757 research outputs found
Taking stock of open access : progress and issues
No full textPurpose - Aims at providing a broad overview of some of the issues emerging from the growth in open access publishing, with specific reference to the use of repositories and open access journals. Design/methodology/approach - A paper largely based on specific experience with institutional repositories and the internationally run E-library and information science (LIS) archive. Findings - The open access initiative is dramatically transforming the process of scholarly communication bringing great benefits to the academic world with an, as yet, uncertain outcome for commercial publishers. Practical implications - Outlines the benefits of the open access movement with reference to repositories and open access journals to authors and readers alike and gives some food for thought on potential barriers to the complete permeation of the open access model, such as copyright restrictions and version control issues. Some illustrative examples of country-specific initiatives and the international E-LIS venture are given. Originality/value - An attempt to introduce general theories and practical implications of the open access movement to those largely unfamiliar with the movement
Social networks: the future of marketing for small business
No full textPurpose – The authors review recent developments in online marketing strategy that demonstrate the growing power of online communities in building brand reputations and customer relationships. Design/methodologies/approach – This work draws upon the results of an ongoing research project that is investigating the use of new technologies by entrepreneurial growing businesses in the London area. A range of examples from our 30 case study businesses are drawn upon to illustrate some of the opportunities and threats associated with these new marketing priorities.<br/
Antonio Gramsci: persons, subjectivity, and the political
No full textMichel Foucault once observed that the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci is an author who is ‘more often cited than actually known’ (cited in Joseph Buttigieg, ‘Introduction’ in Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks. Volume I. edited by Joseph Buttigieg. New York: Columbia, 2016). While Gramsci’s concepts have become diffused across a kaleidoscope of intellectual disciplines, the historical-theoretical laboratory of his Prison Notebooks remains an underexplored resource through which to articulate the complex interrelationship between subjectivity and the political. The central axis of the Notebooks is the nexus between philosophy and the political that retains a power to provoke stimulating encounters with more contemporary thinkers. At the same time, Gramsci cuts an unorthodox figure in recent discussions since his articulation of the political withdraws from more conventional deployments of the category of the subject. Peter Thomas argues that Gramsci operates ‘with the much older and more ambivalent category of the ‘person’, or more precisely, a particular reformulation of this category that is not easily assimilable to the modern (epistemologically founded) discourses of the knowing subject that have often subsumed the older category’ (The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism, Leiden: Brill, 2009, p.397). Despite Gramsci’s infrequent use of the term ‘subjectivity’ in his prison writings, I argue that he elaborates a distinctive conception of subjectivity in the Notebooks, which entails a discourse of persons rather than subjects. Gramsci’s conception of the political has often been characterised as valorising human agency in a ‘subjectivist’ or voluntarist manner, due to his critique of the prevailing ‘scientism’ and ‘metaphysical materialism’ of his age. I argue that this reading underestimates the significance of Gramsci’s confrontation with the sophisticated early ‘post-Marxism’ of Benedetto Croce. I consider the importance of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis for the relationship between subjectivity and the political, and his politico-gnoseological conception of the effective reality of human knowledge as social relations, before concluding that Gramsci’s modern conception of the person offers a way of conceiving of subjectivity that neither diminishes the role of consciousness nor succumbs to the criticisms of ‘theoretical anti-humanism’. Gramsci’s ambitious project, through the philosophy of praxis, is to open up ‘a completely new road, renewing from head to toe the whole way of conceiving philosophy itself’ (Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, Volume II. edited by Valentino Gerratana. (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), Q11§27)
Open Access to Peer-Reviewed Research through Author/Institution Self-Archiving: Maximizing Research Impact by Maximizing Online Access
No full textAll refereed journals will soon be available online; most of them already are. This means that anyone will be able to access them from any networked desk-top. The literature will all be interconnected by citation, author, and keyword/subject links, allowing for unheard-of power and ease of access and navigability. Successive drafts of pre-refereeing preprints will be linked to the official refereed draft, as well as to any subsequent corrections, revisions, updates, comments, responses, and underlying empirical databases, all enhancing the self-correctiveness, interactivity and productivity of scholarly and scientific research and communication in remarkable new ways. New scientometric indicators of digital impact are also emerging <http://opcit.eprints.org> to chart the online course of knowledge. But there is still one last frontier to cross before science reaches the optimal and the inevitable: Just as there is no longer any need for research or researchers to be constrained by the access-blocking restrictions of paper distribution, there is no longer any need to be constrained by the impact-blocking financial fire-walls of Subscription/Site-License/Pay-Per-View (S/L/P) tolls for this give-away literature. Its author/researchers have always donated their research reports for free (and its referee/researchers have refereed for free), with the sole goal of maximizing their impact on subsequent research (by accessing the eyes and minds of fellow-researchers, present and future) and hence on society. Generic (OAi-compliant) software is now available free so that institutions can immediately create Eprint Archives in which their authors can self-archive all their refereed papers for free for all forever <http://www.eprints.org/>. These interoperable Open Archives <http://www.openarchives.org> will then be harvested into global, jointly searchable "virtual archives" (e.g., <http://arc.cs.odu.edu/>). "Scholarly Skywriting" in this PostGutenberg Galaxy will be dramatically (and measurably) more interactive and productive, spawning its own new digital metrics of productivity and impact, allowing for an online "embryology of knowledge.
