Wednesday, 18 May 2016
Elsevier purchase SSRN: Social scientists face questions over whether centralised repository is in their interests.
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN), an online repository for uploading preprint articles and working papers, has been recently acquired by publishing giant Elsevier. Thomas Leeper looks at what this purchase, and for-profit academic services more generally, mean for the scholarly community. Many regular users may not be aware that SSRN has been run by a privately held corporation since its founding in 1994.
What are the most-cited publications in the social sciences (according to Google Scholar)?
Drawing on citation data that spans disciplines and time periods, Elliott Green has identified the most cited publications in the social sciences. Here he shares his findings on the 25 most cited books as well as the top ten journal articles. The sheer number of citations for these top cited publications is worth noting as is the fact that no one discipline dominates over the others in the top 20, with the top six books all from different disciplines.
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
Monday, 16 May 2016
Best universities in the UK 2016 from the THE World University Rankings
This UK university league table reveals the 78 best UK universities and colleges, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016.
The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge take the top two spots in the UK ranking, while universities in London fill out the rest of the top five.
Bias against novelty in science
Bias against novelty in science | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal
There is growing concern that funding agencies supporting scientific research are increasingly risk-averse, favouring safe projects at the expense of novel projects exploring untested approaches. This column uses the citation trajectories for over 1 million research papers to examine the impact profile of novel research. Novel papers tend to suffer from delayed impact, but are more likely to become big hits in the long run and to generate follow-up research. The short time windows of the bibliometric indicators that are increasingly used by funding agencies in their decision-making may bias funding decisions against novelty.
There is growing concern that funding agencies supporting scientific research are increasingly risk-averse, favouring safe projects at the expense of novel projects exploring untested approaches. This column uses the citation trajectories for over 1 million research papers to examine the impact profile of novel research. Novel papers tend to suffer from delayed impact, but are more likely to become big hits in the long run and to generate follow-up research. The short time windows of the bibliometric indicators that are increasingly used by funding agencies in their decision-making may bias funding decisions against novelty.
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