How do we handle self-plagiarism in submitted manuscripts?

Self-plagiarism is a controversial issue in scientific writing and presentation of research data. Unlike plagiarism, self-plagiarism is difficult to interpret as intellectual theft under the justification that one cannot steal from oneself. However, academics are concerned, as self-plagiarized papers mislead readers, do not contribute to science, and bring undeserved credit to authors. As such, it should be considered a form of scientific misconduct. In this paper, we explain different forms of self-plagiarism in scientific writing and then present good editorial policy toward questionable material. The importance of dealing with self-plagiarism is emphasized by the recently published proposal of Text Recycling Guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).     

Gender diversity in the management field: Does it matter for research outcomes?

This study examines the relationship between gender diversity and research outcomes. Existing research on the topic primarily focuses on how team gender diversity influences scholarly productivity in terms of citations and publication rates. Far less attention has been devoted to the question of how the intellectual contents of research disciplines change as they become more gender diverse. Drawing on a global sample of more than 25,000 management papers, we use natural language processing techniques, correspondence analysis and regression models to illuminate impact-, content- and status-related dimensions of gender diversity in management research. In regression models adjusting for geographical setting, institutional prestige and collaboration patterns, we find no discernable effects of team gender diversity on per-paper scientific impact. In contrast, our analyses converge to yield a broadly consistent pattern of gender-related variations in research focus: women are well-represented in social- and human-centered areas of management, while men comprise the vast majority in areas addressing more technical and operational aspects. Our findings corroborate recent sociological research suggesting that cultural norms and expectations are channeling women and men towards different areas of work and study. We argue that the broadened repertoire of perspectives, values and questions resulting from gender diversity may render management research more responsive to the full gamut of societal needs and expectations.     

Disseminating scientific research: a double-edged sword?

This study addresses the problem of knowledge dissemination in science–society relation, its connection with the specialization of scientific research fields and the proliferation of academic and practitioner-oriented journals. Specifically, we elaborate on the scientists’ failure to communicate successfully with practitioners and the need for establishing alternative mechanisms that help boost the flow of knowledge between academics and industry. To do so, a thorough literature review is conducted and the author guidelines of the most prominent journals that appeal to both academics and practitioners are reviewed. Based on the analysis, the article offers suggestions on how to narrow the science–industry knowledge gap and how to find a way of not only delivering science to practitioners, but also making science benefit society. Progress is necessary to move towards a better academic–practitioner dialogue and thereby advance both science and practice.     

The impact of AI: can a robot get into the University of Tokyo?

<正>The ‘Todai Robot Project(Can a robot get into the University of Tokyo?)’ was initiated by the National Institute of Informatics(NII),the Japan’s only general academic research institution of informatics,in 2011 as an AI grand challenge.he goal of the project is to create an AI system that answers real questions on university entrance     

Explanation and trust: what to tell the user in security and AI?

There is a common problem in artificial intelligence (AI) and information security. In AI, an expert system needs to be able to justify and explain a decision to the user. In information security, experts need to be able to explain to the public why a system is secure. In both cases, an important goal of explanation is to acquire or maintain the users’ trust. In this paper, I investigate the relation between explanation and trust in the context of computing science. This analysis draws on literature study and concept analysis, using elements from system theory as well as actor-network theory. I apply the conceptual framework to both AI and information security, and show the benefit of the framework for both fields by means of examples. The main focus is on expert systems (AI) and electronic voting systems (security). Finally, I discuss consequences of the analysis for ethics in terms of (un)informed consent and dissent, and the associated division of responsibilities.     

The important thing is not to win,it is to take part: What if scientists benefit from participating in research grant competitions?

“The important thing is not to win, it is to take part,” this famous saying by Pierre de Coubertin asserts that the value athletes draw from Olympic games lies in their participation in the event and not in the gold they collect during it. We find similar evidence for scientists involved in grant competitions. Relying on unique data from a Swiss funding program, we find that scientists taking part in a research grant competition boost their number of publications and average impact factor while extending their knowledge base and their collaboration network regardless of the result of the competition. Receiving the funds increases the probability of co-authoring with co-applicants but has no additional impact on the individual productivity.     

The shifting role of information processing and management in interdiscipline development: From a collection of tools to a crutch?

Information science, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence have boosted interdisciplinary topics in a wide range of domains, which calls for novel theories and methods specialized for the interdisciplinary research driven by information processing and management (IP&M)-centric methodology, frameworks and methods. In this article, we present a taxonomy of the IP&M_driven interdiscipline describing different levels of cross-disciplinary research paradigms centered around data, information and computing, and discuss opportunities and challenges confronted with the IP&M-driven interdiscipline development. We highlight the role of IP&M (and related disciplines, fields, or areas) in facilitating the interdisciplinary research and development.     

