Discussing recent research into how the REF distorts research and academic publishing patterns in the UK Moqi Groen-Xu and Peter Coveney argue for a researcher, rather than a rules centred REF. All governance systems – states, parents, or research eval…
Category: Citations
Standing on the shoulders of Chinese (Scientific) Giants – Evidence for a citation discount for Chinese Researchers
Chinese researchers are increasingly leading scientific research, yet their contributions are not fully recognized, notably by US researchers. Shumin Qiu, Claudia Steinwender and Pierre Azoulay discuss the reasons why articles written by Chinese academ…
Bibliometrics at large – The role of metrics beyond academia
The role of bibliometrics, such as impact factors and h-indices, in shaping research has been well documented. However, what function do these measures have beyond the institutional contexts in which, for better or worse, they were designed? Commenting…
Aspirational metrics – A guide for working towards citational justice
Is it possible to have a just politics of citation? Reflecting on their work to create a guide to fairer citation practices in academic writing, Aurélie Carlier, Hang Nguyen, Lidwien Hollanders, Nicole Basaraba, Sally Wyatt and Sharon Anyango*, highlig…
What does it mean to “connect your work to an ongoing conversation”?
Placing your research within a wider academic discourse or ‘conversation’ is a standard requirement for academic writing, but what does it actually mean? In this cross-post, Pat Thomson, explores the concept and suggests that three principl…
Citation counts reinforce the influence of highly cited papers and nudge us towards undervaluing those with fewer.
In the context of everyday research assessment citation counts are often taken as a simple indicator of the influence of any particular paper. However, all citations are not the same and can be deployed to achieve different ends. Commenting on a recent…
Female researchers are more read and less cited because they more often engage in research for societal progress
The gender gap in citations between male and female researchers is well documented. However, the reasons for this gap are less certain and widely contested. Discussing findings from a mixed methods analysis of research publications from Norway, Lin Zha…
Book Review: Dear Science and Other Stories by Katherine McKittrick
In Dear Science and Other Stories, Katherine McKittrick positions Black storytelling ‘as a way to hold on to the rebellious methodological work of sharing ideas in an unkind world’. Exploring how Black creatives have always used such interdisciplinary …
CRediT Check – Should we welcome tools to differentiate the contributions made to academic papers?
Elsevier is the latest in a lengthening list of publishers to announce their adoption for 1,200 journals of the CASRAI Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT). Authors of papers in these journals will be required to define their contributions in relation to a predefined taxonomy of 14 roles. In this post, Elizabeth Gadd weighs the pros and … Continued
2019 In Review: Research Tools & Tech
Digital technologies continue to reshape and reimagine core research practices, from transcribing interviews, to creating entire texts autonomously. This list brings together some of the top posts on research technologies that have featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2019. Disrupting transcription – How automation is transforming a foundational research method The transcription of verbal and non-verbal social interactions is […]