1,720,961 research outputs found
Choosing Open Access Publishing: The Key Issues
No full textIn this interactive webinar aimed at PhD students, post-docs and other early career researchers, Professor Patrick Dunleavy and Dr Frances Pinter introduced participants to Open Access Book Publishing, answered questions concerning the current publishing landscape, and gave insight into career-related issues for junior researchers to consider when choosing to publish open access. Although aimed specifically at junior researchers, this online webinar was open to all who wished to participate from across the CIVICA partner institutions
Documenting research as you go
No full textA key aspect of encouraging and developing ‘open science’ modes of research in the modern social sciences centres on being explicit about decision-making about all stages of the research process. Yet for all kinds of researchers, documenting your research as you go need not be an unpleasant, extra chore. Instead, it can become an integral and time-saving way of underpinning your research advances, strengthening your critical grasp on issues, avoiding common ‘timebomb’ problems, and improving the preparation of research for the later publication and depositing of data phases. Professor Patrick Dunleavy and Dr Tim Monteath led this seminar, which covered some fundamentals of recording coding, analysis and research-shaping decisions in transparent and recoverable ways. The presentation and discussion also covered resources that may be useful for new researchers starting out and for experienced researchers seeking to improve their approach. This event was the first in a series of seminars to support the development of the CIVICA Research Open Science Handbook for the Social Sciences
How can case study research in the social sciences become more open?
No full textCase studies form an important part of qualitative social science and are undertaken in diverse ways to meet different goals. Relatively numerous but shallow cases are used as ‘apt illustrations’ at one end of the spectrum. At the other end, one or a few ‘deep’ cases in ‘diagnostic’ mode often seek to show the holistic and necessary nature of causal connections in a given situation. There are also many intermediate forms of case, and strong connections now to mixed methods and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and set-defined cases.
Open social science aims to enhance the ease of reproducing and replicating all forms of case study evidence, and to strengthen the robustness and generalizability of studies using this key methods tool. Professor Patrick Dunleavy and Dr Tim Monteath led this seminar which covered such key steps as:
ethical de-anonymization strategies allowing more evidence to be openly cited;
pre-specifying hypotheses and propositions;
making more explicit and ‘stress-testing’ the posited links between particular conditions and analytic judgements;
stating the relative salience of holistic influences in a structured manner, not reliant on discretionary judgements by the analyst; and
using open social science approaches for interview-based and documentation-based research (see here and forthcoming).
This event was part of a series of seminars organised to support the development of the CIVICA Research Open Science Handbook for the Social Sciences
Open social science principles in systematic documentation analysis
No full textAlongside case studies and interviews, documentation analysis and review of varying kinds and levels of sophistication forms one of the top three parts of qualitative social science. In this session, Professor Patrick Dunleavy and Dr Timothy Monteath focused on contemporary or fully publicly available document and text sources where access for replication purposes is feasible, and where a full set of documents can be read or sampled. Thus, their scope included a vast range of government, parliamentary, public policy, sub-national government documentation (especially available under freedom of information), plus publicly available documentation of corporations, firms and NGOs, and a wide range of media outputs in text/document or other formats. (They reserved discussion documents in formal archives with restrictive access needing specialist skills, such as many historical archives, for a later session).
Open social science aims to enhance the confidence that readers can respond in the presentation and interpretation of documentary evidence, strengthening the replicability, robustness and generalizability of studies using this key methods tool. Key steps include:
Strengthening the systematic nature of documentation identification, search and summarization via content analysis, and QCA/set-based methods;
Developing improved quantitative summaries of documentation contents and memes;
Making more evidence crucial for qualitative judgements accessible for inspection or counter-interpretation;
Pre-specifying hypotheses and propositions, and narratively recording the evolution of analyses or interpretations;
Making more explicit and ‘stress-testing’ the posited links between particular evidence and analytic judgements;
Complementing open social science approaches for interview-based research (see here) and case studies (forthcoming).
This event was part of a series of workshops organised to support the development of the CIVICA Research Open Science Handbook for the Social Sciences
England needs an integrated public services ombudsman,organised regionally
No full textThe House of Commons Public Administration Committee is currently considering the role of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Professor Patrick Dunleavy, Co-Director of Democratic Audit gave evidence at the Committee’s most recent hearing on the topic. In this post, Richard Berry summarises the evidence presented and highlights key recommendations for improving the Ombudsman’s role in citizen redress
Google Scholar Citations is now open to everyone. It shows great promise as a free, reliable way to track and compare academic impact over time
No full textGoogle is once again making progress in organising the world’s information, this time by systematising the way scholarly citations are noted. Professor Patrick Dunleavy creates his Google Scholar profile and finds the process intuitive, helpful, and a welcome alternative to traditional measures of academic influence
In Scotland, Wales and the London Assembly elections every voter has TWO choices this Thursday. Here’s how to use both votes well
No full textVoters are used to a two-vote electoral system for the Edinburgh Parliament, and the Assemblies in Cardiff and London. But how these systems operate changes a bit every time, with changing party fortunes. And this year some politicians (especially in Scotland) are advising voters to do things that may ‘waste’ one of their votes. Wherever you stand politically, Professor Patrick Dunleavy explains how to use both your votes so as to achieve more of what you want
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
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