1,721,040 research outputs found
Can U B A Can Writer? Child Abuse and Neglect: Identikit of the Model Author
No full textBackground: Child Abuse and Neglect (CAN) represents a relatively young theme in the world of research. However, more than 50 000 manuscripts dealing with it have been published since its birth, classically considered the Kempe’s paper, “The battered child syndrome”, published in 1962. Such an amount of papers has allowed the blooming of knowledge, and more and more people got involved in understanding the phenomenon.
In the last few years, a decrease is observed in the interest this issue is able to evoke in the scientific community (measurable in the progressively lower number of manuscripts published). Identification of model contributors and estimation of prevalence of group and corporate authorship could represent a good tool to understand how to enhance the number of publications, considered as the currency of academic research.
Objective: Aim of the present study is to draw an identikit of the model researcher involved in investigating the issue of child abuse and neglect.
Method: A retrospective bibliometric analysis was carried out, utilizing the search engine of NIH, PubMed. The last 10-year literature (1995-2004) was explored and the quoted phrase “Child Abuse” was searched in all available manuscripts. Starting from retrieved papers, information on authors was collected. Particular attention was paid to affiliation, country of origin, preferences shown on country of publication, tendency to publish in groups or corporate authorships. Starting from the Web of Science, 50 most prolific investigators were studied for the number of citation they showed. A descriptive analysis was performed.
Results: The bibliographic research retrieved 7369 articles, with a total “horde” of 19075 authors. The main characteristic of average investigator is utilizing English as language of transmission of his/her knowledge (92.4%) and write alone (38% of manuscripts have a single author; mean 2.6 authors per paper, range 0-26; SD of 2). Moreover, the model researcher seems to look for journals published in English speaking countries. In fact, top five countries of publication are the US, the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada (85.8% English speaking, 2.9% German speaking). The trend is to choose traditional journals (or traditional plus e-publishing journals), instead of stand-alone e-publications (99.9% vs 0.1%). Authors show another clear tendency, i.e. to publish in their own homeland, or in a country with whom there is an historical of geographical cooperation (for example Canada and the US, India and England or Japan and Australia). Looking to the most prolific authors, the 1st one have published, during the considered interval period, 41 manuscripts creating his own CV starting moving on the “chessboard” of author’s position during years: 1st author in 10 manuscripts with 60% after 2001, and 2nd author in 23 manuscripts with 50% published after 2001. Further result on most cited authors will follow.
Conclusion: CAN seems to be an hot topic for single-author: in fact the at-a-glance picture of the published manuscripts in the considered interval period strongly highlight the scarce frequency of corporate authorships, and much more than multidisciplinary teams. A number of reflections on most prolific authors and leading investigators working-in-the-field can be drawn. The study has pointed out that both being able to speak in English and coming form the US increase the probability to be able to publish a paper on CAN. Is it a choice of authors or a protectionist policy of publishers
Constraint therapy nella forma emiplegica di paralisi cerebrale infantile: sperimentazione sulla efficacia e sicurezza del trattamento
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CAN in kilos - CAN Literature's "weight" in the major data-banks
No full textAim: This work aims at determining how widespread and heavy is the body of child abuse literature in the major available data-bases.
Materials and methods: 19 data-bases were selected. For each of them, information was collected on inventory of articles and books contained, number of articles and books obtained utilizing as filter the phrase “child abuse”, publication years’ interval, number of CAN articles per year. For every article selected information was collected on title, author/s, source and language, in a dedicated data-base (marking every reference per Db of origin in order to verify all the articles contained by more than a data-base). A descriptive analysis was carried out.
Results and Conclusion: In the inventory’s amount of 53271581 items stored (articles, books and reports on every issue) from 1872 to 2004, about 1‰ contains EXACTLY the phrase “child abuse”. 5605 are all the items published before 1984, while 33 in 2004. In the 20 years period 1984-2003 43341 were the items found. The most “fruitful” year is 2001: 7% of the entire period 1984-2003. Since 1993 the articles published were always more than 2000. Among all data-bases, the overlapping area (same article) is represented nearly by a 20%. CAN issue can be found in data banks of 4 macro-areas, that were subdivided into: medical area (i.e. Medline), psychological area (i.e. PsycINFO), educational area (i.e. Eric) and other (i.e. Econlit). Through this analysis, several increases were registered in different periods of time. The greatest general increase is findable between 1992 and 2000, with a subsequent mild decrease. 96% of the literature is written in English, and 2% in French. CAN is showed to be studied in different, and somehow unexpectable, cultural environments (Geobase for instance, dealing with earth sciences) and usually non comprised in the Scientific Societies dedicated to ill-treatment. The interest noticed in the different cultural settings is unbalanced and shows peaks and dips.
It seems fundamental to better connect all the different cultural sensibilities and create a more organic and coherent system in order to obtain more efficacious changes in social attitude towards children
Network analysis for optimal biomethane plant location through a multidisciplinary approach
No full textBioenergy production from agricultural biomass is considered a key opportunity for achieving the sustainable development goals set by various international institutions. This sector must combine efficiency and profitability with environmental protection and territorial integration. For this reason, plants location should consider the natural and anthropic characteristics of the areas where they are supposed to operate. In this paper, a multicriteria analysis is introduced for optimal location of biomass plants in a region of Northern Italy. The study was based on a detailed set of 8 constraints and 15 criteria, and eventually identified 93 potential sites for plant location. The distribution of biomass from the territory to the plants was carried out with the specific Location-Allocation algorithm that allowed considering both the attractiveness of the plants and the maximum acceptable power. This result was compared with the current bioenergy production system: three alternative scenarios were developed, considering existing plants and the natural gas distribution network. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted, to study the consequences of various decision-makers decisions. The results showed the possibility of installing between 90 and 199 plants in the different scenarios, resulting in a biomethane production between 246.8·106 Nm3 and 503.6·106 Nm3
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