Cross-sectional associations between mental health indicators and social vulnerability, with physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep in urban African young women
No full textBACKGROUND: Relationships between mental health and multiple health behaviours have not been explored in young South African women experiencing social constraints. The aim of this study was to identify associations between mental health indicators and risk factors with physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep, amongst young women living in Soweto, a predominantly low-income, urban South African setting. METHODS: For this cross-sectional study, baseline measurements for participants (n = 1719, 18.0–25.9 years old) recruited for the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative were used including: physical activity, sedentary behaviour (sitting, screen and television time), sleep (duration and quality), depression and anxiety indicators, emotional health, adverse childhood experiences, alcohol-use risk; social vulnerability, self-efficacy, and social support. RESULTS: Multiple regression analyses showed that depression (β = 0.161, p < 0.001), anxiety (β = 0.126, p = 0.001), adverse childhood experiences (β = 0.076, p = 0.014), and alcohol-use risk (β = 0.089, p = 0.002) were associated with poor quality sleep. Alcohol-use risk was associated with more screen time (β = 0.105, p < 0.001) and television time (β = 0.075, p < 0.016). Social vulnerability was associated with lower sitting time (β = − 0.187, p < 0001) and screen time (β = − 0.014, p < 0.001). Higher self-efficacy was associated with more moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (β = 0.07, p = 0.036), better-quality sleep (β = − 0.069, p = 0.020) and less television time (β = − 0.079, p = 0.012). Having no family support was associated with more sitting time (β = 0.075, p = 0.022). Binomial logistic regression analyses supported these findings regarding sleep quality, with anxiety and depression risk doubling the risk of poor-quality sleep (OR = 2.425, p < 0.001, OR = 2.036, p = 0.003 respectively). CONCLUSIONS: These findings contribute to our understanding of how mental health indicators and risk factors can be barriers to health behaviours of young women in Soweto, and that self-efficacy and social support can be protective for certain of these behaviours for these women. Our results highlight the uniqueness of this setting regarding associations between mental health and behaviours associated with non-communicable diseases risk. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-022-01325-w
Pesquisas qualitativas, pesquisas quantitativas e além
No full textThe recent paper of Cassel (2018) on the similarities between the skills required to conduct qualitative research and to perform management functions has rekindeled an old debate about the contrast between qualitative and quantitative research. The author believes that MBA students conducting qualitative research for the first time acquire managerial skills such as the ability to analyze complex environments, which is a fundamental skill for organizations today. The study presents empirical data sourced from students and managers about the skills acquired in the research process.O recente artigo de Cassell (2018) sobre as similaridades existentes entre as habilidades necessárias para a condução de pesquisas qualitativas e as habilidades e competências necessárias para o exercício de funções gerenciais traz de volta um velho debate sobre a oposição entre a pesquisa qualitativa e a pesquisa quantitativa. O argumento da autora é que, ao conduzir pesquisas qualitativas pela primeira vez, alunos de MBAs adquirem, para além dos resultados da pesquisa em si, competências para o desempenho da função de gestores, como analisar ambientes complexos, habilidade fundamental para o cenário das organizações hoje. A pesquisa traz dados empíricos descritos por esses alunos/gestores sobre as diversas competências adquiridas no processo de pesquisar
Journal rankings and the ABS Journal Quality Guide
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of the arguments for and against different
types of journal ranking lists, and, against this background, an account of the development of the
Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Journal Quality Guide. The paper identifies recent trends in academic journal publication that have increased the need for mechanisms to assess the overall quality of academic journals. Six approaches to ranking are outlined and evaluated including the hybrid approach adopted in producing the ABS Journal Quality Guide. The ABS Journal Quality Guide provides wide journal coverage; has high levels of internal and external reliability; is sensitive to small variations in the ratings of journals, and is generally accepted as a fair means of ranking journals within its user community. This paper focuses on developments in the UK, and while the findings of this study may be of interest to researchers in other countries, the implications for policy and practice will be felt most keenly in British business schools. This paper describes a hybrid, iterative and consensual approach to developing and validating a journal quality guide that is likely to be of value to researchers, academic managers, subject librarians and research auditors
