10,569 research outputs found

    Assessing the influence of R&D institutions by mapping international scientific networks: the case of INESC Porto

    Get PDF
    Although scientometric and bibliometric studies embrace a much wider perspective of the linkages/networks of R&D institutions than standard economic studies, to the best of our knowledge, these studies have not yet made use of scientometric tools to analyse the influence and impact of R&D institutions. Moreover, the international perspective has so far been neglected both in standard and bibliometric studies. Based on networks of 1239 foreign co-authorships and 13035 foreign citation linkages, we demonstrate that INESC Porto international influence has considerably expanded since 2003, a year that coincided with the implementation of an internal policy of granting monetary prizes to publications in scientific international journals. In terms of co-authorship, the network of INESC Porto more than duplicated (13 countries in the initial period to 27 in 2004-07). In terms of citations, INESC Porto’s network encompassed almost 40 countries during the whole period (1996-2007). Its more prolific units (optoelectronics, energy and multimedia) presented a rather distinct pattern both in terms of size and evolution of the corresponding network boundaries. The network size of foreign co-authorships was not much different between the three units by the beginning of the 2000s (around 10 countries) but it evolved quite distinctly. The most remarkable pattern was registered by the multimedia (UTM) unit, whose network size rose exponentially to 21 countries in 2004-07. This contrasted with the decline (down to 8 countries) of the energy (USE) unit. The citation network of the optoelectronic unit (UOSE) was by far the largest, until 2003, involving 34 distinct countries, which contrasted with the size of USE (12 countries) and UTM (1 country). But again, after 2003, the size of the citation network of USE and UTM converged spectacularly to that of UOSE’s, reaching in the last period 21 and 16, respectively. The influence of INESC Porto reaches all five continents, especially when we consider citation networks. Indeed, excluding the citations from authors affiliated in Portuguese institutions, those that most cite INESC Porto’s (and UOSE’s) works are affiliated in institutions located in China, the UK and the US. The scientific works produced by USE influences mostly authors affiliated in institutions located in India, China and Spain, whereas for UTM the corresponding countries are the US, Germany and Italy. We infer from the evidence analysed that not only did the boundaries of INESC Porto’s scientific network substantially enlarge in the period of analysis (1996-2007) but its ‘quality’ also evidenced a positive evolution, with authors affiliated in institutions located in the scientific frontier countries citing works of INESC Porto (and its units).Bibliometrics, Knowledge networks; R&D Institutions

    Assessing the influence of R&D institutions by mapping international scientific networks: the case of INESC Porto

    Get PDF
    Although scientometric and bibliometric studies embrace a much wider perspective of the linkages/networks of R&D institutions than standard economic studies, to the best of our knowledge, these studies have not yet made use of scientometric tools to analyse the influence and impact of R&D institutions. Moreover, the international perspective has so far been neglected both in standard and bibliometric studies. Based on networks of 1239 foreign co-authorships and 13035 foreign citation linkages, we demonstrate that INESC Porto international influence has considerably expanded since 2003, a year that coincided with the implementation of an internal policy of granting monetary prizes to publications in scientific international journals. In terms of co-authorship, the network of INESC Porto more than duplicated (13 countries in the initial period to 27 in 2004-07). In terms of citations, INESC Porto’s network encompassed almost 40 countries during the whole period (1996-2007). Its more prolific units (optoelectronics, energy and multimedia) presented a rather distinct pattern both in terms of size and evolution of the corresponding network boundaries. The network size of foreign co-authorships was not much different between the three units by the beginning of the 2000s (around 10 countries) but it evolved quite distinctly. The most remarkable pattern was registered by the multimedia (UTM) unit, whose network size rose exponentially to 21 countries in 2004-07. This contrasted with the decline (down to 8 countries) of the energy (USE) unit. The citation network of the optoelectronic unit (UOSE) was by far the largest, until 2003, involving 34 distinct countries, which contrasted with the size of USE (12 countries) and UTM (1 country). But again, after 2003, the size of the citation network of USE and UTM converged spectacularly to that of UOSE’s, reaching in the last period 21 and 16, respectively. The influence of INESC Porto reaches all five continents, especially when we consider citation networks. Indeed, excluding the citations from authors affiliated in Portuguese institutions, those that most cite INESC Porto’s (and UOSE’s) works are affiliated in institutions located in China, the UK and the US. The scientific works produced by USE influences mostly authors affiliated in institutions located in India, China and Spain, whereas for UTM the corresponding countries are the US, Germany and Italy. We infer from the evidence analysed that not only did the boundaries of INESC Porto’s scientific network substantially enlarge in the period of analysis (1996-2007) but its ‘quality’ also evidenced a positive evolution, with authors affiliated in institutions located in the scientific frontier countries citing works of INESC Porto (and its units). Length: 64 pagesBibliometrics, Knowledge networks; R&D Institutions

