Does taking a PhD abroad increase the number of international publications? Reflections from the best self-reported publications in Portuguese academia

This paper contributes to the debate on academics’ internationalisation and academic research productivity by focusing on knowledge diffusion. The policy measures to foster national innovation systems and Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are entrenched in the establishment of the European Research Area and in the European Higher Education Area. These two settings also represent the changing dynamics of international academic mobility, which, in turn, can be translated in an increase of extramural collaboration and its importance in academic research activities over the last few decades. In Portugal, public policies on S&T developed in the last years have fostered an increase of PhD graduates, inciting them to study abroad. Consequently, many PhD students have been studying outside Portugal. Alongside these developments, international publications have been assuming increasing relevance in researchers’ recruitment and career advancement. One of the facets of knowledge production is research performance and research outputs, which in HEI is usually measured in terms of publications produced by individuals and/or research groups. Trying to see if there is a relationship between academic international experiences and academics’ research productivity, we took those PhD graduates who have a contractual relation with an HEI, and asked them whether having graduated abroad favoured a different profile for disseminating knowledge produced with a higher emphasis on publishing internationally. We believe this is so, given the higher orientation that foreign countries may have towards publications in international outlets when compared to Portugal and the fact that being abroad improves researchers’ knowledge of a second or even a third language. Bearing in mind that the internationalisation of the academy varies according to individual, institutional and structural characteristics, and that among factors influencing it, discipline plays a major role, we will be able to assess whether the different types of outputs reported by researchers are dependent on their characteristics, with the main factor being the international experiences of the staff. Using a dataset of 9602 staff members of Portuguese HEI coming from a mandatory questionnaire by the Portuguese Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (covering nearly all doctorates in Portugal–in 2012, 83% of the PhD were employed in HEI), we explore the relationship between the self-reported publication patterns of these staff and the HEI where they obtained their PhD degree (abroad or in a national institution). Statistical inference and econometrics methods were used in order to assess whether this relationship is significant. The analysis was also broken down into different scientific fields to check whether this relationship holds for each scientific field. Conclusions show a positive effect between taking the PhD abroad and reporting a higher number of international articles (both when considering only journal articles and all international outlets). However, when checking for the robustness of these effects broken down by the ISCED-97 fields of education, that effect does not hold for most fields, being only significantly positive for Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences, Commerce & Law, while having null and negative effects for other fields, suggesting that, after all, the overall effect verified earlier was due only to the effect of this variable on some fields.publishe

Sponsorship of sport mega events: a conceptual approach for creating shared value

Sport mega events represent an important platform that sponsors can use to communicate with prospective consumers. Although literature exists on value creation within sport (e.g. Woratschek, Horbel, & Popp, 2014), little attention has been afforded as to how sponsor brands and hosts may create value for consumers and other stakeholder groups within this important context. Therefore, this study aims to conceptualise the Creation of Shared Value (CSV) in sport mega events

Understanding the importance of sport stadium visits to teams and cities through the eyes of online reviewers

This study explores the relationships among sport stadium visitors’ experiences, satisfaction, team brand image, and destination image. A text mining approach was first used to analyse 26,538 individual reviews from 17 European sport stadiums on TripAdvisor. The online reviews were then used as input to create a word frequency of each individual review and construct a structural equation model. Results indicate that the visitor experience had a strong impact on team brand image and a moderate effect on destination image. Satisfaction mediated the influence of the visitor experience on team brand image, but not on destination image. Team brand image exerted a significant but small impact on destination image. These findings show that stadium visits impact the marketing of both host teams and cities. City, leisure and stadium managers should therefore coordinate their efforts to highlight teams as part of a city’s cultural brand to generate image-based benefits for both.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Traffic Vertical Signposting: Materials Characterization and Structural Numerical Simulation

Aknowlegements: This work was supported by the project POCI-01-0247-FEDER-010797from the Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (IAPMEI). In addition, the authors acknowledge the funding from the project UID/Multi/04044/2013 of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and PAMI - ROTEIRO/0328/2013 (Nº 022158).The existing metallic solutions used for vertical traffic signs are associated with higher costs and environmental issues due to their manufacturing and degradation, when compared with polymeric solutions. Thus, the development of vertical signs considering the injection from polymeric materials in order to overcome problems related with sustainability, maintenance costs, and to achieve higher resistance to corrosion assumes nowadays an important role. The use of ecofriendly and innovative products considering the industrial waste combined with synthetic polymers performing the appropriate mechanical properties, can also be studied to find out new solutions that allow to solve the aforementioned problems. Additionally, these innovative vertical signs can contribute to avoid vandalism events related with theft and graffiti activities. This work presents the prior materials investigation and the structural design of vertical signs that are intended to be produced through polymer injection. Three main steps were considered: i) materials research, ii) materials characterisation through the analysis of polycarbonate resin isolated and in different sets of mixtures with different concentrations through tensile testing and static water contact angle measurements to find the optimal material composition; and iii) structural numerical simulation considering polycarbonate resin and using the current standard EN 12899-1 [1] to compute wind resistance, temporary and permanent deflections. Both experimental and numerical results led to an optimized proposal of the vertical signposting structural design.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DAWRS: A Differential - Algebraic System Solver by the Waveform Relaxation Method

We investigate the concurrent solution of low-index differential-algebraic equations (DAE’s) by the waveform relaxation (WR) method, an iterative method for system integration. We present our new simulation code, DAWRS (Differential - Algebraic - Waveform Relaxation Solver), to solve DAE’s on parallel machines using the WR methods, and describe new techniques to improve the convergence of such methods. As experimental results, we demonstrate the achievable concurrent performance to solve DAE’s for a class of applications in chemical engineering

Resistance sources to root-knot nematode Meloidogyne enterolobii in Solanum species.

The objective of this work was to prospect sources of resistance to root-knot nematode Meloidogyne enterolobii in Solanum species with potential to be used as rootstocks for cultivated Solanaceae. Nine accessions of Solanum sessiliflorum, 27 accessions of S. lycocarpum, 21 accessions of S. acanthodes, 22 accessions of S. scinericum and 26 accessions of S. scuticum for resistance to M. enterolobii. Rutgers and Nemadoro tomatoes were used as susceptible and resistant controls, respectively

Reaction of sweet potato genotypes to the root-knot nematode (Meloidogyne javanica).

The objective of this work was to characterize the resistance level of one Embrapa pre-commercial genotype of sweet potato to the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne javanica