Overview of the Altmetrics Landscape

While the impact of article citations has been examined for decades, the “altmetrics” movement has exploded in the past year. Altmetrics tracks the activity on the Social Web and looks at research outputs besides research articles. Publishers of scientific research have enabled altmetrics on their articles, open source applications are available for platforms to display altmetrics on scientific research, and subscription models have been created that provide altmetrics. In the future, altmetrics will be used to help identify the broader impact of research and to quickly identify high-impact research

Media pluralism and the overlapping instruments needed to achieve it

The authors review recent scholarly and policy initiatives in respect of media pluralism and argue that contradictions between policy objectives, in analytical approaches and deficiencies in some established methodologies mean that robust conclusions have been hard to secure. They argue that concerns about diminishing pluralism are likely to grow in consequence of changes in a dominant “legacy media” funding model as advertising revenues move online. Examining UK data, they argue that a contemporary focus of concern, growing concentration in privately owned media, is overshadowed by the striking dominance of the publicly owned BBC and suggest established analytical methodologies used to analyse market power may offer a valuable analogy in the definition and measurement of pluralism issues. They consider possible alternatives to regulation as means of enhancing pluralism and propose the use of subsidised entry

Re-Staging the 1934 Abbey Theatre Production of Yeats’s The King of the Great Clock Tower: An Evaluation and Critique

This essay investigates and critiques an attempt from the surviving evidence to re-stage the first performance of Yeats’s The King of the Great Clock Tower at the Abbey Theatre in 1934. This dance-drama was the last of four collaborations between the playwright and the dancer-choreographer, Ninette de Valois, during the period when she established for him a School of Ballet at the Abbey in Dublin. A wealth of evidence survives from which a performance text (as distinct from the printed text) may be inferred. The limitations to be found in various kinds of extant data concerning performance (music scores, set designs, photographs, revisions to play scripts, reviews, correspondence, reminiscence) are discussed in the light of the writer’s experience of bringing such a re-staging into production. The dangers of overly hypothesising or historicising are examined and devices for negotiating gaps in the evidence while being wholly transparent in one’s efforts are discussed. Finally the essay explores the many and diverse levels of collaboration on which a successful staging of one of Yeats’s dancedramas depends. In the course of that discussion the meaning of the word, collaboration, is interrogated and to some degree re-defined

Teachers' beliefs about the value of making

This paper draws on the findings of an on-going research project, funded by the Crafts Council 'Learning through Making' project and the Technology Enhancement Programme, into the competencies and capabilities which young people develop by being involved in making activities. The first phase of this research has established a general model of teachers' beliefs about the value of making. This model has been established by undertaking case study research in a number of schools, selected because of the importance which they place on making. These schools cover all key stages and the participating teachers are drawn from across the curriculum, inclusion being determined by their use of making in the teaching context. Methodologies employed are described. Teachers' beliefs were sought in three different response modes which provided a measure of triangulation and validation. Key quantitative data is provided which highlights the hierarchical manner in which teachers view competencies and capabilities when they are categorised in to three discrete classes: practical competencies, cognitive abilities and personal attributes. Finally the paper proposes conclusions about the value of making in the school curriculum and provides possible reasons for the way in which teachers prioritise and focus their teaching on certain competencies and capabilities