    Conflicts, integration, hybridization of subcultures: An ecological approach to the case of queercore

    Get PDF
    This paper investigates the case study of queercore, providing a socio-historical analysis of its subcultural production, in the terms of what Michel Foucault has called archaeology of knowledge (1969). In particular, we will focus on: the self-definition of the movement; the conflicts between the two merged worlds of punk and queer culture; the \u201cinternal-subcultural\u201d conflicts between both queercore and punk, and between queercore and gay\lesbian music culture; the political aspects of differentiation. In the conclusion, we will offer an innovative theoretical proposal about the interpretation of subcultures in ecological and semiotic terms, combining the contribution of the American sociologist Andrew Abbot and of the Russian semiologist Jurij Michajlovi\u10d Lotma

    Reconceptualising public spaces of (IN)equality: sensing and creating layers of visibility

    Get PDF
    Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Geografia e Planeamento Territorial - Especialidade: Geografia HumanaSpace and social identities mutual relation of constitution and reproduction lead us to the understanding that space reflects power relations and hegemonic discourses, and that inequality can perpetuate itself through the ways space is organized, experienced, represented and created. Public spaces are constructed around particular notions of appropriate sexual comportment, reflecting and reproducing heteronormativity, as they exclude non-normative sexualities, such as lesbian sexualities. In a context of a heteronormative socio-spatial landscape women can decide not to disclose their non-normative sexual orientation, leading to a pervasive invisibility of lesbian sexualities in public spaces. Concurrently the pervasive invisibility of lesbian sexualities in public spaces reinforces power inequalities, feeding back the heteronormative socio-spatial landscape. Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation is still a widespread reality in Portugal in spite of the significant legal advances towards equality in recent years. Discriminated minority groups, such as lesbians, experience power inequalities in their everyday lives, and their spatial invisibility in public spaces contributes to their disempowerment. Communication technologies recast the organization and production of the spatial and temporal scenes of social life and they open new possibilities of public action. The production of alternative representations of space, based on individuals’ georeferenced experiences, thoughts and emotions are increasingly supported by the potentialities of Internet based technologies, such as the ever more easy-to-use online software. The potential of these technologies to promote the agency, to change power relations and to disrupt the hegemonic discourse increase as more people become the authors of a complementary flow of knowledge, information, memories and stories. This research explores the potential of geospatial online practices, based upon the experiences, emotions and feelings of lesbian and bisexual women to disclose the socially encoded meanings of different bodies in specific spatial, temporal and cultural contexts, highlighting how spaces and sexual identities are mutually constitutive. This research project aims to explore the potential of collaborative web mapping to promote the agency and empowerment of lesbian and bisexual women. It is structured in three phases: ‘Mapping the landscape’ aims to map spaces of lesbian and gay visibility in public spaces to contextualise the hetero pervasive reality in Portugal; the second phase ‘Sensing the landscape’ focuses on the intersections of gender and sexual orientation, aiming to identify significant dimensions of space and places that relate to lesbian and bisexual women sexual identities; and the third and final phase of the research ‘Creating landscapes’ explores how creating and sharing digital layers of lesbian visibility on collaborative web maps can disrupt a hetero pervasive reality and impact social identity and belonging, building capacities for action of lesbian and bisexual women, and facilitating same-sex public displays of affection. Ultimately, this research aims to explore the empowering potentialities of geospatial online practices to provide alternative possibilities for citizenship, and foster social change

    Determinants of the international influence of a R&D organisation: a bibliometric approach

