1,720,972 research outputs found
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Stakeholder interactions and capacity development for innovation and adoption of agricultural technologies: the case of banana value chain in Uganda
Get PDFThesis (PhD (Agrarian Extension))--University of Pretoria, 2024.The low level of adopting improved technologies has been a major challenge towards increasing agricultural productivity and ensuring food security in developing countries. Although multiple studies have been conducted with regard to how the adoption of improved technologies could be enhanced, less attention has been focused on understanding the role of interactions among stakeholders in an agricultural system such as the value chain and their capacities to influence innovation and adoption of improved technologies. This study examined interactions and capacity development needs for innovation and adoption of technologies among stakeholders in the Ugandan banana value chain. The study employed a mixed methods design, involving the use of qualitative and quantitative methods as complements in collecting and analyzing primary data. Primary data were collected by conducting focus group discussions with banana farmers and traders; the key informant interviews (KIIs) with the banana traders (retailers, wholesalers, bicycle/motorbike banana traders), the processors for various banana products, export farmers, researchers and extension agents as key influential stakeholders in the banana value chain. A household survey was also conducted among banana farming households. The study took place in low-land, highland, and mid-highland agroecological zones in Uganda; specifically, in Nakaseke, Bunyangabu, and Isingiro districts respectively, representing the historical banana growing areas in Uganda. The data collected through FGDs and KIIs were analyzed qualitatively using the Social Network Analysis (SNA) methodology to establish the stakeholder interactions for innovation and technology adoption. Thematic analysis was also conducted to establish Capacity Development (CD) gaps for innovation and adoption of technologies. Data from the household survey was analyzed using the Multivariate probit and Ordered probit models in order to establish factors that influence multiple adoption decisions of improved technologies among banana farming households. According to the study findings, there are various stakeholders in the banana value chain with the potential to contribute to innovation and adoption of technologies. Social Network Analysis (SNA) results indicate the densities of 28.0%, 25.6%, and 26.8% from Bunyangabu, Isingiro, and Nakaseke value chains, respectively, implying the existence of weak linkages among stakeholders in such areas which indicates that most of them are working in isolation. This limits the possibility of innovating together. Particularly, research and extension had weak or missing connections with the key stakeholders such as the processors, traders, and farmer groups. This depicts the existing limited discussions, cooperation and feedback among them, with the likely outcome of generating and promoting technologies that are not acceptable among end users. Betweenness results indicate that in Bunyangabu, regulatory bodies were the most influential stakeholders for facilitating information exchange and service delivery as indicated by the relative betweenness of 1. The position of regulatory bodies in this area depicts the importance of an enabling environment in facilitating information exchange and service delivery for innovation and adoption of technologies. In Isingiro and Nakaseke, farmer groups were the most influential stakeholders. The results show that the potential of various stakeholders to engage in innovation activities could be unlocked by engaging in capacity development at individual, organizational and enabling environment dimensions. Capacity development needs at all the dimensions were similar and are; banana value addition, marketing and financial access options, and management in order to improve adoption. Results from the econometric analysis show that a number of banana technologies can be adopted as complements or substitutes. The results further show that household size, total area under banana production, ecological location, household membership to a farmer group, access to formal sources of credit, and, input and output markets in major towns of Uganda produced significant results with the MVP model and ordered probit model. This indicates that the type and the number of technologies that can be adopted at a time are determined by similar factors which should be taken into account when designing adoption interventions for multiple agricultural technologies. The study results provide evidence that there were missing linkages among essential stakeholders (such as research, extension, processors, financial service providers, and traders) which further limits their involvement in the innovation activities in banana value chain. The need for improved access to and management of finance and marketing services to facilitate innovation and adoption of technologies is reflected in the capacity development needs and was identified as a key limiting factor for the adoption of technologies among banana farming households. Therefore, the banana farming environment should be improved such that there are favorable marketing systems and availability of funding at low-interest rates affordable by the value chain stakeholders. By answering the three research questions, this study provides a guiding framework for identification of appropriate technological packages, intervention zones and training topics as capacity development requirements to be fulfilled in order to facilitate innovation and adoption of technologies in the Ugandan banana value chain.Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural DevelopmentPhD (Agrarian Extension)UnrestrictedFaculty of Natural and Agricultural Science
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe 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
Evaluating farmers' and consumers' acceptance of new cooking banana hybrids in Uganda : micro-economic analysis and policy implications.
