1,720,957 research outputs found
‘This is all very academic’: critical thinking in professional military education
Full text linkAgainst a backdrop where critical thinking is lauded as a tool to navigate the unpredictability of contemporary warfare, Sophy Antrobus and Hannah West argue in this article that the military, as an institution, and the soldier, as scholar, struggle to listen to a truly critical voice. If critical thinking comprises ‘reason assessment’ (understanding, analysing, arguing) and ‘critical spirit’ (disposition, attitude of mind, culture), how does an institution that values, indeed relies on for its effectiveness, uniformity and group identity encourage diversity of opinion and develop the critical spirit of its people? Our journey, as two women veterans, from insiders to outsiders, has led us to argue that professional military education is something of a ‘black box’ where we could observe outcomes but found it almost impossible to see back inside these institutions
Remotely piloted aircraft systems:the introduction of the 'flying watchtower'
No full textThis commentary will contest that a lack of deep critical thinking on the nature of air power and its relationship with those it overflies, surveils, and bombs by air power practitioners can lead to a void in engagement with the public and create distrust. It will discuss how the unique characteristics of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) are critical to understanding their specific impact on those they overfly and their characterisation as ‘flying watchtowers’. The introduction of Predator and Reaper aircraft into the UK Royal Air Force (RAF) inventory will be used as a case study to explore this contention and to argue that the RAF and the Ministry of Defence should communicate more thoroughly and proactively about new technologies than they have done in the recent past. The paper will then consider what implications this might have for the introduction of future technologies. In doing so, it will highlight the importance of capturing lessons from the RAF’s recent experience of ‘wars of choice’ and counter-insurgency, however diverting the current global security challenges may be. In the context of the proposed new human right to protect the freedom to live without physical or psychological threat from above, recent research has demonstrated that the particular characteristics of RPAS may impact the mental health of those they surveil. This in turn may have implications both in terms of the behaviours it incites and considerations of proportionality in targeting decisions
‘Deeply odd’: women veterans as critical feminist scholars
Full text linkA series of conversations between two women veterans triggered a realization that our military service had been ‘deeply odd’. Jointly authored by a historian and a social scientist, both have served in different services, through different conflicts, for different lengths and left for different reasons. Nonetheless, they have been fascinated by the parallels in their experiences of transition from military service to the academic researcher. This paper considers how their gendered military identity was constructed and negotiated such that they could not see their gendered experiences as ‘deeply odd’ when serving and can only see this now because their studies have challenged them to reflect critically. Women veterans are largely invisible in academia in contrast to the prominence of male veterans, particularly in military history and mainstream defence studies. Yet, the field of Critical Military Studies places women veteran researchers in a unique position of insider-outsider; still stained by our past compliance with the military institution – still outsiders – yet endeavouring now to find a new home as an ‘insider’, as critical feminist researchers. They find their identity as critical feminist scholars distances themselves from the military they want to remain engaged with and yet they are also viewed as ‘deeply odd’ themselves in the eyes of the critical feminist scholar community. Drawing on their personal experience, this paper argues that using the concept of the ‘deeply odd’ helps explore the dynamics of women veterans as critical feminist scholars with their insider-outsider status
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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