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

Graduate Catalog, 1965-1966

https://scholar.valpo.edu/gradcatalogs/1002/thumbnail.jp

Graduate Catalog, 1966-1967

https://scholar.valpo.edu/gradcatalogs/1003/thumbnail.jp

Graduate Catalog, 1969-1970

https://scholar.valpo.edu/gradcatalogs/1005/thumbnail.jp

Graduate Catalog, 1970-1971

https://scholar.valpo.edu/gradcatalogs/1006/thumbnail.jp

Lived religion as an emerging field: an assessment of its contours and frontiers

Over the last three decades, lived religion has emerged as a distinct field of study, with an identifiable “canon” of originating sources. With this body of work reaching maturity, a critical assessment is in order. This study analyzes sixty-four journal articles published in English, since 1997, which have used either “lived religion” or “everyday religion” in their titles, abstracts, or keywords. We find that the field has largely been defined by what it excludes. It includes attention to laity, not clergy or elites; to practices rather than beliefs; to practices outside religious institutions rather than inside; and to individual agency and autonomy rather than collectivities or traditions. Substantively, the focus on practice has encompassed dimensions of embodiment, discourse and materiality; and I argue here that these substantive foci can form the analytical structure for expanding the domain of lived religion to include the traditions and institutions that have so far largely been excluded from study. In doing so, lived religion’s attention to gender, power, and previously-excluded voices must be maintained. But that task cannot be accomplished without continuing to expand the field beyond the still-limited geographic and religious terrain it has so far covered

Disciplinary identity of game scholars: an outline

There has been academic research work directed at games and play for decades, but the field has been somewhat scattered, and around the turn of the millennium the idea of establishing a new discipline, dedicated to the study of games in their own right gained prominence. The conference, journal and other publication activity in games research has expanded during the last decade, but it remains unclear how many contemporary academics working on games could be seen to represent a unified group, sharing a common disciplinary identity. This paper reports the first results from an international survey (valid n = 544), carried out among the DiGRA mailing list subscribers, as well as among the members of ECREA and ICA games research groups, aimed at probing the background education, orientation and academic practices of games researchers. The findings highlight the great diversity of educational backgrounds and of the current self-identified research fields, but also the dynamic interdisciplinary changes from one field to another, and how strong the identification as a “digital games researcher” is among the survey respondents

A century of methodological individualism part 1: Schumpeter and Menger

2009 marks the centenary of methodological individualism (MI). The phrase was first used in English in a 1909 QJE paper by Joseph Schumpeter. Yet after 100 years there is considerable confusion as to what the phrase means. MI is often invoked as a fundamental description of the methodology both of neoclassical and Austrian economics, as well as other approaches, from New Keynesianism to analytical Marxism. However, the methodologies of those to whom the theoretical practice of MI is ascribed differ profoundly on the status of the individual economic agent, some adopting a holistic and some a reductionist standpoint. The purpose of the research of which this paper is part is to uncover and evaluate some of the meanings of the phrase methodological individualism (MI). This first paper considers the contributions of Joseph Schumpeter, who was the first to use the term, and of Carl Menger, considered by many to be the founder of MI. The approach adopted is to apply the intellectual apparatus developed in Denis (2004) to the arguments of these writers. This constitutes a test of that apparatus: is it able to clarify the standpoints to which it is applied? The conclusion reached is that both Schumpeter and Menger adopt a reductionist ontology in the sense of Denis (2004)

Historical Schools of Economics: German and English

This paper contrasts the German and English traditions of "Historical Economics" and explains their differences by positioning these two traditions in the specific institutional contexts in which they developed.Historical Economics, Historical School, Neoclassicism, German Economics

Some lessons from the Nordic way of doing science

For more than 20 years the Nordic scholars have been major contributors to the advancement of knowledge in orgganization studies. Four aspects are considered: they are both global oriented and locally embedded, they combine disciplinary roots with interdisciplinary openess, they are functioning as a stream open to pluralism, the have constructed a common scientific identity.organizational studies; discplinary roots; paradigms