Roars Trans.最新文献

{"title":"Un elemento di valutazione della qualità della didattica universitaria = An element of evaluation of the quality of university teaching","authors":"G. Sbardella, Francesco Sebastianelli, C. Mariani, V. Nesi, A. Pelissetto","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/6862","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/6862","url":null,"abstract":"For many years, Italian Universities have been committed to to collecting \"assessment questionnaires\" of the courses from their students. It is not fully clear how to manage these questionnaires, though. In the present work, we propose a method to single out significant information from the wide amount of issues raised by the students. With this work, we aim at improving the services offered by Universities. Human resources dedicated to the evaluation of teaching are definitely scarse, if not absent. Thus, we believe that coordination committees must focus on the most critical issues, rather than dispersing information. In this work, we show how an almost automatic method allows to single out a very limited fraction (about 7% in the case of our Faculty of Sciences at Sapienza University in Rome) of really critical courses. Our political objective is to give a clear and objective answer to the students' request of improving those courses. With this approach we do not consider the students' opinions as absolute. We rather aim at respecting their implicit request of verification of their opinions. Our approach also suggests some improvements in the formulation of the questions raised in the questionnaires, so as to reduce ambiguity and obtain a more accurate statistical treatment. In the example presented here, a very high appreciation of our courses emerges if we focus on the average values. However, a punctual control of opinions for a fraction of courses is indispensable. Technically, we use the so called trimming method to single out the problematic courses. This method, used in a variety of fields, helps to control for carelessness of some students who may not take the questionnaires seriously. In our case, for each course and for each question, we delete 50% of the questionnaires, namely those corresponding to 25% of the most positive and 25% of the most negative. Still, our analysis leads to very stable results, if we focus onthe most critical courses, which is the main objective of this work. Da molti anni le Universita italiane hanno l'obbligo di somministrare questionari sul gradimento degli insegnamenti. Non e chiaro tuttavia come utilizzare questi questionari. In questo lavoro si propone un metodo per selezionare l'enorme informazione contenuta nei suggerimenti di studentesse e studenti. L'unico obiettivo che appare utile e migliorare i servizi offerti dall'Universita. Le risorse di personale a disposizione di coloro che coordinano le attivita didattiche sono inadeguate ed a volta risibili. Pertanto sembra necessario concentrare l'attenzione degli organi di coordinamento sulle maggiori ciriticita. Nel nostro lavoro dimostriamo che un metodo quasi automatico permette di isolare una porzione molto limitata (il 7% circa nel caso della Facolta di Scienze della Sapienza) di insegnamenti drammaticamente critici. L'obiettivo politico e rispondere, con chiarezza, nella massima trasparenza, alla domanda che viene da studentesse e studenti di migl","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"17 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113979315","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":"University ranking methodologies. An interview with Ben Sowter about the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Ranking","authors":"A. Baccini, Antono Banfi, G. Nicolao, P. Galimberti","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/6446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/6446","url":null,"abstract":"University rankings represent a controversial issue in the debate about higher education policy. One of the best known university ranking is the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS), published annually since 2004 by Quacquarelli Symonds ltd, a company founded in 1990 and headquartered in London. QS provides a ranking based on a score calculated by weighting six different indicators. The 2015 edition, published in October 2015, introduced major methodological innovations and, as a consequence, many universities worldwide underwent major changes of their scores and ranks. Ben Sowter, head of division of intelligence unit of Quacquarelli Symonds, responds to 15 questions about the new QS methodology.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116818989","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":"Science Policy for an increasingly diverging Europe","authors":"M. Heitor","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/4816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/4816","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues about the need for a revisited public policy framework giving priority to knowledge and technological change across the entire Europe, by discussing new cumulative data on R&D expenditure and the qualification of human resources across Europe. It takes a wide international comparison after a decade hit by recession and economic and budgetary problems, which shows an increasing internal divergence on knowledge investments across Europe, beyond the increasing gap between Europe as a whole and North America. As a result, the paper argues that new paradigms and conditions for responsible science and innovation policy across EU require the collective action of R&D institutions and a system approach to higher education, together with new initiatives towards international cooperation across an enlarged Europe. Analysis shows that chronic backwardness in science and technology in many European peripheries, including in EU southern and eastern regions, have been significantly overcome over the last decade. Nevertheless, their growing scientific and technological capacity is now associated with an increasing vulnerability as a result of the growing international competition for qualified human resources. Additionally, the comparative analysis of levels of economic diversification and sophistication across Europe, suggests the need to insist on qualification and institutional strengthening. This should consider active public policies to attract and retain qualified human resources all over Europe, as well as considering public actions towards promoting new markets. The way in which the economic fabric may gain competitiveness and access to external markets may require enhancing the degree of internationalization of the scientific community and encouraging international knowledge and innovation networks.