1,721,023 research outputs found
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Some historical crossroads between astronomy and visual neuroscience.
No full textThe histories of astronomy and visual neuroscience share some important events. Observation of the sky provided early basic information about visual acuity and sensitivity to light and their variations at dierent retinal locations. Some of the early tests of visual functions were inspired by astronomical knowledge existing since antiquity and possibly since human prehistory. After science became a hallmark of human civilization, astronomy played a crucial part in the discovery of the laws of nature. At the turn of the 19th century, astronomers discovered interindividual variability in detecting the time of stellar transit and tried to measure the so-called personal equation, a supposedly inherent individual bias in making observations, judgements and measurements. Convinced that the reliability of scientific observations depended on the reliability of the observer, they were the first scientists to realize that studying man and human psychophysiology was essential for achieving accuracy and objectivity in astronomy and other sciences alike. There is general consensus that the science of experimental psychology grew out of astronomy and physiology in connection with the development of the reaction time method and the so-called mental chronometry.
The crucial role of the observer in astronomical observations appears to have been neglected by astronomers in the second half of the 19th century after Giovanni Schiaparelli described “canals” on the surface of the planet Mars. Percival Lowell and others thought that these canals had been constructed by a Martian intelligent population in order to distribute water from the polar regions to the equatorial deserts on the planet. Since it has been ascertained that the Mars canals seen by Schiaparelli do not exist, some speculations are offered from a neuroscientific viewpoint as to why he and others were mistaken in their observations of Mars
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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