Infometrics : history ans trends

Numa releitura da história das metrias da informação em todas suas variantes, o presente Capítulo resgata a contribuição de numerosos pesquisadores da Ïndia, bem como da Europa Oriental e da antiga União Soviética, estes últimos notadamente no domínio da cientometria. O Interesse pelos estudos infométricos no Brasil, e mais particularmente pela bibliometria, nos anos 70-80 do passado século, experimentou posteriormente um declínio significativo, para renascer com nova pujança nos últimos anos, emnumerosas aplicações. A intenção deste longo Capítulo é mostrar, com o auxílio de exemplos concretos, a variedade de aplicações das metrias da informação e, o que é mais importante, ―como fazer‖. Sob uma variedade de nomes – bibliometria, infometria, cientometria, webmetria, etc. – as técnicas infométricas abrem à ciência da informação um brilhante leque de aplicações nos procesos informacionais de representação, organização, gestão, recuperação, planejamento, inferência, tomada de decisão, competitividade, inovação, e todos os desdobramentos políticos, sociais, econômicos, educativos e culturais.In a new reading of the history of infometrics in its whole variety, this Capter uncovers the contribution of a number of Indian, as well as East-European and Russian researchers, the last ones mainly in the domain of scientometrics. The interest, in Brazil, on infometrics, and more precisely in bibliometrics, in the decades of the s seventies and eighties of the last century suffered later on a significant decrease by a recent and strong revival in numerous issues. Special attention is paid in this lon Chapter to show, with the support of numerous examples, to the diversity of infometrics uses and, more important, to ―how to do it‖.Under a variety of names – bibliometrics, infometrics, scientometrics, webmetrics, and so one – infometrics opens a wide and briklliant diversity of actual applications in information recording, organizining, managing, processing, retrieving, forecasting, innovating, decision-making, as well as founding social, economic, cuktural and educationa policies

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

Scientometrics have become an essential element in the practice and evaluation of science and research, including both the evaluation of individuals and national assessment exercises. Yet, researchers and practitioners in this field have lacked clear theories to guide their work. As early as 1981, then doctoral student Blaise Cronin published The need for a theory of citing - a call to arms for the fledgling scientometric community to produce foundational theories upon which the work of the field could be based. More than three decades later, the time has come to reach out the field again and ask how they have responded to this call. This book compiles the foundational theories that guide informetrics and scholarly communication research. It is a much needed compilation by leading scholars in the field that gathers together the theories that guide our understanding of authorship, citing, and impact

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

Scientometrics have become an essential element in the practice and evaluation of science and research, including both the evaluation of individuals and national assessment exercises. Yet, researchers and practitioners in this field have lacked clear theories to guide their work. As early as 1981, then doctoral student Blaise Cronin published "The need for a theory of citing" —a call to arms for the fledgling scientometric community to produce foundational theories upon which the work of the field could be based. More than three decades later, the time has come to reach out the field again and ask how they have responded to this call. This book compiles the foundational theories that guide informetrics and scholarly communication research. It is a much needed compilation by leading scholars in the field that gathers together the theories that guide our understanding of authorship, citing, and impact

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

Scientometrics have become an essential element in the practice and evaluation of science and research, including both the evaluation of individuals and national assessment exercises. Yet, researchers and practitioners in this field have lacked clear theories to guide their work. As early as 1981, then doctoral student Blaise Cronin published "The need for a theory of citing" —a call to arms for the fledgling scientometric community to produce foundational theories upon which the work of the field could be based. More than three decades later, the time has come to reach out the field again and ask how they have responded to this call. This book compiles the foundational theories that guide informetrics and scholarly communication research. It is a much needed compilation by leading scholars in the field that gathers together the theories that guide our understanding of authorship, citing, and impact

Science and Technology Studies. Socio-Historical Epistemology of disciplinary boundaries

