RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation最新文献

{"title":"Post-publication peer review in biomedical journals: overcoming obstacles and disincentives to knowledge sharing","authors":"K. Shashok, V. Matarese","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/10125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/10125","url":null,"abstract":"The importance of post-publication peer review (PPPR) as a type of knowledge exchange has been emphasized by several authorities in research publishing, yet biomedical journals do not always facilitate this type of publication. Here we report our experience publishing a commentary intended to offer constructive feedback on a previously published article. We found that publishing our comment required more time and effort than foreseen, because of obstacles encountered at some journals. Using our professional experience as authors’ editors and our knowledge of publication policies as a starting point, we reflect on the probable reasons behind these obstacles, and suggest ways in which journals could make PPPR easier. In addition, we argue that PPPR should be more explicitly valued and rewarded in biomedical disciplines, and suggest how these publications could be included in research evaluations. Eliminating obstacles and disincentives to PPPR is essential in light of the key roles of post-publication analysis and commentary in drawing attention to shortcomings in published articles that were overlooked during pre-publication peer review.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116757012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Invention through bricolage: epistemic engineering in scientific communities","authors":"Alex G. Gillett","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9113","url":null,"abstract":"It is widely recognised that knowledge accumulation is an important aspect of scientific communities. In this essay, drawing on a range of material from theoretical biology and behavioural science, I discuss a particular aspect of the intergenerational nature of human communities – “virtual collaboration” (Tomasello 1999) – and how it can lead to epistemic progress without any explicit intentional creativity (Henrich 2016). My aim in this paper is to make this work relevant to theorists working on the social structures of science so that these processes can be utilised and optimised in scientific communities.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115840140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Importance of Social Epistemology","authors":"P. Kitcher","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9829","url":null,"abstract":"Descartes is often credited with making epistemology central to philosophy. Unfortunately, the English-language philosophical tradition has tended to focus on the wrong part of Descartes’ achievement. Journals are full of technical articles about various forms of skepticism (typically dead issues), attempts to define ‘knowledge’, and a host of cottage industries that have been spun off from such ventures. We tend to forget how Descartes’ own interest in certainty stemmed from a more fundamental desire to discover methods for inquiry that would work reliably. His interest in firm foundations surely rested on a well-motivated determination to avoid repeating the career of Aristotelianism. Two millennia of wrong-headed efforts were more than enough. The great epistemological tradition since the seventeenth century is not the struggle to show how we have knowledge of an external world, but the provision of criteria for assessing evidence across a range of disciplines. The heroes are Bayes and Mill and Peirce and those who continue their efforts today – as in the work of Judaea Pearl, and Clark Glymour and his team on hunting causes. Yet, despite Peirce’s clear understanding of the collective character of inquiry, virtually all ventures in this tradition have been individualistic. Little has been done to understand how communities should be organized so as to facilitate the search for knowledge. That is changing. Thanks to a number of contemporary scholars, many of them based in Europe, questions about the norms and structures of collective inquiry are now being raised. And, they are being pursued with precise formal tools. The chief epistemological problem of our day is to understand how to improve the knowledge-seeking endeavors of communities of investigators. As I once put it – “The philosophers have ignored the social structure of science (I should have said “the sciences”). The point, however, is to change it (them).”","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132181206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Social Epistemology at Work: from Philosophical Theory to Policy Advice","authors":"E. Petrovich, M. Viola","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9828","url":null,"abstract":"The Twentieth century witnessed the raise of several academic disciplines targeting science as a research object. History of science and philosophy of science were the first to get institutionalized in the university system, with the birth of the journal Isis by George Sarton in 1912 and the diffusion of Neo-positivist philosophy of science in U.S. universities by emigrated members of the Vienna Circle. Sociology of science soon followed, with the establishment of the institutional sociology of science school lead by Robert Merton in the Fifties. The publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn in 1962 set a landmark in the history of the study of science, fueling the raise of new approaches in all the three mentioned disciplines. The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) advanced by Edinburgh School and the emergence of the galaxy of Science and Technology Studies (STS) would not have been possible without Kuhn’s work. The Sixties saw also the birth of the quantitative study of science, with the creation of the Science Citation Index