84,058 research outputs found
Mapping Diversity of Publication Patterns in the Social Sciences and Humanities: An Approach Making Use of Fuzzy Cluster Analysis
<b>Purpose:</b> To present a method for systematically mapping diversity of publication patterns at the author level in the social sciences and humanities in terms of publication type, publication language and co-authorship.<br><b>Design/methodology/approach:</b> In a follow-up to the hard partitioning clustering by Verleysen and Weeren in 2016, we now propose the complementary use of fuzzy cluster analysis, making use of a membership coefficient to study gradual differences between publication styles among authors within a scholarly discipline. The analysis of the probability density function of the membership coefficient allows to assess the distribution of publication styles within and between disciplines.<br><b>Findings:</b> As an illustration we analyze 1,828 productive authors affiliated in Flanders, Belgium. Whereas a hard partitioning previously identified two broad publication styles, an international one vs. a domestic one, fuzzy analysis now shows gradual differences among authors. Internal diversity also varies across disciplines and can be explained by researchers' specialization and dissemination strategies.<br><b>Research limitations:</b> The dataset used is limited to one country for the years 2000-2011; a cognitive classification of authors may yield a different result from the affiliation-based classification used here.<br><b>Practical implications:</b> Our method is applicable to other bibliometric and research evaluation contexts, especially for the social sciences and humanities in non-Anglophone countries.<br><b>Originality/value:</b> The method proposed is a novel application of cluster analysis to the field of bibliometrics. Applied to publication patterns at the author level in the social sciences and humanities, for the first time it systematically documents intra-disciplinary diversity.<b>Purpose:</b> To present a method for systematically mapping diversity of publication patterns at the author level in the social sciences and humanities in terms of publication type, publication language and co-authorship.<br><b>Design/methodology/approach:</b> In a follow-up to the hard partitioning clustering by Verleysen and Weeren in 2016, we now propose the complementary use of fuzzy cluster analysis, making use of a membership coefficient to study gradual differences between publication styles among authors within a scholarly discipline. The analysis of the probability density function of the membership coefficient allows to assess the distribution of publication styles within and between disciplines.<br><b>Findings:</b> As an illustration we analyze 1,828 productive authors affiliated in Flanders, Belgium. Whereas a hard partitioning previously identified two broad publication styles, an international one vs. a domestic one, fuzzy analysis now shows gradual differences among authors. Internal diversity also varies across disciplines and can be explained by researchers' specialization and dissemination strategies.<br><b>Research limitations:</b> The dataset used is limited to one country for the years 2000-2011; a cognitive classification of authors may yield a different result from the affiliation-based classification used here.<br><b>Practical implications:</b> Our method is applicable to other bibliometric and research evaluation contexts, especially for the social sciences and humanities in non-Anglophone countries.<br><b>Originality/value:</b> The method proposed is a novel application of cluster analysis to the field of bibliometrics. Applied to publication patterns at the author level in the social sciences and humanities, for the first time it systematically documents intra-disciplinary diversity.</span
Making visible the invisible through the analysis of acknowledgements in the humanities
Purpose: Science is subject to a normative structure that includes how the
contributions and interactions between scientists are rewarded. Authorship and
citations have been the key elements within the reward system of science,
whereas acknowledgements, despite being a well-established element in scholarly
communication, have not received the same attention. This paper aims to put
forward the bearing of acknowledgements in the humanities to bring to the
foreground contributions and interactions that, otherwise, would remain
invisible through traditional indicators of research performance.
Design/methodology/approach: The study provides a comprehensive framework to
understanding acknowledgements as part of the reward system with a special
focus on its value in the humanities as a reflection of intellectual
indebtedness. The distinctive features of research in the humanities are
outlined and the role of acknowledgements as a source of contributorship
information is reviewed to support these assumptions.
Findings: Peer interactive communication is the prevailing support thanked in
the acknowledgements of humanities, so the notion of acknowledgements as
super-citations can make special sense in this area. Since single-authored
papers still predominate as publishing pattern in this domain, the study of
acknowledgements might help to understand social interactions and intellectual
influences that lie behind a piece of research and are not visible through
authorship.
