1,721,131 research outputs found

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    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

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    “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

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    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

    Ring polymers are much stronger depleting agents than linear ones

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    We investigate the conformations and shapes of circular polymers close to planar, hard walls as well as the ensuing ring–wall and polymer-induced wall–wall interactions in ring polymer solutions. We derive, by means of Monte Carlo simulations, the effective interaction potential between the centres of mass of flexible, unknotted ring polymers and a hard wall for different polymerisation degrees N. Adopting the coarse-grained description of ring polymers as ultrasoft, penetrable spheres, mean-field density functional theory is then employed in order to examine ring polymer solutions under confinement. We demonstrate that, below the semi-dilute regime, ring polymers structure close to walls much more strongly than their linear counterparts, their density profiles featuring pronounced oscillations. Moreover, the polymer-induced depletion potential between the two walls exhibits an oscillatory profile reminiscent of hard-sphere systems, with oscillations that intensify upon increasing polymer concentration. The obtained form of the depletion interaction is shown to be qualitatively different in comparison to the case of linear polymer solutions at the corresponding densities

    Conformation and topology of cyclical star polymers

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    We study the conformation and topological properties of cyclical star polymers with f ring arms, each made of n beads. We find that the conformational properties of unlinked cyclical star polymers are compatible with those of linear star polymers with 2f arms made of n/2 beads each. This compatibility vanishes when the topology of the star, measured as the degree of linking between arms, changes. In fact, when links are allowed, we notice that the gyration radius decreases as a function of the absolute linking number |Lk| of the arms, regardless of the protocol that is employed to introduce said links. Furthermore, the internal structure of the macromolecules, as highlighted by the radial density function, changes qualitatively for large values of |Lk|

    Upsurge of Spontaneous Knotting in Polar Diblock Active Polymers

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    Spontaneous formation of knots in long polymers at equilibrium is inevitable but becomes rare in sufficiently short chains. Here, we show that knotting increases by orders of magnitude in diblock polymers having a fraction p of self-propelled monomers. Remarkably, this enhancement is not monotonic in p with an optimal value independent of the monomer's activity. By monitoring the knot's size and position we elucidate the mechanisms of its formation, diffusion, and untying and ascribe the nonmonotonic behavior to the competition between the rate of knot formation and the knot's lifetime. These findings suggest a nonequilibrium mechanism to generate entangled filaments at the nano- and microscales

    Coil-to-globule collapse of active polymers: a Rouse perspective

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    We derive an effective Rouse model for tangentially active polymers, characterised by a constant active force tangent to their backbone. In particular, we show that, once extended to account for finite bending rigidity, such active Rouse model captures the reduction in the gyration radius, or coil-to-globule-like transition, that has been observed numerically in the literature for such active filaments. Interestingly, our analysis identifies the proper definition of the Peclet number, that allows to collapse all numerical data onto a master curve

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    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
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