The Open Research Web: A Preview of the Optimal and the Inevitable

The multiple online research impact metrics we are developing will allow the rich new database , the Research Web, to be navigated, analyzed, mined and evaluated in powerful new ways that were not even conceivable in the paper era – nor even in the online era, until the database and the tools became openly accessible for online use by all: by researchers, research institutions, research funders, teachers, students, and even by the general public that funds the research and for whose benefit it is being conducted: Which research is being used most? By whom? Which research is growing most quickly? In what direction? under whose influence? Which research is showing immediate short-term usefulness, which shows delayed, longer term usefulness, and which has sustained long-lasting impact? Which research and researchers are the most authoritative? Whose research is most using this authoritative research, and whose research is the authoritative research using? Which are the best pointers (“hubs”) to the authoritative research? Is there any way to predict what research will have later citation impact (based on its earlier download impact), so junior researchers can be given resources before their work has had a chance to make itself felt through citations? Can research trends and directions be predicted from the online database? Can text content be used to find and compare related research, for influence, overlap, direction? Can a layman, unfamiliar with the specialized content of a field, be guided to the most relevant and important work? These are just a sample of the new online-age questions that the Open Research Web will begin to answer

A Deep Relational Event Additive Model for modeling patent citations

The patent citation network is a complex and dynamic system that reflects the diffusion of knowledge and innovation across different fields of technology. With this work, we aim to analyze such citation networks by developing a novel approach that leverages Relational Event Models (REMs) and Machine learning concepts. Overcoming the main limitations of REMs on analyzing large sparse networks, we propose a Deep Relational Event Additive Model (DREAM) that models the relationships between cited and citing patents as events that occur over time, capturing the dynamic nature of the patent citation network. Each predictor in the generative model is assumed to have a non-linear behavior, which has been modeled through a B-spline approach that allowed us to capture such smooth effects. By estimating the model through a stochastic gradient descent approach, we were able to efficiently estimate the parameters of the DREAM and identify the key factors that drive the network dynamics. Additionally, our spline approach allowed us to capture complex relationships between predictors through elaborate interaction effects, leading to a more accurate and comprehensive interpretation of the underlying mechanisms of the patent citation network. Our analysis revealed several interesting insights, such as the identification of time windows in which citations are more likely to happen and the relevancy of the increasing number of citations received per patent. Overall, our results demonstrate the potential of the DREAM in capturing complex dynamics that arise in a large sparse network, maintaining the features and the interpretability for which REMs are mostly famous

Identifying Citation Sentiment and its Influence while Indexing Scientific Papers

Sentiment analysis has proven to be a popular research area for analyzing social media texts, newspaper articles, and product reviews. However, sentiment analysis of citation instances is a relatively unexplored area of research. For scientific papers, it is often assumed that the sentiment associated with citation instances is inherently positive. This assumption is due to the hedged nature of sentiment in citations, which is difficult to identify and classify. As a result, most of the existing indexes focus only on the frequency of citation. In this paper, we highlight the importance of considering the sentiment of citation while preparing ranking indexes for scientific literature. We perform automatic sentiment classification of citation instances on the ACL Anthology collection of papers. Next, we use the sentiment score in addition to the frequency of citation to build a ranking index for this collection of scientific papers. By using various baselines, we highlight the impact of our index on the ACL Anthology collection of papers. Our research contributes toward building more sentiment sensitive ranking index which better underlines the influence and usefulness of research papers

A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics

Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the “laws" of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments

Nonverbal Communication and Its Role in Building Rapport: A Mixed Methods Study of K-12 Teachers

This study set out to measure the impact of nonverbal communication (NVC) teacher behaviors on student perceptions of rapport and to determine which of these behaviors were conscious. Six teachers at three grade levels were participants in the study. The NV behaviors of teachers were quantified and their effect on student perceptions of rapport was measured by student surveys. Teachers’ awareness of their NVC skills was established thorugh an analysis of interviews. The mixed-methods convergent parallel methodology contributed to a rich collection of data that was analyzed using multiple strategies. The literature provides extensive evidence that NVC behaviors contribute to student perceptions of rapport. Evidence is particularly robust at the college level (Andersen,1980 ; Finn et al., 2009; McCroskey et al., 1995). This study resulted in multiple findings. The teachers in this study shared a wide variety of NV behaviors that contributed to rapport, although with varying levels of awareness. The level of awareness did not have an impact on student perceptions of rapport, consistent with Pentland and Heibeck’s (2010) study. Finally, although the study makes a contribution to future research, teachers’ NV behaviors did not yield significant results when correlated with perceptions of rapport

The Phenomenon of Teacher Burnout: Mitigating its Influence on New Teachers

Burnout is a psychological condition with physical, emotional, and mental dimensions. Burnout often includes feelings of exhaustion, long-term fatigue, negative self-concept, despair or hopelessness, frustration, and a lack of productivity at work. Teacher burnout is a well-known and researched field. It has been documented in the literature that teachers experience high levels of stress and emotional exhaustion, which leads to high levels of burnout and professional attrition. This study examined the incidence of burnout in new elementary school teachers and offered recommendations for changes to organizational structure that may reduce professional burnout. For the purpose of this study five new elementary-level teachers, with fewer than five years of experience, from several school districts in the San Francisco Bay Area were selected. I, as the researcher, conducted informal as well as formal surveys of self-reported stress levels using the teachers’ own descriptions of their daily stressors. Teachers completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (1981). The researcher then synthesized these findings and use this information to suggest ways in which organizational change can alleviate teacher burnout. Results indicated that new teachers are feeling significant burnout to the point where they are considering leaving the field. Suggestions from participants include hiring more paraprofessionals, providing material resources, and increased opportunities for mentorship and professional development

Coaches’ dehumanisation in sport: exploring antecedents and relationships with wellbeing.

Overview: Dehumanisation is the denial of humanness, in which humanness is considered as attributes that characterise what it means to be human. To the author’s knowledge, this study was the first to specifically explore dehumanisation in a sporting context. The context used was team-selection decisions, widely conceptualised as a stressor for coaches. This study sought to explore whether dehumanisation was employed by coaches when making team selection decisions, what personal or contextual factors may predict this, and to examine whether dehumanisation may be protective for mental well-being. Methodology: A combination of sampling methods were used alongside gatekeepers to recruit participants. Coaches completed a two part questionnaire, one before (n=193) and one after a team selection decision (n=104). Questionnaires contained demographic information, and measures of dehumanisation, Personal Sense of Power (PSP), Emotional Intelligence (EI), Resilience, Relatedness and Mental well-being. Results: Coaches’ change in use of dehumanisation from pre to post selection was found to be negligible. This indicated that personal factors instead of contextual factors were of greater prominence when predicting coaches’ engagement with dehumanisation. Specifically, coaches’ levels of PSP, EI Relatedness and Resilience negatively predicted use of all three forms of dehumanisation. Moreover, it was found that all three forms of dehumanisation were negatively related to mental well-being, suggesting that engagement with dehumanisation is unlikely to be functional for coaches in relieving stress. Conclusion: Findings suggest that dehumanisation does not significantly change following a team selection decision, yet personal factors do influence coaches’ engagement with dehumanisation. Thus, the key implication of this study is that coach education programmes seek to integrate training of EI, Resilience and Relatedness, due to the negatively correlations with dehumanisation, and dehumanisation’s negatively relationship with mental well-being. It is recommended future research focuses on practical manifestations of, and sport-specific measures for, dehumanisation