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Towards including social sustainability in green and sustainable chemistry
No full textGreen and sustainable chemistry holds the promise of realising a sustainable society by providing environmentally friendly production processes. However until now the focus has been very much on reducing waste and hazards, while there is also a need to consider the broader societal impact of chemical innovations. This article presents three additional principles to guide those in green chemistry towards including social sustainability in innovation trajectories.</p
Respect for autonomy and technological risks
No full textTechnological developments can undermine the autonomy of the individual. Autonomy is one's ability to make and act upon decisions according to one's own moral framework. Respect for autonomy dictates that risks should not be imposed on the individual without her consent. Technological developments can bring about risks, which often confront the individual in ways beyond individual control. This research deals with the question: How should autonomy be respected in the context of technological risks? It is argued in this thesis that respect for autonomy requires amending current decision procedures on the acceptability of risks. These amendments should be based on a specific, original concept of autonomy; narrative autonomy. Narrative self-understanding forms the core of this concept of autonomy. Respect for narrative autonomy requires that anyone who is concerned about risks associated with a technological development, is allowed to influence the decision regarding the acceptability of those risks, provided that the arguments put forward are compatible with specific constraints. Why this is an important condition for decision procedures on risk and how this recommendation can be implemented is illustrated with case-studies on public debates concerning biotechnology, mobile phone technology and vaccination.Technology, Policy and Managemen
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
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