Switching between academic disciplines in universities in the Netherlands

The Netherlands university system encompasses roughly one half of the state financed research enterprise. Some characteristics and data on the field of education and present occupation of the professional staff in this system are given and conclusions are drawn concerning field mobility and mutual influencing of different disciplines.     

Migration of physicists to other academic disciplines: Situation in the Netherlands

“Field switchers” are an interesting group of people to study if one wants to find out to what extent and the ways in which the various scientific disciplines influence each other. In this paper we present and discuss the results of an inquiry that was conducted at Dutch universities among one particular type of field switchers, namely migrated physicists. By migrated physicists we mean physicists working in universities but not in physics departments. Although migrated physicists form a very heterogenous group one can draw some general conclusions about their attitudes, characteristics and capacities. Migrated physicists apparently continue to feel themselves to be physicists, and they think that physics or natural sciences should play a greater role in their “adopted” fields. At least in the case of physicsts, field-mobility seems to be linked with general mobility Migrant parform a useful and important sevice.     

Citations among communication journals and other disciplines: a network analysis

This article describes the results of a network analysis based on the citation among Communication journals and those academic disciplines that are cited by those journals labeled as “Communication” by the Web of Science. The results indicate that the journals indexed solely as Communication rather than those also tagged as another social science are more central in the citation network. Further, a cluster analysis of the cited disciplines revealed three groupings, a micro psychological cluster, a macro socio-political group and a woman’s studies clique. A two-mode network analysis found that the most central Communication journals cited multiple clusters, while the peripheral journals cited only one, suggesting that the structure of influence on the field of Communication is more complex than suggested by Park and Leydesdorff (Scientometrics 81(1):157–175, 2009). Also, the results indicate that the macro cluster is about twice as influential as the micro cluster, rather than as Park and Leydesdorff suggest that Psychology is the discipline’s primary influence.     

A novel method for depicting academic disciplines through Google Scholar Citations: The case of Bibliometrics

Scientometrics - This article describes a procedure to generate a snapshot of the structure of a specific scientific community and their outputs based on the information available in Google Scholar...     

Measuring the disparity among scientific disciplines using Library of Congress Subject Headings

Scientometrics - Examining the relationships among scientific disciplines is important today, but existing methods are limited by the contents and structure of their bibliographic databases. We...     

Multilevel analysis of academic publishing across disciplines: research preference,collaboration, and time on research

This study developed a multilevel model of academic publishing and tested the effects of several predictors on faculty publishing. In particular, the analysis paid special attention to faculty preference, time on research, research collaboration, and faculty discipline. The data we used for this study is the Changing Academic Professions (CAP) data which is the follow-up study of the Carnegie Foundation in 1992. The study found that faculty preference for research affects research publishing. In addition, faculty collaboration with international peers is a critical factor in academic publishing. While time spent on research is related to publishing, time spent on teaching does not have a conflicting effect on faculty research. In the institution level analysis, institutional goal-orientation and institutional mission were found to have effects on academic publishing. However, the principal determinants of academic publishing were found to lie at the individual faculty member level. For each of these findings, there are subtle differences by academic discipline.     

Communication activities in scientific disciplines in Belgium

The communication behaviour of Belgian university scientists is investigated over the period of 1977–1979. For 5 broad scientific domains the general characteristics are given and the distribution of the scientists over groups with 1 to 20 communications per three year is discussed. For two domains, Arts and Basic Sciences, an analysis is given of constituent disciplines. The present investigation presents a background profile of the communication activities, enabling evaluation of extreme activity in the disciplines discussed.     

Migration patterns of U. S. Ph. D. s among disciplines and specialties

Patterns of migration among disciplines and specialties are examined using data from a large survey of U. S. Ph. D. s in a broad range of fields. Mappings of scholarly fields are derived from the migration patterns and these mappings are largely consistent with results from previous studies using citation flows and other measures of field similarities. Migration patterns suggest that there are two boundaries dividing the fields in this analysis, and that hierarchical relations among disciplines are weak or absent. In contrast, specialties within a discipline are more likely to exhibit structural hierarchies.Revised version of a paper presented at the George Sarton Centennial, University of Ghent, November 1984.     

INTELSAT two-way time transfer experiments among Japan, Korea, andTaiwan

The first two-way time transfer experiments using an INTELSAT Ku-band satellite in eastern Asia in cooperation between the Communications Research Laboratory (CRL, Japan), Korea Research Institute of Standard and Science (KRISS, Korea), and the Telecommunication Laboratory (TL, Taiwan) were carried out during 1992. The CRL-KRISS experiment attained a short term precision of better than 1 ns. The CRL-TL experiment suffered from a low C/N₀ ratio which made the short term precision greater than 1 ns. The long term averaged residuals contained a periodic noise signal which we believe was the result of a Doppler shift in the frequency of the signal caused by the relative motion of the satellite. A MITREX compatible modem under development at CRL exhibited a linear correlation with frequency offsets that were similar to the noise in the data     

中日韩物流信息化基础标准的比较研究

随着中、日、韩经贸和物流活动的迅速发展,区域物流信息服务网络的需求日益迫切.本文比较研究和分析了中、日、韩物流信息标准化领域中的数据元、代码和电子单证/报文三项基础性、关键性标准,对于研究和制定中、日、韩物流信息交换标准,为东北亚物流信息服务体系的建立提供依据和指导具有非常重要的意义和作用.     

Interactions between disciplines and countries in methodical preferences for empirical research

Scientific results of empirical research depend on the methods used. The selection of empirical methods by scientists is not solely determined by the subject of research or by theory. Social and historical (in our investigation national) conditions also affect the application of methods. This hypothesis has been corroborated with the help of journals in psychology, psychiatry, and sociology from different countries. The national impact on method preference varies among these disciplines. Conclusions are drawn concerning the generalizability of empirical results beyond disciplines and beyond countries.     

