1,720,961 research outputs found
Sustainability in business - beyond the right thing to do
No full textIn business there is the need for a shift from current perspectives that seek to minimise negative impacts, to developing an understanding of how leaders can create positive impact to society and the planet
Apple’s Recycling Robot ‘Liam’ and the Global Recycling Economy of E-Waste : What “The Guardian” Does, and What He Misses Out On
No full textThinking like Apple's recycling robots : towards the activation of responsibility in a postenvironmentalist world
Get PDFThis article turns to valuation studies to enrich the critical capacities of postenvironmentalism with a more situated approach. Debates in postenvironmentalism suggest moving away from a romanticized notion of nature and instead shining the spotlight on the responsibility humans have toward the built environment, which includes technologies. We use Liam and Daisy, two recycling robots of Apple Inc., as intermediaries to discuss the multiplicities of value-production in the recycling economies of electronic waste. The company introduced these robots as innovations to revolutionize the recycling industries; yet, drawing on our ethnographic research in the UK, Germany, India and Ghana we emphasize that Apple’s approach to research is limited. The notion of dis/assembling value enables us to activate the production of responsibility as a value in empirical contexts, with a focus on (1) decisions on material breakdown that are hidden in the black box of Apple’s algorithms, (2) the vulnerability and fragility of electronic waste work, and (3) the rising impact of shredding technologies in the global recycling economies of e-waste
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
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
Processes in organising reconditioned computers and vulnerable people - the untold story
No full textIn an attempt to address the conference theme this paper seeks to bring together two empirical studies. Both studies were initiated by non-profit organisations and both are focused on the organising of reconditioned computers and the social inclusion of vulnerable people in these processes of organising. The first of these non-profit organisations was for disabled people and the project initiated by them we will call ‘CommunITy’. This is a project that aimed to introduce reconditioned computers to disabled people in order to get them better, more effectively, ‘electronically’ connected to society – the assumption being that disabled people suffer from issues of social exclusion as a result of their inability to get out of the house as often as able-bodied people. Providing them with a computer and internet access was considered to assist with reducing this social exclusion. One of the authors of this paper was an active participant within this particular project and involved with the recruitment and selection of ‘suitable’ users, the delivery and installation of computers into selected users’ homes and an evaluation of the project as a whole. She saw therefore and participated with many aspects of the project that were involved in its implementation. The second non-profit organisation we will call ‘Green NPO’. The goals of this organisation were threefold: “to ease poverty by providing furniture and used goods to individuals from economical disadvantage backgrounds”, "to reduce the amount of household goods that end up in landfill" and "to offer training to assist unemployed individuals with their re-entry back to work". Since 2005 Green NPO have offered a ReuseIT project that redirects computers from landfill, offering specific back to work training in IT products, repair and maintenance, and computer access to people identified as socially and economically disadvantaged through the selling of reconditioned computers at a low cost (some were as cheap as £40.00). At the time of this research, the assumption was that computers were expensive, held considerable financial value and not everyone could afford these so this project could overcome some of the problems of access to IT associated with costs. In addition, reconditioning and reducing the cost of computers seemed a positive way forward in terms of reducing social exclusion by offering work opportunities which would/could reduce the cost of computers. The second author of this paper spent time following the trajectory of a computer through the organisation from its donation, collection, assessment, repair, refurbishment to its resale or dismantling. She worked closely with the volunteers involved in the project and as a result gained rich insights into the working practices of the ReuseIT project. Arguably both projects see IT skills as integral to modern day society and inclusion in society as requiring everyone to have the right to access information electronically. The focus of both therefore can be identified as on getting what are seen as vulnerable people more ‘connected’ to society. What we will demonstrate in a fuller paper is that the seemingly straightforward processes that are seen to take place in order to make these projects a success (both of which were identified as successful) are not as straightforward as they may seem. In the first project, the recruitment and selection of disabled people, the delivery and installation of the computer with the assumption of internet connection and the subsequent evaluation of the project; and, in the second the resale of reconditioned computers, the diversion of computers from landfill, the training provision for back to work schemes and individuals gainfully employed. Working as active participants within the projects both authors were able to identify how in order to organise the projects the disorganised messy nature of both projects became glossed over/hidden. More specifically, as a result of the active nature of both researchers involvement they could not only identify the disorganised but also played key roles in the active constitution of both projects. Accordingly, from a methodological point of view there were not only rational and somewhat abstract choices made but also and more importantly choices made which were conditioned by a series of ongoing circumstances and events. Expressed differently, Heritage (1992) argues ‘Actions-as-constitutive-of-their-settings and settings-as-constitutive-of-their-actions are two halves of a simultaneous equation which the actors are continually, solving through a mass of methodic procedures.’ (p. 308) We aim to explicitly highlight the role of the researchers in the shaping of the projects in a fuller paper. Drawing initially on Cooper (1986) and his discussions of organisation/disorganisation this paper seeks to reflect on and uncover the disorganised (silence) and in turn highlight its significance in terms of understanding the involvement of objects/technologies and subjects/bodies in the processes of organising that took place during the implementation of both of these projects. To do this we will draw on the actor network perspective, which allows for an identification of the networks that are built and in turn glossed over as projects like the two being discussed are enacted/performed. As Law (1997) argues as technologies begin to move (in the empirical cases here this relates to the reconditioned computers), they change and so do ‘the social and technical relations around it (p. 3).’ In summary, in an attempt to uncover the performances taking place as the projects were enacted the paper to be developed will explore both as on-going and emergent sociomaterial accomplishments. References: Cooper R (1986) – Organization/Disorganization – Social Science Information, 25(2):299-335 Heritage J (1992) Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, Polity Press Law J (2003) Traduction/Trahison: Notes on ANT Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaste
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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