34,350 research outputs found
Citations: Indicators of Quality? The Impact Fallacy
We argue that citation is a composed indicator: short-term citations can be
considered as currency at the research front, whereas long-term citations can
contribute to the codification of knowledge claims into concept symbols.
Knowledge claims at the research front are more likely to be transitory and are
therefore problematic as indicators of quality. Citation impact studies focus
on short-term citation, and therefore tend to measure not epistemic quality,
but involvement in current discourses in which contributions are positioned by
referencing. We explore this argument using three case studies: (1) citations
of the journal Soziale Welt as an example of a venue that tends not to publish
papers at a research front, unlike, for example, JACS; (2) Robert Merton as a
concept symbol across theories of citation; and (3) the Multi-RPYS
("Multi-Referenced Publication Year Spectroscopy") of the journals
Scientometrics, Gene, and Soziale Welt. We show empirically that the
measurement of "quality" in terms of citations can further be qualified:
short-term citation currency at the research front can be distinguished from
longer-term processes of incorporation and codification of knowledge claims
into bodies of knowledge. The recently introduced Multi-RPYS can be used to
distinguish between short-term and long-term impacts.Comment: accepted for publication in Frontiers in Research Metrics and
Analysis; doi: 10.3389/frma.2016.0000
Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity
Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars
around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs),
most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the
differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking
scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more
than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We
divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of
the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the
scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic
complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length
and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of
lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The
observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and
lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure
How Does Science Come to Speak in the Courts? Citations Intertexts, Expert Witnesses, Consequential Facts, and Reasoning
Citations, in their highly conventionalized forms, visibly indicate each texts explicit use of the prior literature that embodies the knowledge and contentions of its field. This relation to prior texts has been called intertextuality in literary and literacy studies. Here, Bazerman discusses the citation practices and intertextuality in science and the law in theoretical and historical perspective, and considers the intersection of science and law by identifying the judicial rules that limit and shape the role of scientific literature in court proceedings. He emphasizes that from the historical and theoretical analysis, it is clear that, in the US, judicial reasoning is an intertextually tight and self-referring system that pays only limited attention to documents outside the laws, precedents, and judicial rules. The window for scientific literature to enter the courts is narrow, focused, and highly filtered. It serves as a warrant for the expert witnesses\u27 expertise, which in turn makes opinion admissible in a way not available to ordinary witnesses
Styles of academic production in the Argentine social sciences: Heterogeneity and heterodoxy
Argentina is an appealing case for analyzing the social science system. In recent years (until 2015) there has been a robust increase in public funding, giving way to the expansion of research, the recruitment of hundreds of new full-time researchers and the consolidation of scholarships for PhD students. All this, in turn, has resulted in a remarkable increase in publications. Although these processes have occurred in the midst of professionalization (which implies higher levels of adherence to international academic standards), recent studies have shown that two contesting models within the social sciences continue to prevail in Argentina: one that conforms to international standards and practices, and another of a more endogenous nature, with its own logic for knowledge production, evaluation and circulation. In order to examine the impact of international standards in the Argentine social sciences, in this paper I analyze the styles of academic production. This implies the study of three closely related dimensions: research processes and models (theoretical foundations, methods, techniques, etc.); writing formats (structure and organization of academic texts); and publication logics (types of publications, profiles of the journals where the articles are published, etc.). The analysis is based on a large sample of publications selected by other researchers in order to carry out a comprehensive review of Argentine literature with regard to six key themes of the social sciences. These publications were also used to produce a dataset with several variables related to the three above-mentioned dimensions. In particular, this paper focuses on the publications grounded in empirical research, and compares qualitative with quantitative research and the various types of publications (journal articles, book chapters and conference papers). The results show that regardless of the recent process of professionalization, âheterodox modelsâ of academic production are still largely pervasive within the Argentine social sciences.Fil: Piovani, Juan Ignacio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas. Centro CientĂfico TecnolĂłgico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la EducaciĂłn. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales; Argentin
Investigating the psychological and emotional dimensions in instructed language learning: obstacles and possibilities