by Eugene Garfield in 1964. From the Eighties onward, the academic research targeting science has flourished enormously, addressing its research object from a wide range of methods and disciplinary perspectives (from cultural anthropology to economics, from philosophy to bibliometrics). Even if it these different studies of science have not coalesced into a unified and coherent picture of science, still it is right to say that today we know more and better how scientific inquiry works, at different levels and in different contexts. The second half of the century was marked not only by the flourishing of academic metadiscourses on science, but also by the increasing interaction of science and society at large. The Manhattan project was the first occurrence of so-called “Big Science”, i.e. a huge techno-scientific project involving thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians, and funded by massive amount of public money. Science, the Endless frontier, the report delivered by Vannevar Bush to President Roosevelt in 1945, marked the dawn of science policy as a strategic issue in the United States. National Science Foundation (NSF) was soon created and categories like “basic” and “applied” research started rapidly to shape policy discussion about the organization and the funding of scientific research. The main tenet of Fifties and Sixties science policy was the clear separation between scientific community","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"3 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126104503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In Praise of Precipitatory Governance as a (Meta-)Principle of Responsible Innovation","authors":"S. Fuller","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9830","url":null,"abstract":"The most natural way to think about “responsible innovation” is how the European Union and the scholars associated with the Journal of Responsible Innovation think about it – namely, in terms of being wise before the fact, when “the fact” consists in suboptimal, if not catastrophic, impacts for a broad range of constituencies in the wake of some proposed innovation. In that case, one tries to anticipate those consequences with an eye to mitigating if not avoiding them altogether. This is normally the territory of the precautionary principle, according to which innovations with great capacity for harm – regardless of benefits – would not be introduced at all. “Responsible innovation” tries to take a more moderate line, recognizing the generally beneficial character of innovation but insisting on monitoring its effects as it is unleashed on society and the larger environment. The guiding idea is that one might have one’s cake and eat it: Innovations would be collectively owned to the extent that those potentially on the receiving end would be encouraged from the outset to voice their concerns and even opposition, which will shape the innovation’s subsequent development. But one needs to be responsible not only before the fact but also after the fact, especially when “the fact” involves suboptimal impacts, including “worst case scenarios”. This is the opposite of anticipatory governance. Call it precipitatory governance. Precipitatory governance operates on the assumption that some harm will be done, no matter what course of action is taken, and the task is to derive the most good from it. I say “derive the most good” because I do not wish to limit the range of considerations to the mitigation of harm or even to the compensation for harm, though I have dealt with that matter elsewhere (Fuller and Lipinska 2014: ch. 4). In addition, the prospect of major harm may itself provide an opportunity to develop innovations that would otherwise be seen as unnecessary if not utopian to the continuation of life as it has been. Here I refer to the signature Cold War way of thinking about these matters, which the RAND Corporation strategist Herman Kahn (1960) dubbed “thinking the unthinkable”. What he had in mind was the aftermath of a thermonuclear war in which, say, 25-50% of the world’s population is wiped out over a relatively short period of time. How do we rebuild humanity under those circumstances? This is not so different from ‘the worst case scenarios” proposed nowadays, even under conditions of","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121772205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Managing the Future Imaginary: Does ‘Post-Normal’ Science need Public Relations?","authors":"James Michael MacFarlane","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9139","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary conditions of so-called ‘post-normal’ science characterised by fundamental uncertainty and high decision stakes have been met by the call for an ‘extended peer community’ to include a full range potential stakeholders in the assessment and evaluation of future research policy (Functowicz and Ravetz, 1993; 1994). Correspondingly, the term ‘Anticipatory Governance’ (AG) has entered currency within Science and Technology Studies (STS) circles, where the phrase refers sympathetically to the fields involvement with an array of novel practices routinely carried-out in the name of increasingly public-focused, conscientious management of emerging science and technology. Existing literature in this area has typically focused on perceived benefits of social-scientist driven AG as ‘Real Time Technology Assessment’ (RTTA), rather than address how such participation — in line with STS’s contemporary post-social, object-centred, anti-normative research character — relates to a lack of institutional protection for most STS practitioners today. I argue the activities of social science researchers enrolled in AG-styled programmes appears to closely resemble those of PR professionals, and as such, in today’s knowledge economy the field could have much to gain by turning to clarify and formalise the unique cognitive-base and normative horizons befitting of a closed occupational group. I suggest an occupational restructuring in line with the ‘professional project’ (Macdonald, 1995) could bring about increased autonomy for STS practitioners, as well as purposeful direction for future research.