1,720,955 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
Enduring flows: The transit of drugs in contemporary Honduras
Get PDFSince the 2000s, Honduras has expanded its role as a transit hub for international cocaine trafficking, with tonnes of cocaine passing through the country every year. Nevertheless, research on illicit drug flows in the country – and more generally across transit areas – remains limited. This resides in a tendency within both academic and institutional discourses to depict illicit flows as detached from societal structures, with little implications for the realities they touch. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of publicly available official US court documents on drug trafficking in Honduras and semi-structured interviews with experts on the country’s drug economy, this article addresses this gap by exploring the movement of US-bound cocaine shipments across Honduras. It explores whether, and how, transient activities such as illicit drug flows become embedded in the territories they traverse. The discussion shows the extent to which the drug trade has become embedded within Honduras’ political and territorial realities, concluding that drugs do not merely pass through transit spaces but become integrated into them. Drug traffickers rely on relationships they establish with both legal and extra-legal actors – including other drug traffickers and state officials – to receive and move drugs across the country. These relationships allow them to obtain access to ‘points of passage’ such as clandestine airstrips, security checkpoints and road networks – all of which are crucial infrastructures for facilitating the transit of drugs. Furthermore, the article reveals both legal and extra-legal actors’ role in exerting control over these logistics infrastructures and therefore in enabling the transnational flow of illicit goods. These insights contribute to broader debates on illicit flows, organised crime and the control of passage points along trade routes, while also shedding light on the often-overlooked role of transit countries like Honduras in the transnational cocaine trade
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
CONTESTED TERRITORY: VIOLENCE, ORGANISED CRIME AND TERRITORIAL PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY HONDURAS
No full textThe relationship between organised crime and territory is a complex one, and one which affects extensively security dynamics. Especially in countries plagued by violence and insecurity, like Honduras, territory is strategically important for criminal actors, that usually seek to obtain territorial control in certain areas and often compete over it with their rivals and authorities. Despite this, Honduras remains a highly understudied country in academic and policy discourses on the issue, especially due to the objectively dangerous nature of the criminal groups present in the country and the elevated levels of corruption and impunity that permeate it. As a result, the ways in which criminal groups shape the country’s territory, affecting local communities and security dynamics, remains an underexplored aspect in the literature. Especially, little is known about the way in which criminal groups’ presence, activities, and interactions shape space and territory across different scales in Honduras.
By drawing upon thirty semi-structured interviews with Honduran residents, ex-residents, and experts on criminal groups, activities, and dynamics in the country, and the analysis of official judicial documents, secondary literature, available public reports, and media outlets, this qualitative case study explores the ways in which criminal, state, and non-state actors shape the territory in Honduras in the context of a liberal market democracy. By focusing on different scales, respectively the local, regional, and national, and the interplay among these, this study aims at painting a picture of the bordering and territorial practices that different actors – especially criminal groups – have been carrying out in the country approximately in the last three decades. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis consolidates and integrates the literature on organised crime, violence, the state-crime nexus, territory and territorial practices, and borders and bordering practices with original empirical research.
By focusing on gangs in urban areas of the country, drug trafficking organisations in rural ones, and state-crime relationships across the national territory, I argue that these actors have been able to actively produce and shape the country’s territory along micro, meso, and national lines, often establishing authority on it, and have contributed to shaping the Honduran territory as a deeply contested space. In doing so, I argue, these groups mirror – and, at the same time, are embedded into – the dynamics of capital accumulation and resource commodification entrenched in the country’s history of capitalist and neo-colonial exploitation and occupation throughout the centuries
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
Enablers of cocaine trafficking: Evidence of the state-crime nexus from contemporary Honduras
No full textHonduras has been Central America's focal point for drug trafficking towards the United States for years as the region's main transit country. Recent court cases held in the United States have revealed the symbiotic relationship between state actors, business elites and drug trafficking organisations in contemporary Honduras, uncovering the blurred boundaries between the licit and illicit, the upper and underworld in the country. In this article, a drug-trafficking family - "Los Cachiros" transportista (transport) group - is analysed as a case study with the aim of exploring state actors' involvement in cocaine trafficking. Drawing on publicly available official judicial documents, this article explores the interpenetrations between formal and informal institutions in the country, arguing that state actors' involvement in the drug trade in Honduras goes far beyond protection, and has evolved into a powerful network of public, private and criminal actors that has been able to capture the state's basic sovereign functions with the aim of protecting and promoting their own private interests. In doing so, this article takes forward the state-crime nexus literature. Building on Hall's (2018) networked approach in the study of illicit economies, this article proposes a conceptual framework to re-theorise the state-crime nexus as a transnationally networked set of relations, which considers the role of external states as actors of power within a country's state-crime nexus. Looking at the unique relationship between Honduras and the United States, I argue that the concept is useful to understand the role of the United States as a transnational actor of power within the Honduran state-crime nexus
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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