L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è (ri)costruire il processo di emergenza del campo di ricerca dei “Science and Technology Studies” (STS) come risultato di una complessa opera di negoziazioni disciplinari. In funzione di questo obiettivo, abbiamo elaborato una metodologia che abbiamo battezzato come “Socio-epistemologia storica”. Dal punto di vista storico, questa tesi di dottorato propone una dettagliata ricostruzione del processo di emergenza del campo interdisciplinare degli STS fra gli anni ’60 e la metà degli anni ’80 (grazie anche a ricerche d’archivio e storia orale). In primo luogo, ci siamo occupati di tracciare alcune traiettorie intellettuali, accademiche e socio-politiche in funzione di una disamina delle condizioni di possibilità dell’emergere di tale campo (fra gli anni ’30 e gli anni ’60). Nel capitolo seguente abbiamo invece proposto una cartografia dei principali centri di ricerca e programmi pedagogici nei principali casi nazionali come: U.K., U.S., Francia, Repubblica democratica tedesca, Repubblica federale tedesca, Austria, e Paesi Bassi. Infine, un ulteriore capitolo è invece dedicato alla ricostruzione della nascita delle prime reti di ricerca internazionali (società e associazioni professionali) in ambito STS. I risultati di questa ricerca storica sono stati interpretati e organizzati tramite il framework della “sociologia dei campi accademici” e della “sociologia della conoscenza”. A completare la nostra disamina, l’approccio filosofico ha reso possibile un’analisi epistemologica basata sui concreti processi storici e sociali di negoziazione disciplinare che hanno reso possibile il programma di ricerca interdisciplinare degli STS. In questo senso, abbiamo sostenuto che le frontiere disciplinari nelle scienze sociali siano al contempo elaborate socialmente, tramite un lungo processo di negoziazione storica, e sulla base di rivendicazioni epistemiche.The aim of this work is to (re)construct the emergence process of the “Science and Technology Studies” (STS) field, as a result of broad disciplinary negotiations (especially between history of science, sociology of science and philosophy of science). In order to achieve this, I proposed an integrated methodology that I labelled “Socio-Historical Epistemology”. From the historical point of view, my Ph.D thesis provides a detailed survey of the academic emergence of the “STS” interdisciplinary field, from the 60s to the mid 80s (made also through archive research and oral history). First of all, I traced some intellectual, academical and socio-political trajectories, in order to explain the conditions of the emergence of this field (from the 30s to the 60s). In the following chapter I proposed a cartography of the major research units and pedagogical programs in U.K., U.S., France, German Democratic Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Austria and Netherlands. Finally, another chapter is dedicated to the professional and international societies in STS. The results of this historical inquiry have been interpreted and organised through the framework of the “sociology of scientific fields” and the “sociology of knowledge”. Furthermore, the philosophical approach has made possible an epistemological analysis of both the historical and the sociological genesis and development of the interdisciplinary context of research of the “STS”. In this sense I argued that disciplinary boundaries in social sciences are, at the same time, diachronically constructed and reconstructed, through a collective process of controversies and negotiations and due to epistemological claims

Imagined Nature: Narratives and Metaphors in the Co-Production of Biotech Patentable Inventions