Positive results receive more citations, but only in some disciplines

Negative results are commonly assumed to attract fewer readers and citations, which would explain why journals in most disciplines tend to publish too many positive and statistically significant findings. This study verified this assumption by counting the citation frequencies of papers that, having declared to “test” a hypothesis, reported a “positive” (full or partial) or a “negative” (null or negative) support. Controlling for various confounders, positive results were cited on average 32 % more often. The citation advantage, however, was unequally distributed across disciplines (classified as in the Essential Science Indicators database). Using Space Science as the reference category, the citation differential was positive and formally statistically significant only in Neuroscience & Behaviour, Molecular Biology & Genetics, Clinical Medicine, and Plant and Animal Science. Overall, the effect was significantly higher amongst applied disciplines, and in the biological compared to the physical and the social sciences. The citation differential was not a significant predictor of the actual frequency of positive results amongst the 20 broad disciplines considered. Although future studies should attempt more fine-grained assessments, these results suggest that publication bias may have different causes and require different solutions depending on the field considered.     

Metrology in the system of physics disciplines (discussion paper)

Methodological problems of metrology are discussed. Metrology is viewed as an empirical scientific discipline in which the basic notions are determined in an operational manner and ought to be verifiable. Relationship between metrology and theoretical and experimental scientific branches is established. From the aspect of the methodology proposed herein, certain notions of metrology are incorrectly defined and not verifiable. Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 10, pp. 3–5, October, 1998.     

Some potential applications of engineering science disciplines in hearing mechanism research

The field of Auditory Studies available to treatment by techniques common in Engineering Science is described under three headings. The first is the Fluid Dynamic Aspects of Cochlea Behaviour in which necessary simplification of the describing equations is achieved with the guidance of dynamic similarity experiments. The second concerns the relationship of neural excitation to basilor membrane displacement function, the terminal point for hydrodynamic analyses. Currently it is envisaged that the formulation of evaluated hypotheses of hair cell deformation will represent the most useful contribution. The third heading relates to middle ear function where an ascending series of kinematic, static and dynamic analyses will give rise to data for middle ear prosthesis re-design and novel comment on middle ear muscle function.     

Writing styles in different scientific disciplines: a data science approach

Scientometrics - We quantified several different elements that reflect writing styles of scientific papers in four related disciplines: physics, astrophysics, mathematics, and computer science....     

International and domestic co-publishing and their citation impact in different disciplines

This paper studies disciplinary differences in citation impacts of different types of co-publishing. The citation impacts of international, domestic inter-organizational and domestic intra-organizational co-publications, and single-authored publications, are compared. In particular, we examine the extent to which the number of authors explains the potential differences in citation impacts when compared to the influence of different types of international and domestic collaborations. The analysis is based on Finland’s publications in Thomson Reuters Web of Science database in 1990–2008. Finland is a small country, thus, it has fewer opportunities to find collaborators inside own country when compared to larger countries. Finland’s science policy has underlined internationalization and research collaboration as key means to increase the quality and impact of Finnish research. This study indicates that both international and domestic co-publishing have steadily increased during the past two decades in all disciplinary groups. International co-publications gain on average more citations than domestic co-publications. In natural sciences and engineering, co-authorship explains only a small proportion of variability in publications’ citation rates. When the effect of the number of authors is taken into account there are no big differences in citation impacts between international and domestic co-publications. However, international co-publications by ten authors or more gather significantly more citations than other publications. In humanities, the difference in citation impacts between co-authored publications in relation to single-authored publications is significant. However, international co-publications are not on average more highly cited in relation to domestic co-publications in humanities.     

Aero-optic effects in turbulent flows

Large-scale vortices and related aero-optic effects in a turbulent boundary layer, a free mixing layer, and an underwater stream have been mathematically simulated. The results are used for the analysis of distortions in the wavefront-phase function of a coherent light beam, which are induced by turbulent fluctuations in the parameters of the medium. The results of numerical calculations are compared to the experimental data and to a solution of the Reynolds equations.     

Turbulent spots in channel flows

A number of investigations into the formation and development of turbulent spots in plane Poiseuille, plane Couette and watertable flows are reviewed. Three main observations are drawn from this work. Firstly, the initial development is associated with the transient growth due to the three-dimensional lift-up effect. Secondly, the spreading and propagation velocities of the different spots are quite similar. Thirdly, the velocity field inside the spots show essentially all the characteristics of fully developed turbulent flow, albeit at low Reynolds numbers. The mechanism behind the rapid spreading of the spots, however, is not yet fully understood, although observations of wave activity, modifications of the surrounding flow field and stability calculations point in the direction of growth by destabilization.     

A bibliometric analysis on rural studies in human geography and related disciplines

Although the world has experienced rapid urbanization, rural areas have always been and are still an important research field in human geography. This paper performed a bibliometric analysis on rural geography studies based on the peer-reviewed articles concerning rural geography published in the SSCI-listed journals from 1990 to 2012. Our analysis examines publication patterns (document types and publishing languages, article outputs and their categories, major journals and their publication, most productive authors, geographic distribution and international collaboration) and demonstrates the evolution of intellectual development of rural geography by studying highly cited papers and their citation networks and temporal evolution of keywords. Our research findings include: The article number has been increasing since the 1900s, and went through three phases, and the rural geography research is dominated in size by UK and USA. The USA is the most productive in rural geography, but the UK had more impact than other countries in the terms of the average citation of articles. Three distinct but loosely linked research streams of rural geography were identified and predominated by the UK rural geographers. The keywords frequencies evolved according to contexts of rural development and academic advances of human geography, but they were loosely and scattered since the rural researches in different regions or different systems faced with different problems.