    Get PDF
    Traditionally, studies on the influence and impact of knowledge-producing organisations have been addressed by means of strict economic analysis, stressing their economic impact to a local, regional or national extent. In the present study, an alternative methodology is put forward in order to evaluate the international scientific impact and influence of a knowledge-producing and -diffusing institution. We introduce a new methodology, based on scientometric and bibliometric tools, which complement traditional assessments by considering the influence of a R&D institution when looking at the scientific production undertaken and the recognition of its relevance by its international peer community. Focusing on the most prolific scientific areas of INESC Porto, and resorting to published scientific work recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI), we show that INESC Porto has enlarged its international scientific network. The logit estimations demonstrate that the wide geographical influence of INESC Porto scientific research is a result not of its international positioning in terms of co-authorships, but rather a result of the quality of its scientific output.Impact and influence assessment methods; R&D Institutions; Bibliometrics, Scientometrics; knowledge network; INESC Porto

    The Faculty Notebook, April 2020

    Full text link
    The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

    Changing times and local terms on the Rio Negro, Brazil: Amazonian ways of depolarizing epistemology, chronology and cultural Change

    No full text
    Partway along the vast waterways of Brazil's middle Rio Negro, upstream from urban Manaus and downstream from the ethnographically famous Northwest Amazon region, is the town of Castanheiro, whose inhabitants skillfully negotiate a space between the polar extremes of 'traditional' and 'acculturated.' This paper takes an ethnographic look at the non-polarizing terms that these rural Amazonian people use for talking about cultural change. While popular and academic discourses alike have often framed cultural change in the Amazon as a linear process, Amazonian discourse provides resources for describing change as situated in shifting fields of knowledge of the social and physical environments, better capturing its non-linear complexity and ambiguity

    Education matters: cumulative advantages and disadvantages amongst Portuguese older men

    Get PDF
    Our paper sought to analyse the influence of the educational background over various dimensions of the lives of Portuguese older men (age 60+) across the life course. Drawing on the theory of cumulative advantages and disadvantages we used biographical research, namely narrative interviews with men from different educational background: men with a very low educational background and men with a medium/high educational background. Our results show the influence of educational background in the life course, and how it can contribute to accumulation of advantages/disadvantages that explain their biographies and the very different situations in which they live today.Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT): project UID/SOC/04020/2013info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Knowing Your Population: Privacy-Sensitive Mining of Massive Data

    Full text link
    Location and mobility patterns of individuals are important to environmental planning, societal resilience, public health, and a host of commercial applications. Mining telecommunication traffic and transactions data for such purposes is controversial, in particular raising issues of privacy. However, our hypothesis is that privacy-sensitive uses are possible and often beneficial enough to warrant considerable research and development efforts. Our work contends that peoples behavior can yield patterns of both significant commercial, and research, value. For such purposes, methods and algorithms for mining telecommunication data to extract commonly used routes and locations, articulated through time-geographical constructs, are described in a case study within the area of transportation planning and analysis. From the outset, these were designed to balance the privacy of subscribers and the added value of mobility patterns derived from their mobile communication traffic and transactions data. Our work directly contrasts the current, commonly held notion that value can only be added to services by directly monitoring the behavior of individuals, such as in current attempts at location-based services. We position our work within relevant legal frameworks for privacy and data protection, and show that our methods comply with such requirements and also follow best-practice

    Urban food strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: what's specific and what's at stake?

    Get PDF
    Integrating a larger set of instruments into Rural Development Programmes implied an increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation. Against the highly diversified experience with regard to implementation of policy instruments the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been set up by the EU Commission as a strategic and streamlined method of evaluating programmes’ impacts. Its indicator-based approach mainly reflects the concept of a linear, measure-based intervention logic that falls short of the true nature of RDP operation and impact capacity on rural changes. Besides the different phases of the policy process, i.e. policy design, delivery and evaluation, the regional context with its specific set of challenges and opportunities seems critical to the understanding and improvement of programme performance. In particular the role of local actors can hardly be grasped by quantitative indicators alone, but has to be addressed by assessing processes of social innovation. This shift in the evaluation focus underpins the need to take account of regional implementation specificities and processes of social innovation as decisive elements for programme performance.
    • 

    corecore