1,721,081 research outputs found
Natural Capital, Ecosystem Services, and Subjective Wellbeing
No full textHumans depend on the rest of nature for their health, wellbeing, and survival. Recent research has analysed the extent to which self-reported life satisfaction (as one form of subjective wellbeing) is related to various proxies for natural capital and ecosystem services. The authors of this chapter analysed 87 studies published between 2000 and 2019 that modelled different versions of this relationship around four basic themes: (1) degree of human intervention, (2) specific environmental goods and services, (3) adverse impacts, and (4) overarching indicators. Results showed that positive effects are most significant when there is a balance of natural, built, human, and social capital and that nonlinear relationships that incorporate this interaction may be most appropriate
Searching for the Sweet Spot: Managing Information as a Good that Improves with Use
No full text‘Additive’ goods and services are defined as those that improve with use. They are not naturally rival, or even non-rival, but are “anti-rival.” Information is an example. Information can be made excludable through the use of patents and copyrights, however this does not necessarily lead to socially optimal production and allocation. A more flexible, open access, and decentralized process for the production and allocation of information could improve social welfare. This dissertation describes the challenges and problems with privatizing and restricting access to information and reviews alternative mechanisms for its allocation. Two particular issues at opposite ends of the access spectrum are: (1) strict barriers to private industry databases and (2) quality perception and control of open access information. The first chapter discusses our current system of producing and distributing information and potential ways to stimulate the transition to a new regime. This paper concludes that some of the ideas to seed such a transition include: (1) redefining wellbeing metrics; (2) ensuring the wellbeing of populations during the transition; (3) reducing complexity and increase resilience within institutions; (4) expanding the “commons sector”; and (4) using the internet to remove communication barriers and improve democracy. The second chapter discusses our current system of determining which information to produce, which resources to allocate towards the production of information, and how to distribute that information once produced. The paper concludes that alternative incentive methods, both inside and outside of the market, of producing information and new methods for distributing it to those that can make best use of it, would improve social welfare. These include: (1) prizes; (2) non-monetary incentives; (3) capping salaries; (4) research consortium; and (5) publicly funded research. Chapter 3 explores the difficulty in determining basic energy information under the current proprietary information system using an analysis of the energy return on investment (EROI) of wind energy. It utilizes a meta-analysis of the energy return on investment (EROI) to obtain basic information about the energy inputs and outputs necessary for the manufacturing, installing, operating, and decommissioning of wind turbines. This analysis shows an average EROI for all studies (operational and conceptual) of 25.2 (n=114; std. dev.=22.3). It concludes that making information proprietary severely limits the accuracy of EROI estimates and increases the difficulty of making the best social choices. Chapter 4 explores the perceived credibility of web-based information using an experiment with Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and the Encyclopedia of Earth. Compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, both Encyclopedia of Earth and Wikipedia were found to provide a statistically negative perception of credibility. The other factors analyzed (presence or absence of an author, references, a biased sponsor, or an award) contribute to “brand equity” a composite characteristic that takes significant time to develop. The relatively new Encyclopedia of Earth has not yet developed enough brand recognition to affect credibility one-way or the other, but its positive characteristics should help build the brand and credibility over time.Natural ResourcesDoctor of Philosophy (PhD
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
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
The Genuine Progress Indicator: A Measure of Net Economic Welfare
No full textThe United Nations has been deeply involved in setting broad goals for humanity with the recently sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, despite all UN countries signing on to these goals, gross domestic product (GDP) is still used as the primary measure of societal progress by every nation in the world. GDP is increasingly recognized as a deeply flawed proxy for development. GDP interprets every expense as positive including environmental disasters and illnesses, leaves out many components that enhance wellbeing including home care and the informal economy, and does not account for income and wealth distribution. We need better measures of societal wellbeing. Many alternatives have been proposed. The genuine progress indicator (GPI) is one that has been applied to several countries. GPI starts with personal consumption expenditures, a large component of GDP, and adjusts it using 24 different environmental, social, and economic components to estimate net economic welfare rather than merely income. GPI has been flat or decreasing in many countries for decades because of increasing inequality, environmental damages, and other costs. GPI is not a measure of overall human wellbeing since it leaves out several important aspects, but it is a better indicator of economic welfare than GDP
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
The Ownership of the Internet and the World Wide Web in Vermont
Full text linkThe internet is an interesting case, since it was created entirely with taxpayer\u27s money by DARPA, while the world wide web was created at CERN in Switzerland and placed into the public domain voluntarily in 1993. The internet and web have many features of a commons, and many people refer to the internet commons . Kubiszewski (pronounced cube- ih-shefski) explores the intricacies of the internet and world wide web to determine if internet companies are extracting economic rent from the public and how it could be recovered. She finds that companies are making a substantial profit by utilizing a resource that was developed by a collective whole and not through their own efforts. In particular, services of ISPs connecting people to the web should be subject to rent as well as the provision of web domain names. Kubiszewski determined that the average profit for Fortune 1000 companies is 7% and everything above that could be considered economic rent. She finds that economic rent from public telecoms to be 3.3 million, and domain names 30 million per year. Instead of dividing this money into equal dividend of about $50 per person, which promotes consumption and encourages the investment into private goods, the money would be placed into a trust with the primary purpose of supporting and furthering research and intellectual development in an open forum
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