1,721,111 research outputs found
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
Technical debt: Showing the way for better transfer of empirical results
No full textIn this chapter, we discuss recent progress and opportunities in empirical software engineering by focusing on a particular technology, Technical Debt (TD), which ties together many recent developments in the field. Recent advances in TD research are providing empiricists the chance to make more sophisticated recommendations that have observable impact on practice. TD uses a financial metaphor and provides a framework for articulating the notion of tradeoffs between the short-term benefits and the long-term costs of software development decisions. TD is seeing an explosion of interest in the practitioner community, and research in this area is quickly having an impact on practice. We argue that this is due to several strands of empirical research reaching a level of maturity that provides useful benefits to practitioners, who in turn provide excellent data to researchers. They key is providing observable benefit to practitioners, such as the ability to tie technical debt measures to business goals, and the ability to articulate more sophisticated value-based propositions regarding how to prioritize rework. TD is an interesting case study in how the maturing field of empirical software engineering research is paying dividends. It is only a little hyperbolic to call this a watershed moment for empirical study, where many areas of progress are coming to a head at the same time
Investigating Technical Debt Folklore - Shedding some light on technical debt opinion
Full text linkWe identified and organized a number of statements about technical debt (TD Folklore list) expressed by practitioners in online websites, blogs and published papers. We chose 14 statements and we evaluated them through two surveys (37 practitioners answered the questionnaires), ranking them by agreement and consensus. The statements most agreed with show that TD is an important factor in software project management and not simply another term for “bad code”. This study will help the research community in identifying folklore that can be translated into research questions to be investigated, thus targeting attempts to provide a scientific basis for TD management
Ask the engineers: Exploring repertory grids and personal constructs for software data analysis
No full textMaturity in software projects is often equated with data-driven predictability. However, data collection is expensive and measuring all variables that may correlate with project outcome is neither practical nor feasible. In contrast, a project engineer can identify a handful of factors that he or she believes influence the success of a project. The challenge is to quantify engineers' insights in a way that is useful for data analysis. In this exploratory study, we investigate the repertory grid technique for this purpose. The repertory grid technique is an interview-based procedure for eliciting 'constructs' (e.g., Adhering to coding standards) that individuals believe influence a worldly phenomenon (e.g., What makes a high-quality software project) by comparing example elements from their past (e.g., Projects they have worked on). We investigate the relationship between objective metrics of project performance and repertory grid constructs elicited from eight software engineers. Our results show correlations between the engineers' subjective constructs and the objective project outcome measures. This suggests that repertory grids may be of benefit in developing models of project outcomes, particularly when project data is limited
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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