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121555571","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":"Some remarks on the division of cognitive labor","authors":"M. Viola","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/4768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/4768","url":null,"abstract":"since the publication of Kitcher's influential paper The Division of Cognitive Labor, some philosophers wondered about these two related issues: (1) which is the optimal distribution of cognitive efforts among rival methods within a scientific community?, and (2) whether and how can a community achieve such an optimal distribution? Though not committing to any specific answer to question (1), I claim that issue (2) does not depend exclusively on an invisible hand like mechanism, since both intra-scientific and extra-scientific institutions may play a major role. Finally, I examine some practical difficulties of reallocating scientists from a method to another, which leads to stress the importance of well-planned training and recruitment.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121744614","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":"Il Punto Organico: una storia italiana = The \"Punto Organico\": an Italian history","authors":"P. Rossi","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/4603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/4603","url":null,"abstract":"Recruitment of professors and researchers by Italian public Universities is limited not only by the financial constraints imposed by National laws, but also by the conversion of the financial resources into positions according to a rule esatablished a few years ago by the Ministry of Education and espressed by the so-called  “Punto Organico” (P.O.). The origin of the notion of P.O. is traced back to some statistical studies performed more than a decade ago . Its subsequent application to university recruiting follows from  a sequel of administrative actions taken by the Ministry but it is not based on an explicit (and formally required) legal formulation. The recent structural evolution of the universita system and some changes in the legislation have further weakened the justification for such a constraint.  An alternative (and legally consistent) mechanism for keeping under control the projected expenses  for personnel is proposed.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116074666","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":"Selecting applications for funding: why random choice is better than peer review","authors":"D. Gillies","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/3834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/3834","url":null,"abstract":"A widely-used method of research funding is through competitive grants, where the selection of which of the applications to fund is made using anonymous peer review.  The aim of the present paper is to argue that the system would work more efficiently if the selection were made by random choice rather than peer review.  The peer review system has defects which have been revealed by recent criticisms, and the paper gives one such criticism due to the Nobel prize winner Sir James Black.  It is then shown, in support of Sir James' position, that the use of anonymous peer review leads to a systemic bias in favour of mainstream research programmes and against minority research programmes.  This in turn leads to the stifling of new ideas and of innovation.  This thesis is illustrated by the example of the recent discovery of the cause of cervical cancer – a discovery which has generated substantial profits for pharmaceutical companies.  It is then shown that selection by random choice eliminates this systemic bias, and consequently would encourage new ideas and innovation","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125283159","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":"What ranking journals has in common with astrology","authors":"B. Brembs","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/3378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/3378","url":null,"abstract":"As scientists, we all send our best work to Science or Nature – or at least we dream of one day making a discovery we deem worthy of sending there. So obvious does this hierarchy in our journal landscape appear to our intuition, that when erroneous or fraudulent work is published in ‘highranking’ journals, we immediately wonder how this could have happened. Isn’t work published there the best there is? Vetted by professional editors before being sent out to the most critical and most competent experts this planet has to offer? How could our system fail us so badly? We are used to boring, ill-designed, even flawed research in the ‘low-ranking’ journals where we publish. Surely, these incidents in the ‘top’ journals are few and far between? It may come as a surprise to many scientists that the data speak a different language. They indicate that perhaps erroneous and fraudulent work is more common in ‘top’ journals than anywhere else (Brembs et al., 2013). There is direct evidence that the methodology of the research published in these journals is at least not superior, perhaps even inferior to work published elsewhere (Brembs et al., 2013) There is some indirect evidence that the error-detection rate may be slightly higher in ‘top’ journals, compared to other journals (Brembs et al., 2013). Neither data alone are sufficient to explain why high-ranking journals retract so many more studies than lower-ranking journals, but together they raise a disturbing suspicion: attention to top journals shapes the content of our journals more than scientific rigor. The attention being paid to publications