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127607017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Supervision, Mentorship and Peer Networks: How Estonian Early Career Researchers Get (or Fail to Get) Support","authors":"Jaana Eigi, Katrin Velbaum, E. Lõhkivi, K. Simm, Kristin Kokkov","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/8709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/8709","url":null,"abstract":"The paper analyses issues related to supervision and support of early career researchers in Estonian academia. We use nine focus groups interviews conducted in 2015 with representatives of social sciences in order to identify early career researchers’ needs with respect to support, frustrations they may experience, and resources they may have for addressing them. Our crucial contribution is the identification of wider support networks of peers and colleagues that may compensate, partially or even fully, for failures of official supervision. On the basis of our analysis we argue that support for early career researchers should take into account the resources they already possess but also recognise the importance of wider academic culture, including funding and employment patterns, and the roles of supervisors and senior researchers in ensuring successful functioning of support networks. Through analysing the conditions for the development of early career researchers – producers of knowledge – our paper contributes to social epistemology understood as analysis of specific forms of social organisation of knowledge production.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127488680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Policy Considerations for Random Allocation of Research Funds","authors":"S. Avin","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/8626","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/8626","url":null,"abstract":"There are now several proposals for introducing random elements into the process of funding allocation for research, and some initial implementation of this policy by funding bodies. The proposals have been supported on efficiency grounds, with models, including social epistemology models, showing random allocation could increase the generation of significant truths in a community of scientists when compared to funding by peer review. The models in the literature are, however, fairly abstract (by necessity). This paper introduces some of the considerations that are required to build on the modelling work towards a fully-fledged policy proposal, including issues of cost and fairness.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115000509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Social Science Centre, Lincoln: the theory and practice of a radical idea","authors":"M. Neary, J. Winn","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9219","url":null,"abstract":"The Social Science Centre, Lincoln (SSC), is a co-operative organising free higher education in the city of Lincoln, England. It was formed in 2011 by a group of academics and students in response to the massive rise in student fees, from £3000 to £9000, along with other other government policies that saw the increasing neo-liberalisation of English universities. In this essay we chart the history of the SSC and what it has been like to be a member of this co-operative; but we also want to express another aspect of the centre which we have not written about: the existence of the SSC as an intellectual idea and how the idea has spread and been developed through written publications by members of the centre and by research on the centre by other non-members: students, academics and journalists. At the end of the essay we will show the most up to date manifestation of the idea, the plans to create a co-operative university with degree awarding powers where those involved, students and academics, can make a living as part of an independent enterprise ran and owned by its members for their benefit and the benefit of their community and society.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128776700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is partial behaviour a plausible explanation for the unavailability of the ICMJE disclosure form of an author in a BMJ journal","authors":"K. V. Dijk","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/9073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/9073","url":null,"abstract":"This case study about the ethical behaviour in the field of scholarly publishing documents an exception on the rule for research articles in the medical journal BMJ Open that ICMJE disclosure forms of authors must be made available on request. The ICMJE, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, has developed these forms for the disclosure of conflicts of interest for authors of medical publications. The case refers to the form of the corresponding author of an article in BMJ Open on retraction notices (Moylan and Kowalczuk, 2016). The corresponding author is a member of the council of COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics. I will argue that the unavailability of the form relates to personal conflicts of interest with the corresponding author about my efforts to retract a fatally flawed study on the breeding biology of the Basra Reed Warbler Acrocephalus griseldis . I describe my attempts to get the form and I will argue that its unavailability can be attributed to partial behaviour by BMJ, the publisher of BMJ Open . This study complements other sources reporting ethical issues at COPE.","PeriodicalId":296314,"journal":{"name":"RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125708882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}