1,721,099 research outputs found
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
How we reason about explanations : philosophy and psychology of explanatory reasoning
No full textCette thèse porte sur le raisonnement explicatif : quel rôle les explications jouent-elles dans nos inférences, comment guident-elles nos stratégies d'exploration, et comment nous amènent-elles parfois à l'adoption de fausses croyances ? Ces questions théoriques sont motivées par la philosophie du raisonnement, de la connaissance et de la logique. Elles sont traitées avec les méthodes empiriques des sciences cognitives, au moyen d'expériences comportementales qui utilisent des matériaux concrets et réalistes. La thèse commence par analyser la portée descriptive de l'inférence à la meilleure explication, qui a été théorisée en philosophie comme permettant de justifier les croyances dans des contextes non déductifs. Elle examine ensuite l'inférentialisme, une récente sémantique des conditionnels selon laquelle le sens d'un énoncé conditionnel dépend de la relation entre antécédent et conséquent, relation qui peut être notamment de nature déductive, inductive ou abductive. Elle étudie aussi comment d'autres attitudes épistémiques, notamment les décisions de recherche, prennent en compte la qualité explicative des hypothèses examinées. Enfin, elle propose d'expliquer l'attrait des théories du complot par deux sources : la prédisposition de certaines personnes à un mode de pensée complotiste et l'impression de qualité explicative que ces théories sont capables de produire. Sa conclusion, que les considérations explicatives jouent un rôle important dans le raisonnement et la cognition, constitue une avancée pour les domaines de la philosophie et de la psychologie. Elle souligne aussi la fertilité d'une alliance de ces deux disciplines pour la recherche en sciences cognitives.This research investigates how people reason about explanations: what role do they play in people's inferences, how do they guide people's exploration strategies, and how do they sometimes lead them to endorse false beliefs? These theoretical questions are motivated by the philosophy of reasoning, knowledge and logic. They are pursued with the rigorous empirical methods of cognitive science, using behavioral experiments with realistic and concrete materials. The thesis starts with an examination of the empirical adequacy of inference to the best explanation, an explanatory inference rule that philosophers have theorized to provide grounds for warranted belief in non-deductive contexts. Next, it puts inferentialism to the test, a novel semantic of conditionals according to which the interpretation of a conditional depends on the strength of the relationship between antecedent and consequent, which can be deductive, inductive, or abductive in nature. Then, it considers how other epistemic attitudes, and in particular pursuit decisions, take into account the explanatory quality of the hypotheses being investigated. Finally, it develops an account of belief in conspiracy theories that proposes two types of sources for their appeal: people's predisposition to conspiracist ideation and the explanatory virtues that these theories appear to exhibit. The finding that explanatory considerations play an important role in reasoning and cognition contributes both to the philosophical and psychological literatures; it also emphasizes how fruitful an alliance between these two fields can prove for research in cognitive science
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
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