Authorship analysis of specialized vs diversified research output

The present work investigates the relations between amplitude and type of collaboration (intramural, extramural domestic or international) and output of specialized versus diversified research. By specialized or diversified research, we mean within or beyond the author’s dominant research topic. The field of observation is the scientific production over five years from about 23,500 academics. The analyses are conducted at the aggregate and disciplinary level. The results lead to the conclusion that in general, the output of diversified research is no more frequently the fruit of collaboration than is specialized research. At the level of the particular collaboration types, international collaborations weakly underlie the specialized kind of research output; on the contrary, extramural domestic and intramural collaborations are weakly associated with diversified research. While the weakness of association remains, exceptions are observed at the level of the individual disciplines.     

Exploring the values of writing collaboratively through a digital storytelling platform: a mixed-methods analysis of users’ participation,perspectives and practices

Digital technologies allow teachers and students to experience new pedagogical approaches leveraging on interactivity and collaboration. Among the available techniques, digital storytelling (DST) has been usually regarded as an activity that can both enrich the teaching practices and foster students’ active behaviour. This paper aims at analysing to what extent a DST platform proposing the collaborative writing of a fictional story and leveraging on an active learning technique such as role-play can affect a variety of dimensions, namely students’ performance, commitment, creativity and social skills. Combining the analysis of the data-log automatically collected by the system with the evaluations given by teachers before and after the activity, this article shows that the use of a DST tool in the teaching practice can have positive effects on students, including the ones that usually manifest moderate scores for the previously mentioned dimensions. Additionally, semi-structured interviews and direct observations provide an insight on how the benefits stemming from the use of a DST tool in the classroom can especially lie on the collaborative process that is activated.     

MenCare+ in South Africa: findings from a gender transformative young men’s group education on sexual and reproductive health and rights

This paper details findings from an evaluation of a gender-transformative sexual and reproductive health and rights group education programme facilitated with young men aged 15–24 years in South Africa. A total of 475 young men participated in the group education programme. A self-administered pre- and post-questionnaire survey was conducted with a sample of the participants, and focus group discussions were facilitated. A total of 265 young men completed both the pre and post-questionnaires. Findings from the surveys as well as the focus group discussions showed positive changes in gender equitable attitudes, contraception and condom use. Results indicate that the young men who participated in the group education learned to identify harmful gender norms and actively questioned these constructs both within their personal lives and in the broader community. The intervention enabled some participants to envision alternative versions of masculinity and femininity, thus enabling them to adopt a new way of being, with transformed attitudes concerning household and gender roles.     

A new indicator for higher education student performance

The debate on academic achievement is a heated issue that involves all the higher education contexts. This paper attempts to provide an indicator that can make the measurement of university student performance easier and that can be easily applied to different systems, making comparisons more fair. The Italian University System is used as a starting point to make several considerations on the current measures and to build up a new performance indicator. Then, a generalization for other marking systems is shown and finally a quantile regression is performed to investigate some determinants of the new performance indicator, also with respect to the current one.     

On the relation between the degree of internationalization of cited and citing publications: A field level analysis,including and excluding self-citations

The growing complexity of scientific challenges demands increasingly intense research collaboration, both domestic and international. The resulting trend affects not only the modes of producing new knowledge, but also the way it is disseminated within scientific communities. This paper analyses the relationship between the “degree of internationalization” of a country’s scientific production and that of the relevant citing publications. The empirical analysis is based on 2010-2012 Italian publications. Findings show: i) the probability of being cited increases with the degree of internationalization of the research team; ii) totally domestic research teams tend to cite to a greater extent totally domestic publications; iii) vice versa, publications resulting from international collaborations tend to be more cited by totally foreign publications rather than by publications including domestic authors. These results emerge both at overall and at discipline level. Findings might inform research policies geared towards internationalization.     

A comparison of two approaches for measuring interdisciplinary research output: The disciplinary diversity of authors vs the disciplinary diversity of the reference list

This study investigates the convergence of two bibliometric approaches to the measurement of interdisciplinary research: one based on analyzing disciplinary diversity in the reference list of publications, the other based on the disciplinary diversity of authors of publications. In particular we measure the variety, balance, disparity and integrated diversity index of, respectively, single-author, multi-author single-field, and multi-author multi-field publications. We find that, in general, the diversity of the reference list grows with the number of fields reflected in a paper’s authors’ list and, to a lesser extent, with the number of authors being equal the number of fields. Further, we find that when fields belonging to different disciplines are reflected in the authors’ list, the disparity in the reference list is higher than in the case of fields belonging to the same discipline. However, this general tendency varies across disciplines, and noticeable exceptions are found at individual paper level.     

The impact of unproductive and top researchers on overall university research performance

Unlike competitive higher education systems, non-competitive systems show relatively uniform distributions of top researchers and low performers among universities. In this study, we examine the impact of unproductive and top faculty members on overall research performance of the university they belong to. Furthermore, we analyze the potential relationship between research productivity of a university and the indexes of concentration of unproductive and top researchers. Research performance is evaluated using a bibliometric approach, through publications indexed on the Web of Science between 2004 and 2008. The set analyzed consists of all Italian universities active in the hard sciences.     

The Engagement of Older People in Civil Society Organizations

This article reviews recent international literature on the opportunities and restrictions experienced by older people to act as volunteers in civil society organizations. Our aim was to develop a conceptual framework applicable to the European ageing society. This aim was pursued through a computerized database search focused on studies analyzing the individual, organizational, and/or societal levels. Findings show that senior volunteers are characterized by “younger” age, good health, and a high level of both educational and socioeconomical status. Volunteers are involved mainly in religious organizations as well as in social and personal care, while main barriers are represented especially by ageist practices. The review shows that the debate on this topic has been barely developed in Europe, both from an individual and societal point of view. Therefore, European countries might take advantage from experiences made in other contexts, but the identification of how this can occur requires further and more specific cross-national research.