URI Disambiguation in the Context of Linked Data
No full textThe Linked Data initiative has given rise to an increasing number of RDF datasets, many of which are freely accessible online. These resources often arise as a result of database exports; however sufficient consideration may not be given to the unseen implications caused when they are used in the wider context of the Semantic Web. This paper investigates two popular resources, DBLP and DBpedia, and discusses whether the issues regarding identity management and co-reference resolution have been suitably addressed. We find that a large percentage of authors in DBLP have been conflated, and that disambiguation pages have been incorrectly linked using owl:sameAs within DBpedia. Systems for dealing with these issues are presented, and directions are given for future research
Ciência e sociedade
No full textDuring these dystopian times in which we are living, it is worth remembering the questions proposed by Rousseau in the eighteenth century: Will science destroy our habits? Will it maintain our virtues? Has science been useful in reducing inequalities? Santos (2008) affirms that we have reached a moment of rupture in the scientific order which asserted its hegemonic rule over scientific development in the last centuries. He believes that the twentyfirstcentury will not distinguish between the natural and human sciences, and that the social sciences will free themselves from positivism, since this is, in effect, “also a totalitarian model” (Santos, 2008, p.11). In this model, the author continues, “to know means to quantify” (Santos, 2008, p.15), but this implies a reduction in complexity, in a mechanistic determinism that does not contemplate the contemporary view that “all natural scientific knowledge issocial scientific knowledge” (Santos, 2008, p. 37).During these dystopian times in which we are living, it is worth remembering the questions proposed by Rousseau in the eighteenth century: Will science destroy our habits? Will it maintain our virtues? Has science been useful in reducing inequalities? Santos (2008) affirms that we have reached a moment of rupture in the scientific order which asserted its hegemonic rule over scientific development in the last centuries. He believes that the twentyfirstcentury will not distinguish between the natural and human sciences, and that the social sciences will free themselves from positivism, since this is, in effect, “also a totalitarian model” (Santos, 2008, p.11). In this model, the author continues, “to know means to quantify” (Santos, 2008, p.15), but this implies a reduction in complexity, in a mechanistic determinism that does not contemplate the contemporary view that “all natural scientific knowledge issocial scientific knowledge” (Santos, 2008, p. 37).Nesse momento de distopia que vivemos, não custa lembrar das questões feitas por Rousseau no século XVIII: a ciência servirá para destruir nossos costumes? Manter nossas virtudes? A ciência tem sido útil para diminuir as desigualdades? Santos (1987) afirma que estamos num momento de ruptura da ordem científica que hegemonicamente regeu o desenvolvimento científico nos últimos séculos. O século XXI, diz Santos, não fará mais distinção entre ciências naturais e ciências humanas e as ciências sociais vão se libertar do positivismo, uma vez que esse modelo em vigência “é também um modelo totalitário” (Santos, 1987, p. 11)
Bibliographics for the 983 eprints in the live archives of E-LIS : trends and status report up to 7th July 2004, based on author-self-archiving metadata
No full textThe priority for ideas and philosophy related to "Network Theory" have been traced back and documented by Braun(2004),and credit goes to Karinthy(1929).The IT has empowered to realise it, as the most practical phenomena and it is no more a humour. The OAI (Open Archives Initiatives)and ACIS (Academic Contributor Information System)are progressive in the direction ,which may lead to realise the "Collective Genius" at global level. Focus of present study is on Author-Self-Archiving (A-S-A)Metadata of the 983 Eprints in the Live Archives of the E-LIS (EPrints of Library and Information Science),which were approved till 7th July 2004.The A-S-A Metadata was used for librametric analysis. Self-explanatory bibliographics are illustrated.The highlights include: Conference papers (34%); highest approval, June 2004 (28%); published archives (76%);not refereed (52%); not in public domain (60%); highest self-archiving-author (De Robbio, Antonella).The Nos. of EPrints having single JITA domain specifications were: Theoretical and general aspects of libraries and information(27); Information use and sociology of information(80);Users,literacy and reading(13);Libraries as physical collections(30);Publishing and legal issues(57);Management(13);Industry, profession and education(36);Information sources, supports, channels(113) ; Information treatment for information services, Information functions and techniques (101); Technical services libraries, archives and museums(25); Housing technologies(1); Information technology and library technology(92); and Inter-domainery (395) i.e. having specifications of two or more than two JITA classes
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