1,720,963 research outputs found
Explaining causal modelling. Or, what a causal model ought to explain
One of the goals of the social sciences is to understand social phenomena, that is to exhibit the mechanism underlying and bringing them about. This task goes beyond description: to exhibit this mechanism requires identifying causal relations between variables of interest. In quantitative social research, causal models are used to provide such explanations of social phenomena. This paper investigates whether causal models can be seen as models of explanation, and argues that causal modelling, by modelling causal mechanisms, provides (or ought to provide) genuine causal explanations and should be considered as a model of explanation, notably a hypothetico-deductive model of explanation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The 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
“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
We 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
Philosophy of Mind between Reduction, Elimination, and Enrichment
a cura di M. D'Agostino, G. Giorello, F. Laudisa, T. Pievani e C. Sinigagli
How contemporary cosmology bypasses Kantian prohibition against a science of the universe
It is well-known that Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason , discusses explicitly the conceptual limitations, to which all our cosmological speculations are subjected. He suggests that the universe as a whole, the object of cosmological explanation, is not an object of possible experience, and, consequently, of knowledge; whence his renunciation to a cosmology as a science, to a rational cosmology that can explain the cosmos in its totality. His meditations on cosmology claim to prove that the ultimate basic questions potentially pertaining cosmology about universe – its finiteness in space, its origin in time – do not stand up to critical examination and are rationally insoluble: it is possible to give apparently cogent reasons to support opposite views in both questions, then one arrives to what seems a contradiction (the so-called cosmological antinomies), and neither answer can be definitely accepted.
But how does Kant reach this result and, above all, which is its epistemological effect on modern cosmology, on its scientific status, in particular in the light of cosmological principle, generally considered a cornerstone in history and in foundations of cosmology, and one of the fundamental tenets of its modern standard relativistic models
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We 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
We 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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