R&DD, JISC, AHRC) and working with research student supervisions, and has led to the provision of innovative courses in search technologies, information seeking behaviour, human computer interaction, trust and ethics in experience design, and text mining in the digital humanities. During this time she has explored the use of information behaviour models, mental models and technology fit to theorise influence and to design change. Her research approach spans lab based experimental science, behavioural talk aloud protocols and applied programming in languages including Prolog. Her work has been published in leading information science journals including the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information Processing and Management, Journal of Documentation, Information Research and across disciplines in the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET). She regularly speaks at conferences and workshops and currently Associate Editor of Data Technologies and Applications, and Features Editor of the Health, Information and Libraries Journal. She is a member of the British Computer Society, Member of the American Society of Information Science (SIGIR) and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Frances has a Ph.D, and MSc from the Department of Computer Science in the University of Manchester (and UMIST University of Manchester Institutue of Science and Technology).
She is Member of the British Computer Society and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
In Progress
Completed
Current and recent appointments
F. Johnson (2020). Health information professionals: delivering core services and value in extraordinary times. Health information and libraries journal. 37(3), pp.245-247.
A. Cunningham, F. Johnson (2016). Exploring trust in online health information: a study of user experiences of patients.co.uk. Health Information and Libraries Journal. 33(4), pp.323-328.
F. Johnson, J. Rowley, L. Sbaffi (2016). Exploring information interactions in the context of Google. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 67(4), pp.824-840.
J. Rowley, F. Johnson, L. Sbaffi, A. Weist (2015). Peer-based information literacy training: Insights from the NICE Evidence Search Student Champion Scheme. Library & Information Science Research. 37(4), pp.338-345.
E. Vassilakaki, F. Johnson (2015). The use of grounded theory in identifying the user experience during search. Library and Information Science Research. 37(1), pp.77-87.
FC. Johnson, J. Rowley, L. Sbaffi (2015). Modelling trust formation in health information contexts. Journal of Information Science. 41(4), pp.415-429.
J. Rowley, F. Johnson (2013). Understanding trust formation in digital information sources: The case of Wikipedia. Journal of Information Science. 39(4), pp.494-508.
E. Vassilakaki, F. Johnson, RJ. Hartley (2012). Image seeking in multilingual environments: A study of the user experience. Information Research. 17(4),
S. Robinson, F. Johnson (2012). The process and affective environment of students’ personal information management. Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences. 4(2), pp.1-13.
F. Johnson (2012). Using semantic differentials for an evaluative view of the search engine as an interactive system. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 909, pp.7-10.
FC. Johnson, J. Craven (2010). Beyond usability: The study of functionality of the 2.0 online catalogue (OPAC). New Review of Academic Librarianship. 16(2), pp.228-250.
J. Craven, F. Johnson, G. Butters (2010). The usability and functionality of an online catalogue. Aslib Proceedings. 62(1), pp.70-84.
F. Johnson, J. Rowley (2010). Contributions from the Department of Information and Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University. Aslib Proceedings. 62(1), pp.5-10.
E. Vassilakaki, F. Johnson, RJ. Hartley, D. Randall (2009). Users' perceptions of searching in flickling. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 1175,
E. Vassilakaki, F. Johnson, RJ. Hartley, D. Randall (2008). A study of users' image seeking behaviour in Flickling. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. 1174,
JR. Griffiths, F. Johnson, RJ. Hartley (2007). User satisfaction as a measure of system performance. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science. 39(3), pp.142-152.
FC. Johnson, SE. Crudge (2007). Using the repertory grid and laddering technique to determine the user's evaluative model of search engines. Journal of Documentation. 63(2), pp.259-280.
SE. Crudge, FC. Johnson (2004). Using the information seeker to elicit construct models for search engine evaluation. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol.. 55, pp.794-806.
FC. Johnson, JR. Griffiths, RJ. Hartley (2003). Task dimensions of user evaluations of information retrieval systems. Inf. Res.. 8,
RJ. Hartley, FC. Johnson, AJ. Oulton (2000). Image, audio, text: a review of recent research in information retrieval. New Review of Information and Library Research. 6, pp.171-206.
FC. Johnson (1999). A critical review of system-centred to user-centred evaluation of automatic abstracting research. New Review of Information and Library Research. 5, pp.49-63.
F. Johnson (1995). Automatic abstracting research. Library Review. 44(8), pp.28-36.
FC. Johnson (1994). A Classification of Ellipsis Based on a Corpus of Information Seeking Dialogues. Inf. Process. Manag.. 30, pp.315-326.
FC. Johnson, WJ. Black (1988). A practical evaluation of two rule-based automatic abstracting techniques. Expert Systems for Information Management. 1(3),
E. Vassilakaki,, E. Garoufallou, FC. Johnson (2014). Users’ Information Seeking Behaviour in a Professional Search Environment. G. Paltoglou, F. Loizides, P. Hansen. In: Professional Search in the Modern World: Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag., pp.23-42.
A. Ahmed, F. Johnson (2021). Gamification as a way of facilitating emotions during information seeking behaviour. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, Springer Nature. 21/3/2021.
A. Ahmed, F. Johnson (2021). Gamification as a Way of Facilitating Emotions During Information-Seeking Behaviour: A Systematic Review of Previous Research. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). pp.85-98.
A. Ahmed, F. Johnson, G. Walton, S. Bayounis (2020). A phenomenographic approach to the effect of emotions on the information behaviour of doctoral students: A narrative inquiry. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). University of Boras, Sweden Virtual Conference, 23/3/2020. pp.874-883.
F. Johnson (2018). From Accessibility to Assess-Ability: An Evaluation Heuristic Based on Cognitive Engagement in Search. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science. University of Sheffield, 26/3/2018.
F. Johnson (2015). Evaluation of the user experience of engagement in the stages of search. In: CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Toulouse, 8/9/2015.
E. Vassilakaki, E. Garoufallou, F. Johnson, RJ. Hartley (2015). An Exploration of Users’ Needs for Multilingual Information Retrieval and Access. In: Communications in Computer and Information Science. pp.249-258.
FC. Johnson Exploring cognitive activity in information interactions. BCS Headquarters, London, 13/9/2014.
E. Vassilakaki, RJ. Hartley, F. Johnson, D. Randall (2010). Users' Image Seeking Behaviour in Multilingual Environments: Experience in Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Data. In: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries. Chania, Greece, 26/5/2009.
E. Vassilakaki, FC. Johnson, RJ. Hartley, D. Randall (2008). A Study of Users' Image Seeking Behaviour in FlickLing. In: CLEF. pp.251-259.
FC. Johnson (1994). A natural language understanding system for reference resolution in information dialogues. Strathclyde, 22/3/1994.
FC. Johnson, J. Craven (2010). Usability testing of Copac’s interface (A JISC funded online catalogue of the holdings of the Research Libraries UK. , University of Manchester.
I also have been involved in conference programme committees including the British Computer Society's Information Retrieval Special Group and CiCLing International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics, and recently the iSchool's iConference
I am Associate Editor of Data Technologies and Applications, and Features Editor for Dissertations into Practice of the Health, Information and Libraries Journal. I regularly review for the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Health Informatics Journal, Journal of Information Science.