1,720,985 research outputs found
Connecting the dots: implementing and evaluating a network intervention to foster scientific collaboration and productivity
No full textImpact of methods for reducing respondent burden on personal network structural measures
No full textWe examine methods for reducing respondent burden in evaluating alter–alter ties on a set of networkstructural measures. The data consist of two sets, each containing 45 alters from respondent free lists: the firstcontains 447 personal networks, and the second 554. Respondents evaluated the communication between990 alter pairs. The methods were (1) dropping alters from the end of the free-list, (2) randomly droppingalters, (3) randomly dropping links, and (4) predicting ties based on transitivity. For some measures networkstructure is captured with samples of less than 20 alters; other measures are less consistent. Researchersshould be aware of the need to sample a minimum number of alters to capture structural variation
The accuracy of small world chains in social networks
No full textWe analyse 10,920 shortest path connections between 105 members of an interviewing bureau, together with the equivalent conceptual, or ‘small world’ routes, which use individuals’ selections of intermediaries. This permits the first study of the impact of accuracy within small world chains. The mean small world path length (3.23) is 40% longer than the mean of the actual shortest paths (2.30), showing that mistakes are prevalent. A Markov model with a probability of simply guessing an intermediary of 0.52 gives an excellent fit to the observations, suggesting that people make the wrong small world choice more than half the time
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
Investigating the variation of personal network size under unknown error conditions
No full textThis article estimates the variation in personal network size, using respondent data containing two systematic sources of error. The data are the proportion of respondents who, on average, claim to know zero, one, and two people in various subpopulations, such as "people who are widows under the age of 65" or "people who are diabetics". The two kinds of error—transmission error (respondents are unaware that someone in their network is in a subpopulation) and barrier error (something causes a respondent to know more or less than would be expected, in a subpopulation) — are hard to quantify. The authors show how to estimate the shape of the probability density function (pdf) of the number of people known to a random individual by assuming that respondents give what they assume to be accurate responses based on incorrect knowledge. It is then possible to estimate the relative effective sizes of subpopulations and produce an internally consistent theory. These effective sizes permit an evaluation of the shape of the pdf, which, remarkably, agrees with earlier estimates
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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