FR

La circulation internationale des savoirs communicationnels entre cadrages disciplinaires et pratiques situées

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Sarah Cordonnier

L’internationalisation académique et la circulation internationale des savoirs sont toujours présentées comme désirables, sans que leurs conditions de félicité soient explicitées. Il en découle des injonctions contradictoires souvent pénalisantes pour les (aspirants) chercheurs.

Les sciences consacrées à la communication fournissent des outils pour élucider les formes spécifiques de l’échange international et ses entraves, ainsi qu’un terrain d’observation remarquable.

L’enquête socio-discursive proposée dans l’article montre d’abord comment elles sont régies par un discours constituant paradoxal, fondé sur l’inachèvement, et ensuite comment l’expérience internationale de chercheurs et d’étudiants des sciences consacrées à la communication est contrainte par ce cadre tout en contribuant à l’amender.

URL : https://lesenjeux.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/2017-supplementB/07-Cordonnier/

EN

Google Scholar as a data source for research assessment

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, Enrique Orduna-Malea, Alberto Martín-Martín

The launch of Google Scholar (GS) marked the beginning of a revolution in the scientific information market. This search engine, unlike traditional databases, automatically indexes information from the academic web. Its ease of use, together with its wide coverage and fast indexing speed, have made it the first tool most scientists currently turn to when they need to carry out a literature search.

Additionally, the fact that its search results were accompanied from the beginning by citation counts, as well as the later development of secondary products which leverage this citation data (such as Google Scholar Metrics and Google Scholar Citations), made many scientists wonder about its potential as a source of data for bibliometric analyses.

The goal of this chapter is to lay the foundations for the use of GS as a supplementary source (and in some disciplines, arguably the best alternative) for scientific evaluation.

First, we present a general overview of how GS works. Second, we present empirical evidences about its main characteristics (size, coverage, and growth rate). Third, we carry out a systematic analysis of the main limitations this search engine presents as a tool for the evaluation of scientific performance.

Lastly, we discuss the main differences between GS and other more traditional bibliographic databases in light of the correlations found between their citation data. We conclude that Google Scholar presents a broader view of the academic world because it has brought to light a great amount of sources that were not previously visible.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.04435

EN

Collaboration Diversity and Scientific Impact

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Yuxiao Dong, Hao Ma, Jie Tang, Kuansan Wang

The shift from individual effort to collaborative output has benefited science, with scientific work pursued collaboratively having increasingly led to more highly impactful research than that pursued individually.

However, understanding of how the diversity of a collaborative team influences the production of knowledge and innovation is sorely lacking. Here, we study this question by breaking down the process of scientific collaboration of 32.9 million papers over the last five decades.

We find that the probability of producing a top-cited publication increases as a function of the diversity of a team of collaborators—namely, the distinct number of institutions represented by the team.

We discover striking phenomena where a smaller, yet more diverse team is more likely to generate highly innovative work than a relatively larger team within one institution.

We demonstrate that the synergy of collaboration diversity is universal across different generations, research fields, and tiers of institutions and individual authors.

Our findings suggest that collaboration diversity strongly and positively correlates with the production of scientific innovation, giving rise to the potential revolution of the policies used by funding agencies and authorities to fund research projects, and broadly the principles used to organize teams, organizations, and societies.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.03694

EN

Zombie Journals: Designing a Technological Infrastructure for a Precarious Journal

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Daniel Paul O’Donnell, Carey Viejou, Sylvia Chow, Rumi Graham, Jarret McKinnon, Dorothea Morrison, Reed Parsons, Courtney Rieger, Vanja Spirić, Elaine Toth

Background

The Meeting of the Minds graduate student journal is edited primarily by students from our Masters programme. This means that our editorial board is subject to high annual turnover and that our technological infrastructure and workflow needed to be easy to train for, accommodate differing levels of technological skill and editorial interest, and provide archiving that did not require a continuing interest in the journal by future generations of students.

Analysis

This article provides a detailed and comparative account of the “off-the-shelf ” systems and software used in developing the journal with an explanation of the rationale behind our choices.

Conclusion and implications

The choices we made can be adopted by other journals interested in a low-cost, “future-proof ” approach to developing a publishing infrastructure.

URL : Zombie Journals: Designing a Technological Infrastructure for a Precarious Journal

DOI : https://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/296

FR

Dessiner les acteurs en humanités numériques : La recherche en dialogue

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Auteur/Author : Marie-Laure Massot

Le numérique, environnement technologique des ordinateurs et du réseau, a transformé les méthodes de travail et la publication des résultats scientifiques dans le domaine des sciences humaines et sociales (SHS).

Dans ce contexte, le rôle de l’ingénieur(e) SHS est en pleine mutation, à la charnière des humanités et du numérique, voire du design. En pleine transformation des savoirs et des métiers, les profils de soutien à la recherche sont en effet brouillés, ont perdu leurs frontières disciplinaires et cherchent à se redéfinir, à se réinventer.

Quels sont les acteurs impliqués dans des projets relevant du champ de humanités numériques ? Quel est le rôle de l’ingénieur SHS dans ce paysage en devenir ? Quelles compétences doit-il acquérir pour faire face au défi du numérique ? Quel pourrait être le profil type d’un ingénieur en « Humanités numériques » ?

Quelques pistes de réflexion issues du travail effectué dans le cadre de l’Atelier Digit_Hum « Humanités numériques et valorisation de corpus », axe transversal du CAPHÉS qui soutient scientifiquement et techniquement des projets d’éditions numériques portés par des équipes de l’École normale supérieure et organise des journées annuelles d’étude sur les humanités numériques en collaboration avec le labex TransferS. Parcours illustré par Saint-Oma qui dessine les acteurs de ce nouveau type de projets interdisciplinaires.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01794185

EN

Analysis of Peer Review Effectiveness for Academic Journals Based on Distributed Parallel System

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Zong-Yuan Tan, Ning Cai, Jian Zhou

A simulation model based on parallel systems is established, aiming to explore the relation between the number of submissions and the overall quality of academic journals within a similar discipline under peer review.

The model can effectively simulate the submission, review and acceptance behaviors of academic journals, in a distributed manner. According to the simulation experiments, it could possibly happen that the overall standard of academic journals may deteriorate due to excessive submissions.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00287

EN

Creativity in Science and the Link to Cited References: Is the Creative Potential of Papers Reflected in their Cited References?

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Authors : Iman Tahamtan, Lutz Bornmann

Several authors have proposed that a large number of unusual combinations of cited references in a paper point to its high creative potential (or novelty). However, it is still not clear whether the number of unusual combinations can really measure the creative potential of papers.

The current study addresses this question on the basis of several case studies from the field of scientometrics. We identified some landmark papers in this field. Study subjects were the corresponding authors of these papers.

We asked them where the ideas for the papers came from and which role the cited publications played. The results revealed that the creative ideas might not necessarily have been inspired by past publications.

The literature seems to be important for the contextualization of the idea in the field of scientometrics. Instead, we found that creative ideas are the result of finding solutions to practical problems, result from discussions with colleagues, and profit from interdisciplinary exchange. The roots of the studied landmark papers are discussed in detail.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00224