Originality/value: Previous works have proposed and explored the prevailing
acknowledgement types by domain. This paper focuses on the humanities to show
the role of acknowledgements within the reward system and highlight publication
patterns and inherent research features which make acknowledgements
particularly interesting in the area as reflection of the socio-cognitive
structure of research.Comment: 14 page
Reviewing, indicating, and counting books for modern research evaluation systems
In this chapter, we focus on the specialists who have helped to improve the
conditions for book assessments in research evaluation exercises, with
empirically based data and insights supporting their greater integration. Our
review highlights the research carried out by four types of expert communities,
referred to as the monitors, the subject classifiers, the indexers and the
indicator constructionists. Many challenges lie ahead for scholars affiliated
with these communities, particularly the latter three. By acknowledging their
unique, yet interrelated roles, we show where the greatest potential is for
both quantitative and qualitative indicator advancements in book-inclusive
evaluation systems.Comment: Forthcoming in Glanzel, W., Moed, H.F., Schmoch U., Thelwall, M.
(2018). Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springer Some
corrections made in subsection 'Publisher prestige or quality
The internationalization of the Polish academic profession. A comparative European approach
The internationalization of the Polish academic profession is studied quantitatively in a comparative European context. A micro-level (individual) approach relying on primary data collected in a consistent, internationally comparable format is used (N = 17 211 cases). The individual academic is the unit of analysis, rather than a national higher education system or an individual institution. The authors\u27 study shows that research productivity of Polish academics (consistent with European patterns) is strongly correlated with international collaboration: the average productivity of Polish academics involved in international collaboration ("internationalists") is consistently higher than that of Polish "locals" in all academic fields. Polish academics are less internationalized in research than the European average but the research productivity of Polish "internationalists" is much higher than that of Polish "locals". The impact of international collaboration on average productivity is much higher in Poland than in the other European countries studied, a finding with important policy implications. (DIPF/Orig.
The structure of the Arts & Humanities Citation Index: A mapping on the basis of aggregated citations among 1,157 journals
Using the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) 2008, we apply mapping
techniques previously developed for mapping journal structures in the Science
and Social Science Citation Indices. Citation relations among the 110,718
records were aggregated at the level of 1,157 journals specific to the A&HCI,
and the journal structures are questioned on whether a cognitive structure can
be reconstructed and visualized. Both cosine-normalization (bottom up) and
factor analysis (top down) suggest a division into approximately twelve
subsets. The relations among these subsets are explored using various
visualization techniques. However, we were not able to retrieve this structure
using the ISI Subject Categories, including the 25 categories which are
specific to the A&HCI. We discuss options for validation such as against the
categories of the Humanities Indicators of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the panel structure of the European Reference Index for the
Humanities (ERIH), and compare our results with the curriculum organization of
the Humanities Section of the College of Letters and Sciences of UCLA as an
example of institutional organization
Untangling the Web of E-Research: Towards a Sociology of Online Knowledge
e-Research is a rapidly growing research area, both in terms of publications
and in terms of funding. In this article we argue that it is necessary to
reconceptualize the ways in which we seek to measure and understand e-Research
by developing a sociology of knowledge based on our understanding of how
science has been transformed historically and shifted into online forms. Next,
we report data which allows the examination of e-Research through a variety of
traces in order to begin to understand how the knowledge in the realm of
e-Research has been and is being constructed. These data indicate that
e-Research has had a variable impact in different fields of research. We argue
that only an overall account of the scale and scope of e-Research within and
between different fields makes it possible to identify the organizational
coherence and diffuseness of e-Research in terms of its socio-technical
networks, and thus to identify the contributions of e-Research to various
research fronts in the online production of knowledge
The structural role of the core literature in history
The intellectual landscapes of the humanities are mostly uncharted territory.
Little is known on the ways published research of humanist scholars defines
areas of intellectual activity. An open question relates to the structural role
of core literature: highly cited sources, naturally playing a disproportionate
role in the definition of intellectual landscapes. We introduce four indicators
in order to map the structural role played by core sources into connecting
different areas of the intellectual landscape of citing publications (i.e.
communities in the bibliographic coupling network). All indicators factor out
the influence of degree distributions by internalizing a null configuration
model. By considering several datasets focused on history, we show that two
distinct structural actions are performed by the core literature: a global one,
by connecting otherwise separated communities in the landscape, or a local one,
by rising connectivity within communities. In our study, the global action is
mainly performed by small sets of scholarly monographs, reference works and
primary sources, while the rest of the core, and especially most journal
articles, acts mostly locally
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