1,720,956 research outputs found
Participatory sociotechnical design of organizations and information systems – an adaptation of ETHICS methodology
No full textThis paper examines a practical adaptation of the ETHICS methodology used in redesigning an information technology (IT) support service in an academic setting. The purpose of the project was to design appropriate organizational structures and functions and an accompanying information system (IS), to increase the effectiveness of the existing service. A participative sociotechnical approach was adopted for the entire design process which was carried out by the practitioners themselves. The staff’s views were elicited during informal participatory group sessions as well as in one-to-one informal discussions. While ETHICS was the overall guiding methodology for the design, QUICKethics was used as a complementary means of analysing the requirements of the new IS. This paper describes the methodology used and the design process; it reflects on the adaptation and its match with the ETHICS methodology, exploring the claimed association with the viable systems methodology and concludes with suggestions for further research.<br/
The use of TSI in designing a system for a university IS user support service. (In special issue: Linking People, Nature, Business and Technology)
No full textThis paper is based on the use of critical systems thinking (CST) to improve a UK university's information system (IS) user support service. The purpose of the intervention described in this paper was to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the IS user support service by deriving a new design for the front end of the service. More specifically, the use of total systems intervention (TSI) informed the choice of the ETHICS methodology to carry out the design itself. This paper is a methodological discourse, reflecting on the usefulness of CST in an IS management problem situatio
New qualifications in IT: a pilot study at Hull College
No full textThe General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) is enjoying growing popularity in the further education (EFE) sector in England and Wales. GNVQs have been recently introduced in the Information Technology (IT) vocational area, to augment or replace existing qualifications. These new courses have been piloted (academic year 1994-199S) at several centres, including Hull College. This paper focuses on the Advanced level GNVQ in IT, contrasting it with existing qualifications (A level and National Diploma); reflections on the Hull College experience are also provided The GNVQ (Advanced) is seen not only as leading directly to employment (like the traditional National Diploma), but also as a route into higher education (HE). Growing numbers of universities now accept the GNVQ as an entry qualification. For the first time, a vocational course is now perceived increasingly as a genuine alternative to the A level. The implications for universities are examined, with predictions as to the likely strengths and weaknesses of different categories of university entrant. The importance of choosing the right HE course, now that university provision has become increasingly diverse in the computing area is also highlighted. This paper extends and provides full discussion of the preliminary findings introduced at the 3rd Annual Conference on the Teaching of Computing held at Dublin City University in August 1995
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
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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