1,721,098 research outputs found
Twenty-one sources of error and bias in transport project appraisal
No full textTwenty-one sources of error and bias in the appraisal of transport projects are identified. These relate to objectives, definitions, data, models and evaluation conventions. Objectives may be unclear, incompletely specified or inconsistent with appraisal criteria. Definitions of study areas and scheme options for testing may bias the outcome. There are multifarious sources of data and model error. Double counting, inappropriate values, and failure to balance quantified and non-quantified items can all affect the evaluation. We suggest that there is a systematic tendency to a mega-error—that of appraisal optimism. Three antidotes to this condition are briefly suggested
Bus deregulation: ten years on foreign summaries
No full textThis paper identifies the principal areas of disagreement in the bus policy debate of 1984–85, and reviews the outcome of bus deregulation against that background. It is concluded that the commercial bus market is imperfectly contestable. Entry may occur where the incumbent is inefficient, where the incumbent is efficient but weak enough to be supplanted, or simply through over-optimism. Incumbents deter entry by tightly controlling costs and by not leaving profitable gaps in service. Merger and acquisition is normally a better strategy than active competition; the tendency to merger has proved stronger than was recognized in the debate. In considering market performance, it is necessary in principle to distinguish between the effects of privatization, subsidy withdrawal, tendering and the abolition of the route licensing system, while recognizing that they interrelate in a complex way. Operating costs have fallen much more sharply than the opponents of deregulation expected. Service levels have risen, but so have real fares. Patronage has fallen faster since deregulation than its historic trend, leaving cost per passenger journey little changed. However, the tendering regime in London has performed much better than full deregulation, with similar (and continuing) reductions in operating costs, little change in patronage and a significant reduction in cost per passenger. Though it may not achieve all the dynamic benefits of full deregulation, tendering avoids wasting resources in competitive battles, offers the opportunity to balance fares and service policies efficiently, and avoids the loss of consumer confidence associated with instability. Finally, the loss of the ability to use local bus services as an instrument of urban planning policy is now recognized as important; here too a tender or franchise regime has the edge over full deregulation
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
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe 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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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