Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Why Bolivian Tactics and U.S. Flexibility Undermine the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs

This Note examines the deterioration of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (“Convention”), as Member State circumvention of treaty spirit continues to highlight the disconnect between progressive drug policies and an enforcement regime armed with little or no power to monitor compliance. It first provides a brief history of the Convention with discussion underscoring the governing bodies of the treaty itself, particularly the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB). Further discussion will note the procedural mechanisms whereby parties can propose amendments or reservations to the Convention itself. With such procedures in mind, subsequent examination will analyze how Member States have come to skirt their responsibilities owed to the Convention, particularly Bolivia’s withdrawal and reaccession and the United States’ “flexibility” approach in interpreting the guidelines of the treaty. Additionally, this Note will examine what threats and problems have been posed to the international narcotics community and to the Convention itself as a result of such circumvention and the inability of the INCB to effectively ensure strict compliance of the treaty. In light of these problems, this Note will highlight several possible solutions to the problem of circumvention, including a blanket amendment preventing party withdrawal and reaccession with reservation and empowering governing bodies like the INCB so that compliance may be ensured in more effective fashion

A recursive field-normalized bibliometric performance indicator: An application to the field of library and information science

Two commonly used ideas in the development of citation-based research performance indicators are the idea of normalizing citation counts based on a field classification scheme and the idea of recursive citation weighing (like in PageRank-inspired indicators). We combine these two ideas in a single indicator, referred to as the recursive mean normalized citation score indicator, and we study the validity of this indicator. Our empirical analysis shows that the proposed indicator is highly sensitive to the field classification scheme that is used. The indicator also has a strong tendency to reinforce biases caused by the classification scheme. Based on these observations, we advise against the use of indicators in which the idea of normalization based on a field classification scheme and the idea of recursive citation weighing are combined

Identifying Overlapping and Hierarchical Thematic Structures in Networks of Scholarly Papers: A Comparison of Three Approaches

We implemented three recently proposed approaches to the identification of overlapping and hierarchical substructures in graphs and applied the corresponding algorithms to a network of 492 information-science papers coupled via their cited sources. The thematic substructures obtained and overlaps produced by the three hierarchical cluster algorithms were compared to a content-based categorisation, which we based on the interpretation of titles and keywords. We defined sets of papers dealing with three topics located on different levels of aggregation: h-index, webometrics, and bibliometrics. We identified these topics with branches in the dendrograms produced by the three cluster algorithms and compared the overlapping topics they detected with one another and with the three pre-defined paper sets. We discuss the advantages and drawbacks of applying the three approaches to paper networks in research fields.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

The Citation Field of Evolutionary Economics

Evolutionary economics has developed into an academic field of its own, institutionalized around, amongst others, the Journal of Evolutionary Economics (JEE). This paper analyzes the way and extent to which evolutionary economics has become an interdisciplinary journal, as its aim was: a journal that is indispensable in the exchange of expert knowledge on topics and using approaches that relate naturally with it. Analyzing citation data for the relevant academic field for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, we use insights from scientometrics and social network analysis to find that, indeed, the JEE is a central player in this interdisciplinary field aiming mostly at understanding technological and regional dynamics. It does not, however, link firmly with the natural sciences (including biology) nor to management sciences, entrepreneurship, and organization studies. Another journal that could be perceived to have evolutionary acumen, the Journal of Economic Issues, does relate to heterodox economics journals and is relatively more involved in discussing issues of firm and industry organization. The JEE seems most keen to develop theoretical insights

Tracing scientist's research trends realtimely

In this research, we propose a method to trace scientists' research trends realtimely. By monitoring the downloads of scientific articles in the journal of Scientometrics for 744 hours, namely one month, we investigate the download statistics. Then we aggregate the keywords in these downloaded research papers, and analyze the trends of article downloading and keyword downloading. Furthermore, taking both the download of keywords and articles into consideration, we design a method to detect the emerging research trends. We find that in scientometrics field, social media, new indices to quantify scientific productivity (g-index), webometrics, semantic, text mining, open access are emerging fields that scientometrics researchers are focusing on.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Are citations from clinical trials evidence of higher impact research? An analysis of ClinicalTrials.gov

An important way in which medical research can translate into improved health outcomes is by motivating or influencing clinical trials that eventually lead to changes in clinical practice. Citations from clinical trials records to academic research may therefore serve as an early warning of the likely future influence of the cited articles. This paper partially assesses this hypothesis by testing whether prior articles referenced in ClinicalTrials.gov records are more highly cited than average for the publishing journal. The results from four high profile general medical journals support the hypothesis, although there may not be a cause-and effect relationship. Nevertheless, it is reasonable for researchers to use citations to their work from clinical trials records as partial evidence of the possible long-term impact of their research

Early Mendeley readers correlate with later citation counts

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics on 26/03/2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2715-9 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Counts of the number of readers registered in the social reference manager Mendeley have been proposed as an early impact indicator for journal articles. Although previous research has shown that Mendeley reader counts for articles tend to have a strong positive correlation with synchronous citation counts after a few years, no previous studies have compared early Mendeley reader counts with later citation counts. In response, this first diachronic analysis compares reader counts within a month of publication with citation counts after 20 months for ten fields. There were moderate or strong correlations in eight out of ten fields, with the two exceptions being the smallest categories (n=18, 36) with wide confidence intervals. The correlations are higher than the correlations between later citations and early citations, showing that Mendeley reader counts are more useful early impact indicators than citation counts

Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping

We present VOSviewer, a freely available computer program that we have developed for constructing and viewing bibliometric maps. Unlike most computer programs that are used for bibliometric mapping, VOSviewer pays special attention to the graphical representation of bibliometric maps. The functionality of VOSviewer is especially useful for displaying large bibliometric maps in an easy-to-interpret way. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, an overview of VOSviewer's functionality for displaying bibliometric maps is provided. In the second part, the technical implementation of specific parts of the program is discussed. Finally, in the third part, VOSviewer's ability to handle large maps is demonstrated by using the program to construct and display a co-citation map of 5,000 major scientific journals

Association of HbA1c Values with Mortality and Cardiovascular Events in Diabetic Dialysis Patients. The INVOR Study and Review of the Literature

BACKGROUND: Improved glycemic control reduces complications in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). However, it is discussed controversially whether patients with diabetes mellitus and end-stage renal disease benefit from strict glycemic control. METHODS: We followed 78 patients with DM initiating dialysis treatment of the region of Vorarlberg in a prospective cohort study applying a time-dependent Cox regression analysis using all measured laboratory values for up to more than seven years. This resulted in 880 HbA(1c) measurements (with one measurement every 3.16 patient months on average) during the entire observation period. Non-linear P-splines were used to allow flexible modeling of the association with mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. RESULTS: We observed a decreased mortality risk with increasing HbA(1c) values (HR = 0.72 per 1% increase, p = 0.024). Adjustment for age and sex and additional adjustment for other CVD risk factors only slightly attenuated the association (HR = 0.71, p = 0.044). A non-linear P-spline showed that the association did not follow a fully linear pattern with a highly significant non-linear component (p = 0.001) with an increased risk of all-cause mortality for HbA(1c) values up to 6-7%. Causes of death were associated with HbA(1c) values. The risk for CVD events, however, increased with increasing HbA(1c) values (HR = 1.24 per 1% increase, p = 0.048) but vanished after extended adjustments. CONCLUSIONS: This study considered the entire information collected on HbA(1c) over a period of more than seven years. Besides the methodological advantages our data indicate a significant inverse association between HbA(1c) levels and all-cause mortality. However, for CVD events no significant association could be found