DOCSLIB.ORG

Maximizing the Impacts of Your Research: a Handbook for Social Scientists

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Maximizing the Impacts of Your Research: a Handbook for Social Scientists MAXIMIZING THE IMPACTS OF YOUR RESEARCH: A HANDBOOK FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS LSE Public Policy Group Consultation Draft 3: Please give us your feedback and comments to [email protected] MAXIMIZING THE IMPACTS OF YOUR RESEARCH: A HANDBOOK FOR SOCIAL SCIENTISTS About this Handbook There are few academics who are interested in doing research that simply has no influence on anyone else in academia or outside. Some perhaps will be content to produce ‘shelf-bending’ work that goes into a library (included in a published journal or book), and then over the next decades ever-so-slightly bends the shelf it sits on. But we believe that they are in a small minority . The whole point of social science research is to achieve academic impact by advancing your discipline, and (where possible) by having some positive influence also on external audiences - in business, government, the media, civil society or public debate. For the past year a team of academics based at the London School of Economics, the University of Leeds and Imperial College London have been working on the Impact of Social Sciences project aimed at developing precise methods for measuring and evaluating the impact of research in the public sphere. We believe our data will be of interest to all UK universities to better capture and track the impacts of their social science research and applications work. Part of our task is to develop guidance for colleagues interested in this field. In the past, there has been no one source of systematic advice on how to maximize the academic impacts of your research in terms of citations and other measures of influence. And almost no sources at all have helped researchers to achieve greater visibility and impacts with audiences outside the university. Instead researchers have had to rely on informal knowledge and picking up random hints and tips here and there from colleagues, and from their own personal experience. This Handbook remedies this key gap and, we hope, will help researchers achieving a more professional and focused approach to their research from the outset. It provides a large menu of sound and evidence-based advice and guidance on how to ensure that your work achieves its maximum visibility and influence with both academic and external audiences. As with any menu, readers need to pick and choose the elements that are relevant for them. We provide detailed information on what constitutes good practice in expanding the impact of social science research. We also survey a wide range of new developments, new tools and new techniques that can help make sense of a rapidly changing field. This Handbook will be of immediate practical value for academics, lead researchers, research staff, academic mentors, research lab leaders, chairs and research directors of academic departments, and administrative staff assisting researchers or faculty team leaders in their work. 2 Contents Executive Summary ...........................................................................................................5 Introduction What are research impacts?.............................................................. 10 Summary .............................................................................................................21 PART A MAXIMIZING THE ACADEMIC IMPACTS OF RESEARCH....................... 22 Chapter 1 What shapes the citing of academic publications?.......................... 23 1.1 Variations in citations rates across disciplines ..............................................24 1.2 Academic careers and the accumulation of citations ....................................28 1.3 Career trajectories and the development of capabilities and publications .34 Summary .............................................................................................................53 Chapter 2 Knowing your strengths: using citation tracking systems ........... 54 2.1 How distinctive is your author name? ............................................................55 2.2 Orthodox citation-tracking systems ...............................................................56 2.3 Internet-based citation-tracking systems ......................................................65 2.4 Comparing conventional and internet citations tracking systems ..............72 Summary .............................................................................................................78 Chapter 3 Key measures of academic influence ................................................... 79 3.1 Assessing how well an author is cited ............................................................79 3.2 Assessing how far journals and books are cited ............................................89 3.3 Who cites a little or a lot: Hub and authority patterns .................................93 Summary .............................................................................................................96 Chapter 4 Getting better cited..................................................................................... 97 4.1 Writing informative titles, abstracts and book blurbs ..................................98 4.2 The issues around self-citation .....................................................................109 4.3 Working with co-authors and research teams ............................................113 Summary ...........................................................................................................120 PART B MAXIMIZING RESEARCH IMPACTS BEYOND THE ACADEMY ..........121 Chapter 5 The origins and patterning of external research impacts ..........123 5.1 Types of scholarship within disciplines and external impacts ...................125 5.2 The role of joined-up scholarship .................................................................138 5.3 Understanding the impacts interface ...........................................................149 5.4 How far do academics and researchers undertake activities likely to generate external impacts? ..................................................................................157 Summary ...........................................................................................................165 Chapter 6 Is there an impacts gap from academic work to external impacts? How might it have arisen? How might it be reduced? ......................................166 6.1 Demand and supply mismatches ..................................................................167 6.2 Insufficient incentives problems ...................................................................173 6.3 Poor mutual understanding and communication .......................................176 6.4 Cultural mismatch problems .........................................................................178 3 6.5 Weak social networks and social capital ......................................................180 Summary ...........................................................................................................184 Chapter 7 Understanding how researchers achieve external impacts.......185 7.1 Theoretical discussion ...................................................................................186 7.2 Empirical evidence .........................................................................................201 7.3 Credit claiming for research ..........................................................................207 Summary ...........................................................................................................211 Chapter 8 Understanding, tracking and comparing external impacts for organizations ..................................................................................................................212 8.1 External impacts are rooted in collective ‘tacit knowledge’ .......................213 8.2 The time lags in achieving impacts ...............................................................217 8.3 Generating an evidence base about external impacts .................................223 8.4 Comparing organizations’ and disciplines’ performance ...........................234 8.5 Managing impacts work – potential pitfalls .................................................241 Summary ...........................................................................................................245 Chapter 9 Expanding external research impacts ...............................................246 9.1 Developing an impacts file for individual academics ..................................248 9.2 Reappraising events programmes ................................................................253 9.3 Building improved management of ‘customer relationships’ ....................258 9. 4 Moving some version of all closed-web published research onto the open- web ........................................................................................................................266 9.5 Improving professional communication: starting multi-author blogs ......269 9.6 Working better in networks ..........................................................................278 Summary ...........................................................................................................280 Methodological Annex: the PPG dataset................................................................281 Bibliography....................................................................................................................285 4 Executive Summary Defining research impacts 1. A research impact is a recorded or otherwise auditable
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rethinking Publishing Infrastructure
    RatSWD Working Paper www.ratswd.de Series Flipping journals to open: 251 Rethinking publishing infrastructure Benedikt Fecher and Gert G. Wagner December 2015 Working Paper Series of the German Data Forum (RatSWD) The RatSWD Working Papers series was launched at the end of 2007. Since 2009, the series has been publishing exclusively conceptual and historical works dealing with the organization of the German statistical infrastructure and research infrastructure in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Papers that have appeared in the series deal primarily with the organization of Germany’s official statistical system, government agency research, and academic research infrastructure, as well as directly with the work of the RatSWD. Papers addressing the aforementioned topics in other countries as well as supranational aspects are particularly welcome. RatSWD Working Papers are non-exclusive, which means that there is nothing to prevent you from publishing your work in another venue as well: all papers can and should also appear in professionally, institutionally, and locally specialized journals. The RatSWD Working Papers are not available in bookstores but can be ordered online through the RatSWD. In order to make the series more accessible to readers not fluent in German, the English section of the RatSWD Working Papers website presents only those papers published in English, while the German section lists the complete contents of all issues in the series in chronological order. The views expressed in the RatSWD Working Papers are exclusively the opinions of their authors and not those of the RatSWD or of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The RatSWD Working Paper Series is edited by: Chair of the RatSWD (since 2014 Regina T.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletternewsletter Volume 1 ■ Number 41 ■ Decemberapril 2003 2003
    newsletternewsletter Volume 1 ■ Number 41 ■ DecemberApril 2003 2003 Welcome In this Issue FEATURES Dear Colleagues, Scholarly Publishing: 12 Observations on the In the transition from the print to the electronic world, technology has Current Situation and Challenges for descended upon the library like a tsunami. Librarians have labored long the Future ..............................................................2-3 and hard to create and be steered by a clear sense of mission in this new age, rather than simply being swept along by the technological wave. Library Vision of the Future: University of Rochester Libraries — There have been enormous challenges in understanding the potential of Geoff Adams the new technology and how to harness it to a needs-driven environment. Focusing on Users, Hiding Technology ............4 Fundamental questions have even been raised about the very value of traditional libraries in this The Future of Librarianship: A View From a new environment, and librarians continue to wrestle with what their future role in the scientific and School of Library and Information Science ......5-6 academic communities will be. Libraries Look to the Future: As a member of these communities Elsevier is equally affected. This highly dynamic environment Place and Space, Physical and Virtual, presents both great challenges and great opportunities. In the course of the last few years we have Where are Libraries Headed? ................................7 seen production, pricing and packaging models from the print journal world change out of all recognition to accommodate the needs of the new digital environment. We have seen the emergence of e-publishing CENTER OF ATTENTION environments such as PUBMED, JSTOR, and most recently the Open Access movement.
