Towards a Cloud-Based Service for Maintaining and Analyzing Data About Scientific Events

We propose the new cloud-based service OpenResearch for managing and analyzing data about scientific events such as conferences and workshops in a persistent and reliable way. This includes data about scientific articles, participants, acceptance rates, submission numbers, impact values as well as organizational details such as program committees, chairs, fees and sponsors. OpenResearch is a centralized repository for scientific events and supports researchers in collecting, organizing, sharing and disseminating information about scientific events in a structured way. An additional feature currently under development is the possibility to archive web pages along with the extracted semantic data in order to lift the burden of maintaining new and old conference web sites from public research institutions. However, the main advantage is that this cloud-based repository enables a comprehensive analysis of conference data. Based on extracted semantic data, it is possible to determine quality estimations, scientific communities, research trends as well the development of acceptance rates, fees, and number of participants in a continuous way complemented by projections into the future. Furthermore, data about research articles can be systematically explored using a content-based analysis as well as citation linkage. All data maintained in this crowd-sourcing platform is made freely available through an open SPARQL endpoint, which allows for analytical queries in a flexible and user-defined way.Comment: A completed version of this paper had been accepted in SAVE-SD workshop 2017 at WWW conferenc

Substitution and Complementarity in the Creation and Communication of Australian University Research

The generation of research is one of the major functions of the University sector. In most disciplines, journal articles continue to be the main outlet for the communication of research findings. However, in Australia, government induced distortions have rewarded refereed conference papers an equal status to refereed journal papers. The aim of this paper is to explore the association between research published in journals and research published in conference proceedings. We use a panel dataset of the research output of 36 Australian universities, for the period 1995-2004. Cobb-Douglas research production functions are estimated, as well as a system of research production functions that allows for simultaneity. The results indicate that journals and conferences are contemporaneous substitutes – an expansion in conference publications displaces journal publications. There is also a “DEST effect”. On average, conference papers are not converted into subsequent journal papers. The DEST effect is found also through analysis of the publication histories of 152 business and law academics. Post-graduate enrollments are shown to contribute only to conferences and have no effect on journal publications. Research income has a positive effect on both conferences and journal publications.Journals, conferences, DEST effect, research production functions, Australian

Advice to Students Considering Graduate Work in English

Drawing on specific case histories from over 50 students who applied to graduate programs in English Literature, Composition, and Writing, this document represents my advice to students applying nationwide to do graduate work in the various subfields of English studies

The strategic impact of META-NET on the regional, national and international level

This article provides an overview of the dissemination work carried out in META-NET from 2010 until 2015; we describe its impact on the regional, national and international level, mainly with regard to politics and the funding situation for LT topics. The article documents the initiative's work throughout Europe in order to boost progress and innovation in our field.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Zach S. Henderson Library Faculty Bylaws

First library bylaws document adopted in response to Faculty Senate directive

Counting research ⇒ directing research : the hazard of using simple metrics to evaluate scientific contributions : an EU experience

In many EU countries there is a requirement to count research, i.e., to measure and prove its value. These numbers, often produced automatically based on the impact of journals, are used to rank universities, to determine fund distribution, to evaluate research proposals, and to determine the scientific merit of each researcher. While the real value of research may be difficult to measure, one avoids this problem by counting papers and citations in well-known journals. That is, the measured impact of a paper (and the scientific contribution) is defined to be equal to the impact of the journal that publishes it. The journal impact (and its scientific value) is then based on the references to papers in this journal. This ignores the fact that there may be huge differences between papers in the same journal; that there are significant discrepancies between impact values of different scientific areas; that research results may be offered outside the journals; and that citations may not be a good index for value. Since research is a collaborative activity, it may also be difficult to measure the contributions of each individual scientist. However, the real danger is not that the contributions may be counted wrongly, but that the measuring systems will also have a strong influence on the way we perform research. Keywords: Counting research, h-index, journal publications, JCR, ranking.publishedVersio

Peri-Urban Community Socio-Cultural Preferences for, and Experts’ Views on, Sanitation Options: A Case Study of the Kotoko Community in Suame (Kumasi), Ghana