In this article I put forth the core argument that Second Language Acquisition (SLA) needs to account for the psychological and emotional dimensions of second language (L2) learning, but that a number of epistemological and methodological difficulties must be surmounted before this new research program can be a reality. To illustrate my arguments, I examine in depth 2 research programs developed by my colleagues and me over the last decade: research on extraversion as a psychological variable investigated within the tradition of individual differences in SLA, and research on the expression of emotion in the L2. Throughout the article, I argue against research isolationism and for more interdisciplinarity in the field of instructed SLA. I contend that research on instructed SLA would benefit from an increased methodological and epistemological diversity and that a focus on affect and emotion among researchers might inspire authors of teaching materials and foreign language teachers to pay increased attention to the communication of emotion and the development of sociocultural competence in a L2
Crossâcampus Collaboration: A Scientometric and Network Case Study of Publication Activity Across Two Campuses of a Single Institution
Team science and collaboration have become crucial to addressing key research questions confronting society. Institutions that are spread across multiple geographic locations face additional challenges. To better understand the nature of crossâcampus collaboration within a single institution and the effects of institutional efforts to spark collaboration, we conducted a case study of collaboration at Cornell University using scientometric and network analyses. Results suggest that crossâcampus collaboration is increasingly common, but is accounted for primarily by a relatively small number of departments and individual researchers. Specific researchers involved in many collaborative projects are identified, and their unique characteristics are described. Institutional efforts, such as seed grants and topical retreats, have some effect for researchers who are central in the collaboration network, but were less clearly effective for others
Mining for Culture: Reaching Out of Range
The goal of this paper is to present a tool that will sustain the
development of culturally relevant computing artifacts by
providing an effective means of detecting culture identities and
cultures of participation. Culturally relevant designs rely heavily
on how culture impacts design and though the guidelines for
producing culturally relevant objects provide a mechanism for
incorporating culture in the design, there still requires an effective
method for garnering and identifying said cultures that reflects a
holistic view of the target audience. This tool presents culturally
relevant designs as a process of communicating with key
audiences and thus bridging people and technology in a way that
once seemed out of range
The social embeddedness of consumption - towards the relationship of income and expenditures over time in Germany
Expenditures and their patterns over time are expressions of the standard of living of individuals, households, and the society they live in. Nevertheless social and economic analysis focused rather on the analysis of production than on consumption, and income was widely used as a main indicator of (economic) well-being. On the other hand, expenditure regards as a measure to describe and estimate the participation of households in the wealth of nation. Therefore, there is an interest in the relationship of income and spending money. It is often considered that expenditure and income are the two sides of the same coin called 'social inequality'. This assumption implies a strong relationship between these two measures of welfare inequality. Due to the lack of longitudinal data in Germany, we used repeated crosssectional data (RCS) in our empirical analysis which is based on the West German Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) in 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 and 1993. The IES's are representative cross-sections of all West German households, collected by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. Descriptive methods are used to separate age, cohort, and period effects just as the RCS enables us to use a linear model to shed some light on this issue. The analysis indicates that the relationship between income and expenditure is given but weak: The higher the income the looser the concrete expenditure structure in terms of real consumption is. All in all, the social organisation of consumption is a research object in itself to obtain information about the living standard of individuals and households. -- Ausgaben und deren VerĂ€nderung im Zeitablauf sind Ausdruck des Lebensstandards von Individuen, Haushalten und der Gesellschaft, in der diese leben. Dennoch bezog sich die soziologische und ökonomische Analyse eher auf die GĂŒterproduktion denn auf deren Konsum, und Einkommen wurde als ein MaĂ zur Beschreibung der (ökonomischen) Wohlfahrt verwendet. Andererseits dienen die Ausgaben als MaĂ zur Beschreibung und AbschĂ€tzung der Partizipation von Haushalten an der Wohlfahrt einer Gesellschaft. Und darin liegt das Interesse am VerhĂ€ltnis zwischen Einkommen und Ausgaben begrĂŒndet. Es wird hĂ€ufig unterstellt, daĂ Ausgaben und Einkommen zwei Seiten derselben Medaille darstellen, die als 'soziale Ungleichheit' bezeichnet wird. Diese Annahme impliziert eine Beziehung zwischen den beiden MaĂzahlen zur Beschreibung der Wohlfahrtsungleichheit. Die empirische Analyse basiert auf den Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichproben (EVS) der Jahre 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988 und 1993 fĂŒr Westdeutschland. Bei den EVS handelt es sich um reprĂ€sentative Querschnitterhebungen, die vom Statistischen Bundesamt durchgefĂŒhrt werden. Auf der Grundlage dieser Daten wird versucht, Aussagen ĂŒber die Beziehung zwischen Einkommen und Ausgaben zu treffen. Es werden vornehmlich Methoden der deskriptiven Statistik verwendet, um Alters-, Kohorten- und Periodeneffekte isolieren zu können. Weiterhin ermöglicht die Verbindung der einzelnen EVS die Verwendung induktiver statistischer Methoden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daĂ Einkommen und Ausgaben nicht in einem festen VerhĂ€ltnis zueinander stehen. Je höher die Einkommen sind, desto offener ist der Zusammenhang zur konkreten Ausgabenstruktur. Insgesamt betrachtet bedeutet dies, daĂ die soziale Organisation des Konsums fĂŒr sich genommen als Forschungsgegenstand zur Erlangung von Informationen ĂŒber den Lebensstandard von Individuen und Haushalten mit berĂŒcksichtigt werden muĂ.
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