1,720,975 research outputs found
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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Ziqpu-stars and Cuneiform Knowledge: Meaning, Applications, Contexts
Get PDFThis dissertation is a comprehensive study of a set of stars called ziqpu-stars in Babylonian astronomy. These stars were a tool devised and employed by astronomers during the first millennium BCE (or perhaps as early as the late second millennium BCE) in Mesopotamia. The culmination of the ziqpu-stars, or when they reach their highest point during their daily journey across the skies, was correlated with other celestial phenomena, such as a lunar eclipse or the first appearance of a star over the course of the year. In effect, these stars were used as a way to indicate or describe time of specific phenomena that were of interest to Babylonian astronomers.The present study examines all known sources featuring the ziqpu-stars. It explores the different contexts in which ziqpu-stars were used as well as the developments that took place within this tradition. This dissertation also investigates the underlying practices that are reflected in the texts, and advocates that the primary method to producing and utilizing knowledge of the ziqpu-stars was by means of abstract models rather than empirical observation. Approaching the topic of ziqpu-stars by means of models highlights the similarities between these kinds of texts and texts that belong to the so-called mathematical or theoretical astronomy of the Late Babylonian period. It also brings the study of Babylonian astronomy closer to current discussions in the philosophy of science and reaffirms the place of Babylonian astronomy within the history of science
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Living in a Culture of the Past: The Life and Work of a Scribe in Hellenistic Uruk
Get PDF“Living in a Culture of the Past” is a microhistorical study of a dossier of fifty-one cuneiform texts written or owned by Iqīšā, son of Ištar-šum-ereš, of the Ekur-zakir clan. Iqīšā lived and worked in the southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk in the late fourth century BCE, during the transition from the end of Achaemenid dominion in the region to the rise of the Hellenistic successor kingdoms. Following the example of theorist of microhistory Carlo Ginzburg, this dissertation reconstructs Iqīšā's particular perspective on the complex, contradictory time in which he lived. As a member of Uruk's urban elite, Iqīšā was deeply invested in the preservation of the privileged status of his class under a new regime. As a teacher of young scribes, Iqīšā endeavored to pass on and preserve essential elements of cuneiform culture and ensure its vibrancy. As a priest of the Rēš temple, Iqīšā balanced the continuation of tradition with intellectual experimentation and innovation. My analysis of Iqīšā's dossier demonstrates the complexity and diversity of Hellenistic Babylonia, the continued vibrancy of cuneiform culture in the late period of Mesopotamian history, the importance of regional differences to our understanding of the transition between the Achaemenid and Seleukid regimes, and the possibilities that new methodologies open up for the history of the ancient Middle East
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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Technology as Knowledge: Cuneiform Technical Recipes and the Material World
No full textThe human activity of making things has a long intellectual history, well predating the Industrial Revolution or even the term “technology” itself. This dissertation examines cuneiform sources written between the second and first millennium BCE in order to determine how technology interacted with and shaped scribal knowledge. With no clear boundary—between genuine and artificial, between the natural and human-made, between theory and practice, episteme and techne, knowing-that and knowing-how—with no term to distinguish between scribe and craftsman, cuneiform texts challenge how we think about both technology and knowledge. The case studies presented herein derive from cuneiform tablets written between the late second and mid first millennia BCE in what is today Iraq. These ancient clay tablets preserve technical recipes, explanatory lists of materials, and rituals bearing the hallmarks of scholarship. For the intellectual historian, they exemplify a discerning interest in the construction and proliferation of technical knowledge at an early stage of Middle Eastern textual history.The work argues that notions of technology constitute an essential element of cuneiform scribal knowledge. Ignoring the technological component of cuneiform scholarship renders an incomplete portrait of nēmequ—the Akkadian term we translate as “knowledge,” or “wisdom.” Neo-Assyrian glassmaking recipes can function as literary or ritual texts focused on purity, Middle Assyrian perfume recipes can be read as cultural windows into the roles of female experts during the rise of the Assyrian territorial state, and even a solitary tablet containing wool dyeing recipes can expand our knowledge of the cultural role of garments in first millennium Babylonia. Technical recipes, in sum, constitute textual sources that inform and interact with the construction of knowledge at the local level. This work offers close, contextualized readings of Akkadian technical recipes, and utilizes frameworks derived from the history and philosophy of science and technology, in order to generate new methods for investigating the relationship between technology and cuneiform scribal knowledge
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Bilingual Education and Innovations in Scholarship
Get PDFThe present study demonstrates the close connection in scribal practice between language and scholarship. During the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800 B.C.E) in the city of Nippur in southern Mesopotamia, scribal apprentices learned to write cuneiform by copying lists of words and cuneiform signs. At that time, most copies of these lexical compositions reflected a linguistic ideology valorizing the language of Sumerian and were, accordingly, unilingual. Exceptionally, some exemplars from the curricular stage Advanced Lexical Education (ALE)--particularly the word list Izi--exhibit explicit Sumerian-Akkadian bilingualism. I argue that such examples of explicit bilingualism in scribal education represent an innovative form of knowledge, a mode of scholarly interpretation I term analogical hermeneutics. The present study thus explores the intersection of language and scholarship in a period in which these subjects have not yet been extensively explored together.The word list Izi, a two-chapter list comprising approximately 1,025 entries, provides the core dataset for the study. The list was previously edited in the series Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon 13 (Civil, 1971). I provide a new introduction, synopsis edition, translation, and commentary. The present edition is based on collation of all known Izi exemplars, including over forty previously unpublished manuscripts. Izi characterizes the compositions of ALE, the curricular stage during which scribes internalized analogical hermeneutics as scribal practice and began applying such habits interlingually.Analogical hermeneutics is a form of analogical reasoning that is well recognized in later periods of cuneiform culture as a technique for determining relationships between epistemic objects. Analogical hermeneutics juxtaposes the particular to the particular--phonology, graphic shape, semantic referent, among others. The practice of analogical hermeneutics produces possibility. A scribe may base scholarly interpretations on similarity in seemingly dissimilar, even spurious, objects. My analysis contextualizes the study of Izi in its linguistic and educational setting. I first provide conceptual tools from semiotics in order to frame the relationship between a sign and its referent and between a Sumerian lemma and its Akkadian counterpart. Moreover, I adopt the sociological language of P. Bourdieu's practice theory to establish how scribal practices were inscribed in student scribes as habitus. Scribal apprentices copying texts during ALE reproduced ideologies regarding Sumerian language and traditions, the possibilities of polyvalency and polysemy embedded in the cuneiform writing system, and analogical hermeneutics. The scribes established their scholarly credentials through their aptitude in writing Sumerian and in producing analogies, taking positions within the field of scholarship and, thereby, reproducing the field. I show that tokens of Akkadian found in unilingual compositions reflect analogical hermeneutics, allowing interlingual correspondences based on perspectives other than semantic correlation. Thus, many Sumerian-Akkadian correspondences lack semantic commensurability. Explicit bilingualism is thus an extension of the practices scribes employed throughout ALE. The possibility of interlingual analogical hermeneutics is grounded in the polyvalency and polysemy of the writing system, allowing scribes to demonstrate their aptitude with the writing system in the interlingual space. The emergence of analogical hermeneutics during ALE marks a transition in ancient scholarly practice, wherein analogical hermeneutics, rather than Sumerian language use, became the primary characteristic of cuneiform scholarship until the end of cuneiform culture. I show that the manipulation of the writing system and language and similar unconventionalities in written text should not be understood as idiosyncratic scribal play, but as knowledge production, an important facet of scholarly practice
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