in high-ranking journals not only entices scientists to send their best work to these journals, it also attracts fraudsters as well as unexpected and eye-catching results, which all too often prove literally too good to be true (Steen, 2011a, 2011b; Fang and Casadevall, 2011; Cokol et al., 2007; Hamilton, 2011; Fang et al., 2012; Wager and Williams, 2011). A conservative interpretation of the currently available data suggests that the attraction for truly groundbreaking, solid research just barely cancels out the attraction for unreliable or fraudulent work. A less conservative approach suggests that the solid research is losing. How can the data be so at odds with our intuition? Of course, the research providing these data may itself be flawed. Selection bias, methodological errors and field-specific distortions may be dominating the studies currently available. However, in the absence of any evidence of such","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122067796","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":"Reporting - the final phase of scientific research - can and should be supported. A case for integrating language professionals into the research setting","authors":"V. Matarese","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/3200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/3200","url":null,"abstract":"Writing for peer-reviewed research journals is difficult and requires specialized skills and knowledge—in language, logical argumentation, data presentation, publication ethics and more. The task is especially challenging for researchers who use English as an additional language. In this discussion paper, I illustrate how research writing in non-anglophone settings can usefully be supported by three types of language professional: teachers of academic writing, authors' editors, and academic translators. Reviewing the situation in Italy, I observe that Italian researchers have limited access to the best forms of writing support, in part due to misconceptions and complex hiring rules. Finally, and based on the higher educational trends in northern Europe, I envisage a future scenario for Italy where university-wide academic writing centers will be established, language professionals with disciplinary knowledge will become part of research institutes' staff, and researchers will have facilitated access to the services of authors' editors and academic translators on a per-manuscript basis. As research writing support becomes integrated into the university setting, Italian researchers' productivity will increase and the profile of Italian reporting in the international literature will be raised.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124978144","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":"Metajournals. A federalist proposal for scholarly communication and data aggregation","authors":"M. C. Pievatolo","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/2942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/2942","url":null,"abstract":"While the EU is building an open access infrastructure of archives (e.g. Openaire) and it is trying to implement it in the Horizon 2020 program, the gap between the tools and the human beings – researchers, citizen scientists, \u0000students, ordinary people – is still wide. The necessity to dictate open access publishing as a mandate for the EU funded research – ten years after the BOAI - is an obvious symptom of it: there is a chasm between the net and the \u0000public use of reason. To escalate the advancement and the reuse of research, we should federate the multitude of already existing open access journals in federal open overlay journals that receive their contents from the member journals and boost it with their aggregation power and their semantic web tools. \u0000The article contains both the theoretical basis and the guidelines for a project whose goals are: \u00001. making open access journals visible, highly cited and powerful, by federating them into wide disciplinary overlay journals; \u00002. avoiding the traps of the “authors pay” open access business model, by exploiting one of the virtue of federalism: the federate journals can remain little and affordable, if they gain visibility from the power of the federal overlay journal aggregating them; \u00003. enriching the overlay journals both through semantic annotation tools and by means of open platforms dedicated to host ex post peer review and experts comments; \u00004. making the selection and evaluation processes and their resulting data as much as possible public and open, to avoid the pitfalls (e. g, the serials price crisis) experienced by the closed access publishing model. \u0000It is about time to free academic publishing from its expensive walled gardens and to put to test the tools that can help us to transform it in one open forest, with one hundred flowers – and one hundred trailblazers.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129225435","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":"Blue skies, impacts, and peer review","authors":"J. B. Holbrook, Steven Hrotic","doi":"10.13130/2282-5398/2914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13130/2282-5398/2914","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes the results of a survey regarding the incorporation of societal impacts considerations into the peer review of grant proposals submitted to public science funding bodies. The survey investigated perceptions regarding the use of scientific peers to judge not only the intrinsic scientific value of proposed research, but also its instrumental value to society. Members of the scientific community have expressed – some more stridently than others – resistance to the use of such societal impact considerations. We sought to understand why. Results of the survey suggest that such resistance may be due to a lack of desire rather than a lack of confidence where judging impacts is concerned. In other words, it may be less that scientists feel unable to judge broader societal impacts and more that they are unwilling to do so.","PeriodicalId":315540,"journal":{"name":"Roars Trans.","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128255252","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}