Outlining an analytical framework for mapping research evaluation landscapes

This paper suggests an infrastructure perspective, as suggested by Star and Bowker (2006), as an analytical framework for studying the research evaluation landscape. An infrastructure is suggested to be understood, not as a concrete technology, but as a system of contextual factors including ‘Actors/Stakeholders’, ‘Technical systems’, and ‘Evaluation practices’. How the framework can be operationationalized is exemplified by examples from previous and ongoing research, as well as by identify gaps in current research

Augmenting usability: cultural elicitation in HCI

This paper offers context and culture elicitation in an inter-cultural and multi-disciplinary setting of ICT design. Localised usability evaluation (LUE) is augmented with a socio-technical evaluation tool (STEM) as a methodological approach to expose and address issues in a collaborative ICT design within the Village e-Science for Life (VeSeL) project in rural Kenya. The paper argues that designers need to locally identify context and culture in situ and further explicate their implications through the design process and at the global level. Stakeholders’ context, culture, decisions, agendas, expectations, disciplines and requirements need to be locally identified and globally evaluated to ensure a fit for purpose solution

Interdisciplinarity metric based on the co-citation network

Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of a research is a relevant problem in the evaluative bibliometrics. The concept of interdisciplinarity is ambiguous and multidimensional. Thus, different measures of interdisciplinarity have been propose in the literature. However, few studies have proposed interdisciplinary metrics without previously defining classification sets, and no one use the co-citation network for this purpose. In this study we propose an interdisciplinary metric based on the co-citation network. This is a way to define the publication's field without resorting to pre-defined classification sets. We present a characterization of a publication's field and then we use this definition to propose a new metric of the interdisciplinarity degree for publications (papers) and journals as units of analysis. The proposed measure has an aggregative property that makes it scalable from a paper individually to a set of them (journal) without more than adding the numerators and denominators in the proportions that define this new indicator. Moreover, the aggregated value of two or more units is strictly among all the individual values.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

The many voices of interdisciplinarity

* Cogent Arts & Humanities aspires to publish high-quality, peer-reviewed academic work from around the world in a scholarly Open Access format supported by the finest Internet software, marketing, and analytics. While the journal as a whole is divided into five thematic sections defined roughly in disciplinary terms, Cogent Arts & Humanities does not center itself upon a specific discipline, tradition, or movement within or among academic disciplines. This makes it a particularly fine place to publish interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, as well as liminally or marginally disciplinary work-in addition, of course, to work that is properly disciplinary. We collect here, in this our first special issue, a selection of extraordinary essays from authors exhibiting something of the range of interdisciplinary work with which academics and other intellectuals are today engaged. In part, the composition of this collection was driven by dynamics evolving within particular academic disciplines themselves-e.g. internal criticisms of the epistemological project of university scholarship and the exclusions, politically speaking, that have defined academia. In part, this collection has also emerged from stresses, challenges, and disruptions inflicted upon conventional disciplines by forces outside of them (often forces in government and commerce). In part, the composition of this collection exhibits the idiosyncratic drives, interests, and aspirations of its particular authors and editors. Michael Davis' remarkable essay, "Lies like the truth," on Plato's philosophical dialog, the Lesser Hippias, and Homer's epic poem, the Iliad, offer a fine gateway into our volume with its meditation being polutopos-i.e. polytopical or many-placed-a concept that anticipates contemporary ideas about interdisciplinarity Clever Odysseus lies and lies well because he can appreciate multiple perspectives, different places from which others (both friends and enemies) understand the world. Odysseus shows us how understanding the truth and turning one's practices upon it requires appreciating what truth is not (i.e. what is false or in error). But the idea of an other to truth also raises questions about the possibility of other truths, or at least the extent to which other perspectives might add depth and complexity to what one sees as (one's own) truth. That may be so perhaps because our own "truths" are necessarily incomplete. Perhaps it is even so because truth is in some sense itself "poly" or multiple. From this perspective, interdisciplinarity can help inquirers resist reductionism. It's an observation Brent Smith finely sharpens in his essay about the disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity of Religious Studies. Following Parmenides' clue about the singularity of esti (or "what is"), Plato's characters variously maintain in dialogs such as the Republic that while doxa (opinion or belief) is many, plural, and shifting, epistemē (or knowledge) is singular or one and stable. Hegel, following out the implications of this thought in the Phenomenology of Spirit, argues that while the truth is polyphonic in the process of its realization-with different competitors to truth vying among themselves-when finally the truth is complete, its realization is both singular and also comprehensive. "Das Wahre ist das Ganze" ("the true is the whole"), Hegel concludes in §22 of the Preface to the Phenomenology, a whole that comprehends all the world's apparently different knowledges in a systematic unity-a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts

Communicational efforts for the construction of relationships in contemporary society: mediations and technology

This article aims to discuss the necessary alignment of communication efforts to build longlasting relationships between a organization and it public facing the ephemerality of the contemporary society. It begins with the historical and conceptual evolution of  Public Relations activity, highlighting, afterwards, the social and technological context in which we live, which features lead to a discussion about the integration of professionals’ skills from various fields of communication. Such integration enhances the construction of relational process, since it is an absolute necessity that translates changes and challenges over which we shed light with this article