    [Show full text]
  • Financial Transaction Taxes
    FINANCIAL MM TRANSACTION TAXES: A tax on investors, taxpayers, and consumers Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness 1 FINANCIAL TRANSACTION TAXES: A tax on investors, taxpayers, and consumers James J. Angel, Ph.D., CFA Associate Professor of Finance Georgetown University [email protected] McDonough School of Business Hariri Building Washington, DC 20057 202-687-3765 Twitter: @GUFinProf The author gratefully acknowledges financial support for this project from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Chamber or Georgetown University. 2 Financial Transaction Taxes: A tax on investors, taxpayers, and consumers FINANCIAL TRANSACTIN TAES: Table of Contents A tax on investors, taxpayers, and Executive Summary .........................................................................................4 consumers Introduction .....................................................................................................6 The direct tax burden .......................................................................................7 The indirect tax burden ....................................................................................8 The derivatives market and risk management .............................................. 14 Economic impact of an FTT ............................................................................17 The U.S. experience ..................................................................................... 23 International experience
    [Show full text]
  • Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
    BREACH OF THE CODE OF PRACTICE FOR OFFICIAL STATISTICS This document reports a breach of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, or the relevant Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Orders, to which the Code applies as if it included these orders. 1. Background information Name of Statistical Output (including weblink to the relevant output or ‘landing page’) HMRC Tax Receipts and National Insurance Contributions for the UK https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk#history Name of Producer Organisation HM Revenue and Customs Name and contact details of the statistical Head of Profession (Lead Official in an Arm’s Length Body) submitting this report, and date of report Sean Whellams, Head of Profession for Statistics, HMRC, 7th June 2016 2. Circumstances of breach Relevant Principle/Protocol and Practice Principle 4 – Practice 3 3. Adopt quality assurance procedures, including the consideration of each statistical product against users’ requirements, and of their coherence with other statistical products. Date of occurrence 19 June 2015, 22 March 2016, 21 April 2016, 24 May 2016 Nature of breach (including links with previous breaches, if any) The HMRC tax receipts and national insurance contributions for the UK statistics are published monthly. The May release was published at 9.30am on 24th May 2016 containing incorrect tax credit figures relating to the monthly data from April 2015 to March 2016. An external user contacted the department at 13:55 on 24th May 2016 enquiring about the tax credit figures in the publication, prompting investigation and identification of the error.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise of Industry and Unions Vocabulary: Network Gauge Samual F.B
    Name: ____________________________ Date: ____________________ Mr. Sanchez Review Sheet-Rise of Industry The Rise of Industry and Unions Vocabulary: Network Gauge Samual F.B. Morris (Telegraph) Consolidation Cyrus Field (Transatlantic Cable) Rebate Alexander Gram Bell (Telephone) Pool Thomas Alva Edison (four of his major inventions) George Westinghouse Jan Matzeliger George Pullman Gustavus Swift (Refrigeration) Cornelius Vanderbilt George Eastman (Kodak Camera) Vertical Integration Henry Ford (assembly line) Entrepreneur mass production Corporation Orville and Wilber Wright (airplane) Stock sweatshops Dividends strikebreakers Invest (Investor) anarchists Trust collective bargaining Monopoly injunction Free Enterprise System Knights of Labor (Terence Powderly) John D. Rockefeller Haymarket Riot Andrew Carnegie (Gospel of Wealth) American Federation of Labor (Samuel Gompers) Bessemer Process International Ladies’ Garment Workers Gospel of Wealth J. Pierpont Morgan Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Standard Oil Company Pullman Strike Sherman Antitrust Act Gauge Captain of Industry Philanthropy Robber Barron Railroads and Industry: 1. Explain why railroads expanded after the Civil War. __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ 2. Describe some new improvements to railroads in the late 1800’s.
