An exploratory social network analysis of academic research networks

For several decades, academics around the world have been collaborating with the view to support the development of their research domain. Having said that, the majority of scientific and technological policies try to encourage the creation of strong inter-related research groups in order to improve the efficiency of research outcomes and subsequently research funding allocation. In this paper, we attempt to highlight and thus, to demonstrate how these collaborative networks are developing in practice. To achieve this, we have developed an automated tool for extracting data about joint article publications and analyzing them from the perspective of social network analysis. In this case study, we have limited data from works published in 2010 by England academic and research institutions. The outcomes of this work can help policy makers in realising the current status of research collaborative networks in England

Academic and demographic characteristics as predictors of scholarly productivity in the Israeli academia

In this study we investigated the influence of various researchers' characteristics, such as faculty, department, gender and seniority, on their scholarly productivity. A quantitative research was conducted with 601 professors with tenure from two leading Israeli universities, in order to construct a comprehensive model for assessment and prediction of the scholarly productivity. We found a great variability in seniority and productivity of the examined professors. In addition, a multivariate linear regression showed significant differences between the examined faculties. The faculty of Life Sciences was the most scholarly productive, while Social Sciences was the least scholarly productive faculty. Overall, there was a positive influence of academic seniority on scholarly productivity, however, scholars with over twenty years of seniority appeared to be less productive than those with the middle level seniority. One of the most interesting findings was gender differences of the scholarly productivity distribution. Contrary to the past research, we found that women were more productive than men. This is a first large-scale quantitative research of senior scholars in Israel which sheds some light on the productivity evaluation and its influence factors in the Israeli academia

Faculty Publication Productivity and Collaboration in Pakistan: Using Mixed Methods to Compare Foreign and Domestic Doctoral Degree Holders

In higher education research, publication productivity and collaboration of foreign doctoral degree holders have been thoroughly examined in developed countries. However, they have been given less attention in developing countries such as Pakistan, despite their growing visibility and significance in HEIs. The purpose of this study was to examine faculty publication productivity and collaboration differences between foreign and domestic doctoral degree holders. The theoretical premise of the study was based on knowledge recombination theory and mobility approaches, and the study used a convergent parallel mixed methods design. The empirical data consist of 232 faculty members and 17 semi-structured interviews with university administrators collected from 14 public universities. The findings of the study revealed that foreign doctoral degree holders had not produced a greater total of refereed journal articles than their domestic doctoral holder colleagues. Qualitative findings also supported the quantitative findings of the study, as well as made a theoretical contribution to knowledge recombination theory and mobility approaches. Our findings suggested that mobility helps knowledge flows and knowledge gained from distant sources is significantly more creative when compared to domestic knowledge. Additionally, analysis demonstrated that certain foreign doctoral holders are particularly productive and could have benefited from unique knowledge not accessible to their domestic doctoral colleagues. The findings also recognized that those who move internationally and opt for foreign study could be beneficial for home countries and undoubtedly help institutions achieve their research excellence goals. Further discussion and implications are provided

Soil-Bentonite Slurry Trench Cutoff Wall Proposal

This is the proposal to the National Science Foundation for a soil-bentonite slurry trench cutoff wall. The proposal includes a project summary, description of the project, and the resources implemented on the project