Get PDFPh. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2014.Banana is an important world food crop supporting the food security and livelihoods of millions of smallholders in tropical countries of Africa, including Uganda. Despite the crop‟s importance in Uganda, its productivity has been declining over time due to pests (banana weevils and nematodes), diseases (black Sigatoka, banana bacterial wilt), soil fertility decline, and socio-economic constraints (high costs of managing the crop, competition for labour with other enterprises, marketing difficulties and low genetic diversity, among others). The decline in banana yields has resulted in food shortages, thus putting consumers heavily dependent on banana at risk of food insecurity, particularly in most rural areas of Uganda where the crop is regarded a staple food.
In response to this trend, the National Banana Research Programme (NBRP) in Uganda initiated a breeding programme in 1994 using a participatory plant breeding approach. The programme has so far developed four new banana 'matooke' hybrid varieties (M2, M9, M14, and M17). These varieties have been under evaluation in different agro-ecological regions of Uganda since 2008 with Mbwazirume (a traditional variety) as a local check. Despite the research and extension efforts to popularise these hybrids in Uganda, to date, no attempt had been made to document consumer acceptance and the likelihood of farmer adoption of these hybrid bananas. Little is known about the socioeconomic factors that influence farmers‟ early-stage adoption of the banana hybrids, farmers‟ preferences of the varieties, consumers‟ willingness to purchase the bananas of the hybrids when found on the market, and the likelihood of these hybrid varieties contributing to solving rural household food insecurity and low incomes.
Given this context, the objectives of this study were to: (i) analyse farmers‟ preferences regarding varietal attributes and assess how these preferences, along with farm and farmer specific characteristics, determine the variations in the levels of early stage adoption of hybrid banana varieties in Uganda with the application of factor analysis and a Zero-Inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression model; (ii) analyse the effects of farmer characteristics, variety attributes and agro-ecological conditions on banana variety choice in Uganda, with the application of a multinomial logit model; and (iii) determine the consumption characteristics and sensory attributes that are most important in predicting the likelihood of consumers‟
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purchase of hybrid banana varieties using binary logit models. The research focused on four regions of Uganda (namely, Mid-Western, Central, Western and Eastern) representing six major agro-ecological zones, including the Lake Albert crescent area, Lake Victoria crescent, Western highlands, Southern highlands, South-east and Eastern agro-ecologies where the National Banana Research Programme of the National Agricultural Research Organisation is evaluating the new hybrid banana varieties. The data were collected from 454 farmers that included participating (149) and non-participating (305) respondents, and 908 consumers that participated in farmer field days to evaluate various hybrid banana varieties from across the four regions of Uganda.
The results show that, compared to Mbwazirume, four of the hybrids (M2,M9,M14 and M17) are preferred in terms of production characteristics (resistance to Sigatoka, weevils, nematodes, tolerance to poor soils, good bunch size, and sucker production) but are regarded as inferior in terms of consumption characteristics (taste, colour when cooked, and flavour). Field observations suggest that farmers‟ preferences for production attributes dominate in their variety choice decisions. The hybrid M9 is regarded as having a relatively good performance with respect to most of the production and consumption characteristics.
The results suggest that land constraint, taste and regional location (central region compared with eastern region) were negatively associated with hybrid variety choice while perceptions that hybrid bananas could reduce food insecurity and enhance tolerance to pests and diseases were positively associated with probabilities of hybrid variety choice. Probabilities of choosing hybrids for food security increase in favour of M2 (by 0.06) and M9 (by 0.28), and decrease for M2 (by 0.23), M9 (by 0.07) and M14 (by 0.09) due to unfavourable taste relative to Mbwazirume. Among the consumers, the study suggests that hybrids M2 and M9 were not significantly (P>0.05) different in terms of taste, flavour, texture and colour, while differences were observed between M14 and M17 when introduced on the market. Hybrid M14 is regarded as better than M17 in terms of taste, flavour and texture.
The results show that the Eastern region would pay significantly higher prices for the hybrid varieties compared to other regions of Uganda. This result could be attributed to the limited availability of cooking banana varieties in this region. The results suggest that age, education, good taste, flavour and texture were the most important factors that are likely to positively influence the purchase of most of the hybrid banana varieties
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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