Sanitation affects all aspects of human development due to its cross-cutting nature.  Sanitation improvement has health and non-health externalities.  Drivers that motivate sanitation improvement, ownership, and usage are governed largely by non-health externalities – improved privacy, convenience, time-saving, social status, prestige, safety for women and children, cleanliness, odour, fly reduction and modernity.  Community perceptions and experts’ views on sanitation options are critical for choice selection and use.  This research seeks to explore and evaluate views and preferences of experts and users to inform sustainable and acceptable sanitation for a low-income high-density predominantly Muslim multi-ethnic peri-urban Kotoko community in Kumasi, Ghana.  Respondents were distributed in proportion to each household size using an equation developed for representativeness.  Out of 2,200 inhabitants, 133 respondents (6% of the population) were interviewed.  The study revealed that the community’s sanitation preferences were inclined towards modern sanitation options – 75% preferred flush as against 76% for water seal.  Contrary to some opinions that the direction in which one faces during defecation does not matter, this research revealed that 41% (55) of respondents preferred positioning in the North-South direction, and most preferred sitting (47%) to squatting (34%) during defecation.  Experts’ analysis of five sanitation options emphasized non-technical, health and environmental factors over technical features although the trend varies across individual sanitation options.  Experts identified with socio-cultural, health and environment factors as most important.  The findings can thus be used by local authorities to gradually address the complexities of peri-urban sanitation challenges. Keywords: preferences, peri-urban, socio-cultural, sanitation, experts, Ghan

Quantity versus impact of software engineering papers: a quantitative study

According to the data from the Scopus publication database, as analyzed in several recent studies, more than 70,000 papers have been published in the area of Software Engineering (SE) since late 1960’s. According to our recent work, 43% of those papers have received no citations at all. Since citations are the most commonly used metric for measuring research (academic) impact, these figures raise questions (doubts) about the (non-existing) impact of such a large set of papers. It is a reality that typical academic reward systems encourage researchers to publish more papers and do not place a major emphasis on research impact. To shed light on the issue of volume (quantity) versus citation-based impact of SE research papers, we conduct and report in this paper a quantitative bibliometrics assessment in four aspects: (1) quantity versus impact of different paper types (e.g., conference versus journal papers), (2) ratios of uncited (non-impactful) papers, (3) quantity versus impact of papers originating from different countries, and (4) quantity versus impact of papers by each of the top-10 authors (in terms of number of papers). To achieve the above objective, we conducted a quantitative exploratory bibliometrics assessment, comprised of four research questions, to assess quantity versus impact of SE papers with respect to the aspects discussed above. We extracted the data through a systematic, automated and repeatable process from the Scopus paper database, which we also used in two previous papers. Our results show that the distribution of SE publications has a major inequality in terms of impact overall, and also when categorized in terms of the above four aspects. The situation in the SE literature is similar to the other areas of science as studied by previous bibliometrics studies. Also, among our results is the fact that journal articles and conference papers have been cited 12.6 and 3.6 times on average, confirming the expectation that journal articles have more impact, in general, than conference papers. Also, papers originated from English-speaking countries have in general more visibility and impact (and consequently citations) when compared to papers originated from non-English-speaking countries. Our results have implications for improvement of academic reward systems, which nowadays mainly encourage researchers to publish more papers and usually neglect research impact. Also, our results can help researchers in non-English-speaking countries to consider improvements to increase their research impact of their upcoming papers.Vahid Garousi was partially supported by several internal grants provided by the Hacettepe University and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK). Joao M. Fernandes was supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013

Determinant of Performance Efficiency in Non-Profit Organizations: Evidence from Nigerian Federal Universities

This study measured the performance efficiency of Nigerian non-profit making organizations with emphasis on federal universities and showed how some factors such as university funding, university assessment and ranking, university size, university technology status and university age are related to the performance efficiency of Nigerian federal universities. Data were collected from the National Universities Commission. Seventeen (17) federal universities out of a total of thirty-seven (37) were used in this study and there were selected based on their similarity of operations. The time frame for the study was 2006 – 2010. Regression results showed that funding, assessment and ranking, size and technology application were statistically but not significant in affecting the performance efficiency of non-profit making organizations in Nigeria. But, age was statistically significant in impacting the performance of federal universities in Nigeria. Finally, the study recommended that there is need for increased funding and monitoring of utilization of funds in federal universities, improved technology applications and infrastructural development in large and older universities in Nigeria, so as to improve their performance efficiency Keywords: Non-profit organizations; Efficiency;Federal Universitie