Computer software and data-processing algorithms are becoming an everyday part of Higher Education. How might this be affecting research in the social sciences and the formation of the professional identities of academics? Ben Williamson argues that these are important challenges … Continue reading →
Category: Higher Education
How-to guide for building a university-administered impact management tool for academics.
Coventry University have devoted time, talent and resources to come up with an embedded management tool to help academics plan and capture the impact of their research. Julie Bayley discusses the lessons learnt through the process of creating a functional, … Continue reading →
‘Value for money’ rhetoric in higher education undermines the value of knowledge in society.
Over the past 15 years, reiterated across successive governments, the concept of value for money has been internalised throughout the higher education sector. Joanna Williams outlines the reasons why it is problematic to use student choice and value for money as a … Continue reading →
It’s the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why instrumentalist arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science are not enough.
The Open Movement has made impressive strides in the past year, but do these strides stand for reform or are they just symptomatic of the further expansion and entrenchment of neoliberalism? Eric Kansa argues that it is time for the movement to broaden … Continue reading →
Book Review: Achieving Impact in Research edited by Pam Denicolo
Achieving Impact in Research aims to address the importance of understanding and achieving impact for the purposes of gaining research funding and reporting achieved impact for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).The book includes contributions from researchers and researcher developers who feel … Continue reading →
Impact Round-Up 25th January: Anonymity, metadata, and tacit knowledge vs reproducible results.
Managing Editor Sierra Williams presents a round-up of popular stories from around the web on higher education, academic impact, and trends in scholarly communication. 1. The role of anonymity in the blogosphere and in science took centre stage this week when a … Continue reading →
The contemporary social sciences are now converging strongly with STEM disciplines in the study of ‘human-dominated systems’ and ‘human-influenced systems’
Much less is known about the development of the social sciences as a complete discipline group than about the previously dominant STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) discipline group. Patrick Dunleavy, Simon Bastow and Jane Tinkler set out some key … Continue reading →
Moneyball for Academics: network analysis methods for predicting the future success of papers and researchers.
Drawing from a combination of network analysis measurements, Erik Brynjolfsson and Shachar Reichman present methods from their research on predicting the future success of researchers. The overall vision for this project is to create an academic dashboard that will include a suite of … Continue reading →
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: The Battle for “Open”.
There are no simple answers to the growing demand for openness in relation to education technology and scholarly communication. Audrey Watters takes a look back at how the term ‘open’ has been discussed in the last year. As open continues … Continue reading →
From the precarious university to the rise and rise of social media: our most popular posts of 2013.
It has been a great year for the Impact of Social Sciences blog and we look forward to the exciting times ahead – particularly with the launch of our Research Book next month! But it wouldn’t be the new year without a … Continue reading →