10,246 research outputs found
The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication
The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an
important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of
scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however,
a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap,
have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic
approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination
of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic
field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping
sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they
differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the
community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about
the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative
patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic
study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include
methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to
adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community
structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a
case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS
Making Sense of Entrepreneurship Journals: Journal Rankings and Strategy Choices
Dozens of peer-reviewed, English language journals are currently published in our field. How ought we to evaluate them? This paper seeks to answer this question. To do so, we utilize both relevant literature and data on Entrepreneurship journals. The literature derives from both information science and other research areas that reflect on their journals. The data derives from six citation measures from Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. We find 59 currently published English language, peer reviewed journals in Entrepreneurship. Contestable judgments based on their impact measures suggest that one of these 59 could be considered as “A+, four as “A”, five as “AB”, eight as “B”, four as “BC”, 23 as “C”, thirteen as “barely detectable”, and one as “insufficient data but promising”.
Journal rankings affect the resources and prestige accorded to business schools, disciplines and subdisciplines, and individual scholars. However, the need to fit evaluations to school strategy implies that no rating system, ours included, is definitive. Multiple measures are needed, letter grades are misleading, and journal rankings should match the institution’s strategy and priorities in stakeholder service. A wider purpose of this study is to alert readers to the range of current methodologies and the limits of conventional rankings. Our conclusions appear innocuous, but standard practice is to use restrictive measures, to employ letter grades, and to prioritize only one stakeholder: scholars. These practices are poorly suited to the Entrepreneurship field
Emerging Search Regimes: Measuring Co-evolutions among Research, Science, and Society
Scientometric data is used to investigate empirically the emergence of search
regimes in Biotechnology, Genomics, and Nanotechnology. Complex regimes can
emerge when three independent sources of variance interact. In our model,
researchers can be considered as the nodes that carry the science system.
Research is geographically situated with site-specific skills, tacit knowledge
and infrastructures. Second, the emergent science level refers to the formal
communication of codified knowledge published in journals. Third, the
socio-economic dynamics indicate the ways in which knowledge production relates
to society. Although Biotechnology, Genomics, and Nanotechnology can all be
characterised by rapid growth and divergent dynamics, the regimes differ in
terms of self-organization among these three sources of variance. The scope of
opportunities for researchers to contribute within the constraints of the
existing body of knowledge are different in each field. Furthermore, the
relevance of the context of application contributes to the knowledge dynamics
to various degrees
Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders Among Dentists and Orthodontists
WORK-RELATED MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS AMONG DENTISTS AND ORTHODONTISTS
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Dentistry at Virginia Commonwealth University.
by
Natalie R. La Rochelle
Thesis Director: Dr. Eser Tüfekçi, D.D.S., M.S., Ph.D., M.S.H.A.
Professor, Department of Orthodontics
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, Virginia
May 2017
The practice of dentistry is physically demanding due to static and dynamic postures sustained daily throughout careers. Previous literature suggests that work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) are not solely the result of work habits, but also due to the individual, his or her physical makeup, genetics, and personal lifestyle. A 33-question survey was distributed to 1000 general dentists and 2300 orthodontists. The overall prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders was greater among dentists and most often reported as self-limiting. Dentists were three times more likely than orthodontists to report WMSD; females were twice as likely to report WMSD than males; those who sought alternative medical remedies were two times more likely to have WMSD; and practitioners 6-10 years in practice were least likely to report WMSD. Dentists reported sitting in static positions longer than orthodontists; and those with WMSD indicated exercising, stretching, and seeking alternative health remedies more than dentists without WMSD
Quantifying literature citations, index terms, and Gene Ontology annotations in the Saccharomyces Genome Database to assess results-set clustering utility
A set of 37,325 unique literature citations was identified from 120,078 literature-based annotations in the Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD). The citations, gene products, and related Gene Ontology (GO) annotations were
analyzed to quantify unique articles, journals, genes, and to rank by publication year, language, and GO term frequency. GO terms, MeSH indexing terms, MeSH Journal Descriptors, and SGD Literature Topics were quantified and analyzed to assess their potential utility for results set clustering. Results: Bradford’s Law of Scattering was shown to hold for the citations, journals, gene products, and GO
annotations. Only the MeSH terms and article title/abstract pairs had significant numbers of term co-occurrence. Multiple term types may be useful for faceted searching and clustered results set browsing if the strengths of each are
leveraged
How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research. A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management
This study provides quantitative evidence on how the use of journal rankings
can disadvantage interdisciplinary research in research evaluations. Using
publication and citation data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity
and the research performance of a number of Innovation Studies units with that
of leading Business & Management schools in the UK. On the basis of various
mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) Innovation Studies units are
consistently more interdisciplinary in their research than Business &
Management schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business
Schools' rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower-ranked
journals; (iii) this results in a more favourable assessment of the performance
of Business & Management schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. This
citation-based analysis challenges the journal ranking-based assessment. In
short, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly 'excellence-based' journal
rankings exhibit a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The
paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in
particular how the bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and
associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary research organisations,
and may result in researchers becoming more compliant with disciplinary
authority over time.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure
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