    [Show full text]
  • Cambridge Working Paper Economics
    Faculty of Economics Cambridge Working Paper Economics Cambridge Working Paper Economics: 1753 PUBLISHING WHILE FEMALE ARE WOMEN HELD TO HIGHER STANDARDS? EVIDENCE FROM PEER REVIEW. Erin Hengel 4 December 2017 I use readability scores to test if referees and/or editors apply higher standards to women’s writing in academic peer review. I find: (i) female-authored papers are 1–6 percent better written than equivalent papers by men; (ii) the gap is two times higher in published articles than in earlier, draft versions of the same papers; (iii) women’s writing gradually improves but men’s does not—meaning the readability gap grows over authors’ careers. In a dynamic model of an author’s decision-making process, I show that tougher editorial standards and/or biased referee assignment are uniquely consistent with this pattern of choices. A conservative causal estimate derived from the model suggests senior female economists write at least 9 percent more clearly than they otherwise would. These findings indicate that higher standards burden women with an added time tax and probably contribute to academia’s “Publishing Paradox” Consistent with this hypothesis, I find female-authored papers spend six months longer in peer review. More generally, tougher standards impose a quantity/quality tradeoff that characterises many instances of female output. They could resolve persistently lower—otherwise unexplained—female productivity in many high-skill occupations. Publishing while Female Are women held to higher standards? Evidence from peer review.∗ Erin Hengely November 2017 I use readability scores to test if referees and/or editors apply higher standards to women’s writing in academic peer review.
    [Show full text]
  • Steering Science Through Output Indicators & Data Capitalism
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln 9-2019 Steering science through Output Indicators & Data Capitalism Ulrich Herb Saarland University & State Library Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons, Scholarly Communication Commons, and the Scholarly Publishing Commons Herb, Ulrich, "Steering science through Output Indicators & Data Capitalism" (2019). Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.. 125. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/125 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc. by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Steering science through Output Indicators & Data Capitalism Published in: Proceedings of the 23rd Congress of the European Society of Veterinary and Comparative Nutrition (ESVCN 2019), Turin/ Italy, 17-20 September 2019. Author: Ulrich Herb, ORCID: 0000-0002-3500-3119 Affiliations: Saarland University & State Library ./scidecode science consulting & research Please cite as: Herb, Ulrich (2019). Steering science through Output Indicators & Data Capitalism. Proceedings of the 23rd Congress of the European Society of Veterinary and Comparative Nutrition, Turin 2019. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3333395 Performance tracking in science Since the mid-1920s, a scientist's performance was tracked by using bibliometric information such as the number of publications or their citations. Today, there are unprecedented possibilities for controlling science by analysing data on production and use of scientific information, so that citations only play a subordinate role in the evaluation of science.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Data Policies of Highly-Ranked Social Science
    1 Data policies of highly-ranked social science journals1 Mercè Crosas2, Julian Gautier2, Sebastian Karcher3, Dessi Kirilova3, Gerard Otalora2, Abigail Schwartz2 Abstract By encouraging and requiring that authors share their data in order to publish articles, scholarly journals have become an important actor in the movement to improve the openness of data and the reproducibility of research. But how many social science journals encourage or mandate that authors share the data supporting their research findings? How does the share of journal data policies vary by discipline? What influences these journals’ decisions to adopt such policies and instructions? And what do those policies and instructions look like? We discuss the results of our analysis of the instructions and policies of 291 highly-ranked journals publishing social science research, where we studied the contents of journal data policies and instructions across 14 variables, such as when and how authors are asked to share their data, and what role journal ranking and age play in the existence and quality of data policies and instructions. We also compare our results to the results of other studies that have analyzed the policies of social science journals, although differences in the journals chosen and how each study defines what constitutes a data policy limit this comparison. We conclude that a little more than half of the journals in our study have data policies. A greater share of the economics journals have data policies and mandate sharing, followed by political science/international relations and psychology journals. Finally, we use our findings to make several recommendations: Policies should include the terms “data,” “dataset” or more specific terms that make it clear what to make available; policies should include the benefits of data sharing; journals, publishers, and associations need to collaborate more to clarify data policies; and policies should explicitly ask for qualitative data.
    [Show full text]
  • 1.12 News Feat 4 Searches MH
    NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 438|1 December 2005 conference proceedings and institutional repositories, often locating free versions of Start your engines articles on author websites. This ‘grey litera- ture’ is growing in importance but remains poorly defined. It is widely assumed that Google has launched another challenge to commercial search Google considers a source scholarly if it is cited services — this time aimed at scientists. But is the new engine by another scholarly resource — but as online publishing evolves, so may this definition. running as smoothly as its fans hope? Jim Gilesinvestigates. Advocates of greater access to the scientific lit- erature hope that Scholar will encourage more s an undergraduate in India in the Science had a monopoly on citation tracking. researchers to deposit their articles in free mid-1980s, Anurag Acharya had to Citation counts allow researchers, institutes online repositories. write letters to scientists when he and journals to follow the impact of individual But how well does Scholar actually work? Acould not find the papers he wanted. articles through time, leading to metrics, such Librarians who have It is a memory that makes the softly spoken as journal impact factors, that are the bane and run systematic computer engineer laugh. Now working at blessing of many academic careers. Google, Acharya is creating a search tool that But unlike Scopus and Web of aims to be the first choice for everyone from Science, Scholar does more Indian students to Iranian professors. “I want than just search the peer- to make it the one place to go to for scholarly reviewed literature.
