1,720,956 research outputs found
Information exchange network on timber legality among key actors in Serbia: An illustrative case study
Get PDFDespite the considerable efforts to mitigate deforestation and forest degradation, illegal logging and unsustainable forest management practices remain pervasive. To deal with the issue of the illegal timber market, the European Union (EU) implemented several initiatives and regulations, the most recent being the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The Regulation brings more stringent requirements and places an additional burden on public authorities and timber traders, which might influence its future implementation. Thus, information availability, transparency and exchange are becoming more and more important. This article provides an illustrative exploration of the policy network of actors that exchange information on timber legality in Serbia, aiming to pinpoint potential gaps and avenues for improvement. Data were collected using interviews and semi-structured surveys of key decision-makers in Serbia, and analysed through Social Network Analysis (SNA). Social networks were visualised using Gephi software. Our results identify ten key actors connected with 53 connections. The findings highlight the importance of strong connections between governmental and non-governmental actors and suggest that the dominance of public actors in the information exchange network for timber legality in Serbia remains a potential weakness for future EUDR implementation and beyond. As trust is essential for building strong relationships and facilitating cooperation, captured network structure may be indicative of high levels of trust among state actors and weak ones with the scientific community, private forest owners and enterprises. This indicates that the policy-makers should focus on strengthening connections with non-state actors, promoting more balanced and inclusive information exchange, and improving the perceived quantity and quality of information exchange
Intermediary Organisations in Collaborative Environmental Governance: evidence of the EU-funded LIFE Sub-Programme for the Environment (LIFE-ENV)
Get PDFIn the framework of the collaborative environmental governance and specifically of network concepts, this study makes an exploratory analysis of the EU-funded LIFE sub-programme for the Environment (LIFE-ENV) and its priority area En- vironment and Resource Efficiency focused on the role of networks and in par- ticular of intermediary organizations by using Social Network Analysis (SNA). More specifically, by investigating the evolving pattern of key statistics (den- sity, clustering coefficient, betweenness and degree centrality) related to bipar- tite (organisations and projects) and dynamic (eleven years) networks, we identi- fied 3003 organisations and 1006 projects and studied how they operate by form- ing new relations and reorganising existing connections. Results evidence that the LIFE-ENV attests a structural coherence and a stable structure over time and it is characterised by four different structures of network components, namely iso- lated coordinating beneficiary, isolated components, small components and gi- ant components. Moreover, the LIFE-ENV is not a cohesive network, due to low values of both density and clustering coefficient. Based on betweenness centrality and degree centrality measures, the LIFE-ENV sub-programme has facilitated the emergence of 4855 intermediary organisations, which equals 29.5% of the total number of coordinating and associate beneficiaries involved in the programme in the eleven years considered. Transnational cooper- ation in the LIFE-ENV sub-programme is characterised by a different intensity of relations: some countries (i.e. Italy, Spain and Belgium) implement transnational cooperation with multiple European countries in both the North and South of Eu- rope, while others tend to cluster with countries in the same geographical area, and lastly East European countries have limited participation in transnational cooper- ation. Our analysis supports the hypothesis of a declining collective action in the LIFE-ENV sub-programme
Intermediary Organizations in Nature Conservation Initiatives: The Case of the EU-Funded LIFE Programme
Get PDFThis study was aimed to identify intermediary organizations active in nature conservation initiatives by adopting a multi-level (ML) and network governance (NG) framework and using social network analysis (SNA). We identified 256 coordinating beneficiaries and 1090 associated beneficiaries connected through 8310 project relations and financed through the EU-funded LIFE Programme from 2014 to 2020. Our results evidence a central component of the network where organizations from Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom play a central role. In contrast, peripheral components return a framework of partnerships mainly constituted by actors of the same country (68%). Moreover, the characterization by type of actor confirms the widespread implementation of a multi-level governance approach in LIFE-Nature (NAT) projects, evidencing the significant presence of non-governmental organizations and foundations, mainly at a national level, in nature conservation initiatives. Our findings reveal that the intermediary capacity of key actors should be further reinforced, particularly toward the promotion of transnational cooperation and cross-sector alliances, by encouraging the involvement of stakeholders operating at the ground level (i.e., provincial and municipal levels)
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
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
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
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