1,720,984 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
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
An Inquiry Into the Diverse Modes of Caring in Khayelitsha Wetlands Parks World of Many Worlds
Full text linkThe management and governance of wetlands in Cape Town is largely informed by economic, techno-scientific, and engineering approaches which are deeply rooted in discourses of “Earth mastery”. Earth mastery aims to command, predict, and control the Earth's natural processes to access ecosystem services to benefit humans. When wetland management is solely informed by logics of domination and extraction for humans, then other ways of knowing, being, being with, and caring for spaces such as the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park (KWP) are often overlooked and overshadowed. Using Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's (2011:90) work on ‘Matters of Care in Technoscience' where the notion of care is viewed as “an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation”, this thesis draws attention to meanings, practices, and enactment of care through thinking with people and the more-than-human worlds in the KWP. Based on eight months of research in the KWP which involved looking at this space's associated landscapes and multispecies communities, this thesis explores ways of living with and relating to the KWP in Cape Town, South Africa, which do not subscribe to logics of domination. This is done by highlighting the often overshadowed and taken for granted forms of care and reciprocity that do not fall into the realm of the “advanced”, “technical”, and “objective” approaches in techno-scientific and engineering practices. In this thesis, I argue that people who live with urban wetlands practise their more-than-techno-scientific approaches and versions of care in these spaces. The evidence basis for these more-than-techno-scientific and more-than-engineering approaches of care are drawn from firstly, people's stories and experiences of relating to and living with the KWP and secondly, an analysis of care, coexistence, and co-becoming among more-than-human species in KWP. This thesis then suggests the importance of deconstructing and queering the understandings of care practices in wetland spaces by arguing that the government and institutions responsible for wetlands could draw on decolonial approaches in managing and practising care in these spaces, shifting from logics of control and domination to relational and historicised interactions with wetlands to address environmental injustices of the past and of the present. Queer theory is often associated with gender and sexuality where it means diverging from what is normalised, for instance, understanding that there are other ways of being outside heteronormative binaries. For this thesis I conceive queering beyond the context of gender and sexuality, for instance, I suggest the importance of being aware that KWP and wetlands in general host multiple worlds. Thus, governmental approaches of managing and caring for these waterbodies should not only conform to the techno-scientific and engineering notions of care. I suggest that these governmental approaches should be democratized and open a space to be informed by citizen science as well. They should understand that their approaches should not be a “one size fits all” as modes of being and of living differ from space to space. This thesis therefore uses the concept of queering as a way to suggest that techno-scientific governmental approaches of caring for wetlands must recognize the efforts of care that are practised by people and multispecies who live with these waterbodies and to start co-existing with them instead of overlooking and overshadowing them. This thesis, drew from the environmental humanities, environmental anthropology, and queer conceptual and theoretical schools of thought to achieve its purpose.
From care inside the laboratory to the world beyond it: a multispecies ethnography of TB science towards growing a decolonised science in South Africa
Full text linkThis anthropological research began with curiosity about human relationships with microbes. Inside the contained environment of a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory at a South African university-based tuberculosis research division, the fieldwork focused on the relationships between scientists and Mycobacterium tuberculosis − the pathogenic bacterium that causes the disease tuberculosis (TB). These deadly bacteria were cared for and nurtured by women scientists. This care extended to the cells and various species with which they worked. Moreover, this care moved beyond the scope of their immediate scientific research projects and well beyond the laboratory. Care was also central to how the participants conducted their scientific research and themselves in the world. This long-term, qualitative ethnographic research weaves together many layers of care in biomedical scientific research, highlighting that scientific research is a deeply personal, caring and subjective practice. The natural and the social are not − and can never be − mutually exclusive. Boundaries between mind/body, subject/object, human/nonhuman, researcher/researched, subjectivity/objectivity and science/society are porous. Acutely aware of the socio-political moment in which this research was embedded, these findings are put into conversation with South African student calls to decolonise science that emerged alongside the #RhodesMustFall student movement. In particular, the focus is on a 2016 meeting about decolonising science at the University of Cape Town where students argued for connection between the university and the community, science and society and the world of academia and the world of Africans. Implicit was the need for science to be relevant to Africans and deeply complex African social formations and problems. The care by women scientists that was observed inside the laboratory and beyond it speaks volumes to cultivating a more caring science and caring institutions of science that connect the laboratory to the world in which it exists in meaningful, relevant and impactful ways. I demonstrate how the participants embodied a decolonised science, and that what they cared about and how they acted upon those cares could serve as important guides for decolonising science and scientific institutions. This research provides important contributions to the field of science and technology studies (STS), to anthropological research on TB and to the conversation on decolonising science in South Africa
The adverse health effects associated with drought in Africa: working towards developing a vulnerability index
Full text linkAfrica is uniquely vulnerable to the occurrence of drought. A rise in temperatures over Southern Africa occurs at almost twice that of the global rate. South Africa has begun to experience an increase in the frequency of drought, particularly in the Western and Eastern Cape. Droughts are associated with several health effects. The direct and indirect risks of climate change to human health have become a global concern. The most recent systematic review available on the adverse health effects associated with drought was published in 2013, and as such, an up-to-date review focusing on Africa is needed to inform a Cape Town specific health vulnerability index. This study aims to provide a review of available research exploring the association between drought and adverse health effects in Africa. The rationale for this study is to provide a solid research foundation from which a drought-specific health vulnerability index for Cape Town can be developed. A narrative review of original studies and published reviews was conducted. An extensive electronic literature search was performed using a combination of keywords, Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms and free text words. The Critical Appraisal Toolkit (CAT) was used to assess the quality of included studies. A total of 1922 publications were identified, of which twenty-four articles were included in this review. The main drought-related health effects that emerged were divided into 4 main categories: (1) drought and nutritional health including malnutrition, poor childhood health outcomes (wasting, stunting and underweight), mortality, anaemia, and nutritionrelated disability; (2) drought and food consumption including micronutrient deficiencies and motor neuron diseases; (3) drought and water-borne, water-washed and water- related diseases including cholera outbreaks, diarrhoeal diseases, protozoa parasite transmission, scabies outbreaks, trachoma, vector-borne disease outbreaks and malaria-related mortality; and (4) drought and health behaviours including health perceptions and health-seeking behaviours, HIV prevention and care behaviours and family planning practices. There was generally limited evidence in all health categories with several limitations. These limitations include studies with methodological weaknesses (e.g. a lack of comparison to a non-drought period), the singularity of published studies on health effects associated with drought and studies which did not account for potential confounders. While the evidence from the included studies is limited, this study highlights gaps in literature to encourage further research into understanding the direct and indirect impacts of drought on health, particularly in vulnerable groups. Furthermore, the results of this study emphasized the contextual factors which lower an individual's adaptive capacity and identified key indicators that can be used to begin to develop a broad framework for a vulnerability inde
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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