133,653 research outputs found
An evaluation of vendor selection models from a Total Cost of Ownership perspective.
No full textMany different vendor selection models have been published in the purchasing literature. However there has been no systematic approach to compare the relative efficiency of the systems. In this paper we propose to use the concept of Total Cost of Ownership as a basis for comparing vendor selection models. We illustrate the comparison with real life data set of the purchasing problem of ball bearings at Cockerill Sambre, a Belgian multinational company in the steel industry. Mathematical programming models outperform rating models and multiple item models generate better results than single item models from a Total Cost of Ownership perspective for this specific case study.Evaluation; Models; Selection;
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
Analysis of the opinions and use of open access repositories by researchers in different disciplines; with specific focus on the development of a new institutional repository at Leeds Metropolitan University
No full textInstitutional repositories, which have been in existence since 2002, are open, web-based archives of research publications produced by members of a particular institution. Many UK Universities are now hosting or developing institutional repositories, believing that they will enhance the scholarly communication at the University and they will help to promote the institution. For IRs to become an accepted method of sharing information, a significant amount of work must be deposited in them, however to date researchers have shown little interest in depositing work in IRs. It has been suggested that differences between disciplines in terms of culture, funding, means of research and means of sharing information may account for the difference in uptake to IRs. I carried out an analysis of all the UK University IRs, and found that while there is a bias towards science/technology and medical research in the IRs compared with arts and humanities research, this corresponded to the bias in publishing output in these disciplines. Other studies have highlighted barriers that researchers perceive to placing their research in IRs. Leeds Metropolitan University is currently developing an IR and I undertook a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with Leeds Met research staff to compare their attitudes and behaviours towards depositing their work in IRs. I found that awareness of open access amongst research staff is quite high, with 66% having some knowledge of open access. Also, many researchers appear to understand the benefits offered by this alternative to traditional journal publishing. Concerns raised amongst the research staff included many of the same concerns as published in previous studies. I found little difference between disciplines and length-of-service of the researchers (although my survey numbers were low). The IR development team at Leeds Met should endeavour to address these concerns in order to achieve successful uptake of the new IR at the University. The success of the Leeds Met IR also depends to some extent on the self-archiving policies of publishers with which Leeds Met researchers have published their work. These self-archiving policies are not clear for many publishers, who may be re-considering their policies due to recent changes and may see the development of IRs as a threat to their business
Intervention strategies for athletes in transition
No full textResearch reveals that a population of athletes exists who require(d) considerable personal adjustment to career transitions from sport. In this chapter, the authors present three intervention strategies for practitioners working with athletes in transition. These approaches include an information processing approach, mentoring, and an existential psychology approach
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe 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
- …