    [Show full text]
  • Forecasting Scottish Taxes
    © Crown copyright 2012 You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open- government-licence/ or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or e-mail: [email protected]. Any queries regarding this publication should be sent to us at: [email protected] ISBN 978-1-84532-963-1 PU1300 Contents Introduction......................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 The OBR's role in forecasting Scottish taxes ........................................... 3 Scotland Bill .................................................................................... 3 Proposals........................................................................................ 3 Chapter 2 Forecasting Scottish taxes..................................................................... 9 Overview ........................................................................................ 9 Scottish Income Tax ....................................................................... 10 Stamp Duty Land Tax .................................................................... 16 Landfill Tax ................................................................................... 20 Aggregates Levy............................................................................ 21 Methodology note: OBR's forecasting of Scottish
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report and Accounts 2020
    Shareholder information Page Interim dividend for 2020 371 Interim dividends for 2021 371 Other equity instruments 371 2020 Annual General Meeting 371 Earnings releases and interim results 372 Shareholder enquiries and communications 372 Stock symbols 373 Investor relations 373 Where more information about HSBC is available 373 Taxation of shares and dividends 374 Approach to ESG reporting 375 Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements 375 Certain defined terms 376 Abbreviations 377 A glossary of terms used in this Annual Report and Accounts can be found in the Investors section of www.hsbc.com. Interim dividend for 2020 The Directors have approved an interim dividend for 2020 of $0.15 per ordinary share. Information on the currencies in which shareholders may elect to have the cash dividend paid will be sent to shareholders on or about 24 March 2021. The interim dividend will be paid in cash with no scrip alternative, as it is dilutive. The timetable for the interim dividend is: Footnotes Announcement 23 February 2021 Shares quoted ex-dividend in London, Hong Kong and Bermuda and American Depositary Shares (‘ADS’) quoted ex-dividend in New York 11 March 2021 Record date – London, Hong Kong, New York, Bermuda 1 12 March 2021 Mailing of Annual Report and Accounts 2020 and/or Strategic Report 2020 and dividend documentation 24 March 2021 Final date for receipt by registrars of forms of election, Investor Centre electronic instructions and revocations of standing instructions for dividend elections 15 April 2021 Exchange rate determined for payment of dividends in sterling and Hong Kong dollars 19 April 2021 Payment date 29 April 2021 1 Removals to and from the Overseas Branch register of shareholders in Hong Kong will not be permitted on this date.
    [Show full text]
  • Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus
    Journal of Informetrics, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 1160-1177, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JOI.2018.09.002 Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: a systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories Alberto Martín-Martín1 , Enrique Orduna-Malea2 , Mike 3 1 Thelwall , Emilio Delgado López-Cózar Version 1.6 March 12, 2019 Abstract Despite citation counts from Google Scholar (GS), Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus being widely consulted by researchers and sometimes used in research evaluations, there is no recent or systematic evidence about the differences between them. In response, this paper investigates 2,448,055 citations to 2,299 English-language highly-cited documents from 252 GS subject categories published in 2006, comparing GS, the WoS Core Collection, and Scopus. GS consistently found the largest percentage of citations across all areas (93%-96%), far ahead of Scopus (35%-77%) and WoS (27%-73%). GS found nearly all the WoS (95%) and Scopus (92%) citations. Most citations found only by GS were from non-journal sources (48%-65%), including theses, books, conference papers, and unpublished materials. Many were non-English (19%- 38%), and they tended to be much less cited than citing sources that were also in Scopus or WoS. Despite the many unique GS citing sources, Spearman correlations between citation counts in GS and WoS or Scopus are high (0.78-0.99). They are lower in the Humanities, and lower between GS and WoS than between GS and Scopus. The results suggest that in all areas GS citation data is essentially a superset of WoS and Scopus, with substantial extra coverage.
    [Show full text]