PhD ThesisSince the 1970s, modern biotechnology and its innovative products have been central to the development of what is considered to fall within the scope of patent eligible subject matter. In major patent systems, an interpretation of the definition of patentable invention has evolved to allow matter qualifying as patent eligible to include techno-scientific products and processes that could not have been envisaged when patent systems were first established. However, modern biotechnology and its bio-artifacts have proved challenging, as they have increasingly raised social opposition and ethical concerns from non-governmental organisations and civil society. Biotech patent claims on genetically modified organisms, DNA sequences and genes, isolated human biological materials and human embryonic stem cells have questioned more radically than other technological claims the meaning of nature and artifact, subject and object, discovery and invention. In the United States, Canada and under the European Patent Convention (EPC), several landmark biotech patent cases involving these kinds of inventions have settled the patent eligibility of these products. In these cases, judges, parties, patent officers and amici curiae have drawn on a rich repertoire of metaphors that, by defining the “nature” and ontology of the claimed invention, sustained or rejected the allocation of intellectual property rights over it. This thesis addresses whether and how metaphors and the analogies they entail have been resorted to in judicial decisions and the administrative discourse of patent offices (practices and guidelines) to expand and limit the scope of patentable subject matter. Moreover, the thesis is engaged in explaining the discrepancies that marked the development of what is a patentable invention in these three jurisdictions. The main hypothesis of the thesis is that the use of the metaphors of the machine, molecule and code has proved pivotal in expanding the scope and stabilizing the meaning of patent eligible matter. These metaphors have been endorsed in technoscientific domains of research and they could be deemed what Ruse has called “root metaphors”, metaphors that were pivotal in orienting the study of the phenomena of life. All these metaphors, as this work illustrates, imply an atomistic and reductionist view of the living organisms, which has largely sustained their patent eligibility. Drawing on the insights offered by cognitive linguistics, the thesis explains that, by prompting analogies, metaphors define the “is” and the “ought” of a concept. Their analysis, therefore, enables an account of how descriptive and normative issues have been entangled in sustaining and settling the meaning of molecular biotech products, so that the metaphorical definition of the nature of the invention conveyed or not its patent eligibility. The thesis argues and shows, furthermore, that the judicial and administrative narratives in which these metaphors have been employed have been likewise influential and backed particular sociotechnical imaginaries of life and nature, which have been pivotal in defining what is natural and artificial and in framing individual and collective identities in molecular terms. This work relies, in particular, on Science and Technology Studies’ framework centered on concept of co-production, namely the insight that the natural and social orders are produced together. According to this framework, the is and ought of the world are continuously established, through the authoritative discourses of science and law, which define what is a claimed invention within a technological field and how it should be governed. The co-productionist framework is fundamental to pinpoint and understand the relevant nexus that narrative analysis should address and explain in the thesis (which has been articulated by Calvert and Joly): the relationship between making knowledge – the creation of ontologies – and the production of intellectual property.Herchel Smith ScholarshipCCLS Scholarshi

Feminine Identities

The first four essays in this volume all focus on issues of gender in the works of different English authors and thinkers. Shorter versions of each of these essays were formerly presented as papers in an autonomous section of the Research and Educational Programme on Studies of Identity at the XXth Meeting of the Portuguese Association of Anglo-American Studies (Póvoa de Varzim, 1999) and published in the proceedings of the conference. The second cluster of essays in this volume — two of which (Jennie Wang’s and Teresa Cid’s) were first presented, in shorter versions, at the joint ASA/CAAS Conference (Montréal, 1999) — addresses the work of American women variously engaged in contexts of cultural diversity and grappling with the ideas of what it means to be an American and a woman, particularly in the twentieth century. These essays approach, from different angles, the definitional quandaries and semantic difficulties encountered when speaking about the self and the United States and provide, in one way or another, a sort of feminine rewriting of American myths and history.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Science Studies: Probing the Dynamics of Scientific Knowledge

How can we understand the intensifying interactions of science and society? It is the interdisciplinary field called science studies that provides us with a rich inventory of analytical approaches. They help us explore science as a practice, a subsystem, a culture, and an institution. Their joint observation: Science today is part and parcel of what has come to be known as 'knowledge society'. More than ever, knowledge production and consumption are in need of incessant monitoring and sophisticated reflection. Nine exemplary studies that inquire into, or are themselves examples of the dynamics of scientific knowledge, are included here: They cover issues as diverse as eugenics, climate research, and the role of historiography, and make use of different tools such as evolutionary reasoning, metaphor, and bibliometrics. Finally, they ponder the need for science to go public (PUS) as well as for society to regulate knowledge and to restructure universities as building blocks of our science system. Their joint message: Science studies can and should assume an active role in observing, reflecting, and communicating the intricate encounters of science and society today