Comparing journals from different fields of Science and Social Science through a JCR Subject Categories Normalized Impact Factor

The journal Impact Factor (IF) is not comparable among fields of Science and Social Science because of systematic differences in publication and citation behaviour across disciplines. In this work, a decomposing of the field aggregate impact factor into five normally distributed variables is presented. Considering these factors, a Principal Component Analysis is employed to find the sources of the variance in the JCR subject categories of Science and Social Science. Although publication and citation behaviour differs largely across disciplines, principal components explain more than 78% of the total variance and the average number of references per paper is not the primary factor explaining the variance in impact factors across categories. The Categories Normalized Impact Factor (CNIF) based on the JCR subject category list is proposed and compared with the IF. This normalization is achieved by considering all the indexing categories of each journal. An empirical application, with one hundred journals in two or more subject categories of economics and business, shows that the gap between rankings is reduced around 32% in the journals analyzed. This gap is obtained as the maximum distance among the ranking percentiles from all categories where each journal is included.Comment: 28 pages, 4 tables and 5 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1007.4749 by other author

The student evaluation of teaching and the competence of students as evaluators

When the college student satisfaction survey is considered in the promotion and recognition of instructors, a usual complaint is related to the impact that biased ratings have on the arithmetic mean (used as a measure of teaching effectiveness). This is especially significant when the number of students responding to the survey is small. In this work a new methodology, considering student to student perceptions, is presented. Two different estimators of student rating credibility, based on centrality properties of the student social network, are proposed. This method is established on the idea that in the case of on-site higher education, students often know which others are competent in rating the teaching and learning process.Comment: 20 pages, 2 table

Impact maturity times and citation time windows: The 2-year maximum journal impact factor

Journal metrics are employed for the assessment of scientific scholar journals from a general bibliometric perspective. In this context, the Thomson Reuters journal impact factors (JIF) are the citation-based indicators most used. The 2-year journal impact factor (2-JIF) counts citations to one and two year old articles, while the 5-year journal impact factor (5-JIF) counts citations from one to five year old articles. Nevertheless, these indicators are not comparable among fields of science for two reasons: (i) each field has a different impact maturity time, and (ii) because of systematic differences in publication and citation behaviour across disciplines. In fact, the 5-JIF firstly appeared in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) in 2007 with the purpose of making more comparable impacts in fields in which impact matures slowly. However, there is not an optimal fixed impact maturity time valid for all the fields. In some of them two years provides a good performance whereas in others three or more years are necessary. Therefore, there is a problem when comparing a journal from a field in which impact matures slowly with a journal from a field in which impact matures rapidly. In this work, we propose the 2-year maximum journal impact factor (2M-JIF), a new impact indicator that considers the 2-year rolling citation time window of maximum impact instead of the previous 2-year time window. Finally, an empirical application comparing 2-JIF, 5-JIF, and 2M-JIF shows that the maximum rolling target window reduces the between-group variance with respect to the within-group variance in a random sample of about six hundred journals from eight different fields.Comment: 24 pages, 5 tables and 3 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1007.4749, arXiv:1208.6122 by other author

The Impact of Airline Differentiation on Marginal Cost Pricing at UK Airports

Airport pricing is a central issue in international transport policies, which tend to support pricing schemes based on marginal operating costs. This paper aims to provide empirical evidence in support of increased differentiation in airport charges on the basis of marginal passenger costs being sensitive to the type of airline, i.e. full-service, low-cost, and charter. To that end, both long- and short-run multi-output cost functions are estimated over an unbalanced pool database of 29 UK airports observed between 1995 and 2009. The passenger output is hedonically-adjusted in order to introduce the desired level of disaggregation while also keeping a parsimonious specification. Results show that low-cost passengers impose significantly lower costs to airport infrastructure than those from either full-service or charter airlines. A full schedule of marginal and average incremental cost estimates for the combined passenger categories is provided for all sample airports. Taking into account the existence of returns to scale and economies of capacity, this provides a useful guide for optimal pricing of aeronautical infrastructure under either single- or dual-till regulations.88722,3552,525Q1Q1SCIESSC

Evaluation of the higher education teaching activity considering the perception that students have of their peers

La opinión de los estudiantes en el proceso de evaluación del desempeño docente en la educación superior se recaba a partir de las encuestas de satisfacción. En este proceso, una de las quejas más habituales por parte del profesorado es que, en ocasiones, la valoración sesgada de algún estudiante puede llegar a tener una influencia determinante en el resultado final de la evaluación, especialmente cuando el número de encuestados es reducido. En este trabajo, se propone un indicador de satisfacción docente que pondera el resultado de las encuestas según la percepción que los estudiantes tienen los unos de los otros en su faceta de evaluadores de la actividad docente universitaria.A opinião dos estudantes no processo de avaliação do desempenho docente na educação superior se angaria a partir das enquetes de satisfação. Neste processo, uma das queixas mais habituais por parte do professorado é do que, em ocasiões, a valoração enviesada de algum estudante pode chegar a ter uma influência determinante no resultado final da avaliação, especialmente quando o número de interrogados é reduzido. Neste trabalho, propõe-se um indicador de satisfação docente que pondera o resultado das enquetes segundo a percepção que os estudantes têm os uns dos outros em sua faceta de avaliadores da atividade docente universitária.The opinion of the student in the higher education teaching evaluation process is carried out by the satisfaction surveys. In this process, one of the more usual teacher complaints is that, sometimes, the biased view of some students can take a decisive influence in the evaluation final result, especially when the number of respondents is reduced. In this work, an indicator of teaching satisfaction, which weighs the result of the surveys according to the perception that students have the one another as evaluators, is proposed

Virtualitat i creació? El buit de l'ordinador en el disseny conceptual

L'ordinador s'ha incorporat a la pràctica de les discipines de disseny sense que se n'hagi avaluat abans l'impacte sobre la creativitat i la innovació. Les eines informàtiques utilitzades en disseny han estat preses, i encara ho segueixen estant, d'altres disciplines que exigeixen més precisió i control, sense tenir en compte que l'inici de l'activitat creativa el que més necessita és ambigüitat, abstracció i imprecisió. Aquest article planteja un nou enfocament de l'ús de la virtualitat en el procés de disseny. Critica la informàtica actual i planteja nous mètodes per incorporar l'ordinador al disseny de manera que enriqueixi les eines manuals tradicionals sense imitar-les ni simular-les

¿Virtualidad y creación? El vacío del ordenador en el diseño conceptual

El ordenador se ha incorporado a la práctica de las disciplinas de diseño sin haber evaluado antes su impacto sobre la creatividad y la innovación. Las herramientas informáticas que se utilizan en diseño se han tomado y siguen tomándose de otras disciplinas en las que se requiere más precisión y control sin tener en cuenta que el comienzo de la actividad creativa necesita mayores dosis de ambigüedad, abstracción e impresición. Este artículo plantea un nuevo enfoque del uso de la virtualidad dentro del proceso de diseño: se pone en tela de juicio la informática actual y se sugieren nuevos métodos para incorporar el ordenador en el diseño enriqueciendo las herramientas manuales tradicionales sin imitarlas o simularlas