How do men and women differ in research collaborations? An analysis of the collaborative motives and strategies of academic researchers

Do men and women academic faculty vary in their research collaboration patterns and strategies? This straightforward question does not lend itself to a straightforward answer. A great many sex-correlated variables could possibly mitigate the relationship of sex and collaboration. If one finds sex-correlated differences in the number of collaborators, can one infer that there is something intrinsic to men's and women's work strategies and preferences? Or would such differences owe instead to women's and men's different positions in work structures and hierarchies? The focus here is on two sets of research collaboration variables, numbers of collaborators and the collaboration strategies employed. The study uses questionnaire data from the U.S. National Survey of Academic Scientists (n = 1714) and tests several hypotheses about collaboration numbers and strategies. Regression results indicate, counter to the core hypotheses and almost all published literature, that in a properly specified model, one taking into account such factors as tenure, discipline, family status and doctoral cohort, women actually have somewhat more collaborators on average than do men. For both men and women, those with more industrial interactions and those affiliated with university research centers have more collaborators. Men and women differ in their collaborator choice strategies. Men are more likely to be oriented to “instrumental,” and “experience” strategies, while both men and women are motivated by “mentoring” strategies. Regression analyses show that for both men and women, having a coherent collaborator choice strategy predicts the number of collaborators.     

Can we estimate a monetary value of scientific publications?

In this paper, we analyze the compelling issue of monetary valuation of a scientific publication. While many academic scholars tend to overlook the topic, as being either too difficult or even meaningless, policymakers begin to use very rough tools for evaluating publications, which have many limitations, as we will discuss in this work. The main objective of this work is to address this open problem by stimulating further discussion on the topic and future research developments. We provide an overview of different methods to value scientific publications. We discuss their main hypotheses, pros and cons by means of an illustration based on Sapienza University of Rome. Although we begin to address the issue of monetary valuation of scientific publications, presenting a range of available methods and listing the limits and benefits of each, further methodological and empirical research is still needed to comply with policy and stakeholders' needs which we expect will increase in the near future.     

The skeleton in the closet: should historians of science care about the history of mathematics?

Up until the 1950s, the history of mathematics was an integral part of the history of science. To George Sarton and his contemporaries, mathematics was the rational skeleton that organized science and held it together, and its history was a fundamental component of the broader history of science. But when historians began focusing on the cultural roots of science rather than its rational structure, the study of mathematics was marginalized and ultimately excluded from the history of science. The alienation between the two fields is detrimental to both, and in recent years there has been a sustained effort to reestablish meaningful communication between the two. This time, however, mathematics is seen not as the static skeleton of science but, instead, as a dynamic and historically evolving field in its own right-just like science itself. The new approach allows for a culturally sensitive study of mathematics, as well as a new and fruitful relationship between the history of science and the history of mathematics. The essays in this Focus section offer a sampling of the new approaches, opening the way to a rapprochement between fields that have gone their separate ways but should by rights be closely interconnected.     

Under what conditions do firms benefit from the research efforts of other organizations?

Although R&D spillovers play a key role in the battle for technological leadership, it is unclear under what conditions firms build on and benefit from the discoveries of others. The study described here empirically examines this issue. The findings indicate that, depending on technological opportunities, firm size and competitive pressure, the net impact of R&D spillovers on productivity can be either positive or negative. Specifically, we find that although spillover effects are positively associated with the technological opportunities that a firm faces, this relationship is reversed when firm size is considered. Whilst external R&D affects large self-reliant firms negatively, its impact on the productivity of smaller firms (who usually introduce incremental innovations that are characterized by a strong reliance on external technologies) is positive, and even higher than that of their own R&D. We also demonstrate that the economic payoff for firms’ own R&D is lower when they face intense competition. In cases of low-appropriability, however, spillover effects are more positive, allowing firms to increase their performance using the inventions of others.     

Allocative efficiency in public research funding: Can bibliometrics help?

The use of outcome control modes of research evaluation exercises is ever more frequent. They are conceived as tools to stimulate increased levels of research productivity, and to guide choices in allocating components of government research budgets for publicly funded institutions. There are several contributions in the literature that compare the different methodological approaches that policy makers could adopt for these exercises, however the comparisons are limited to only a few disciplines. This work, examining the case of the whole of the “hard sciences” of the Italian academic system, makes a comparison between results obtained from peer review type of evaluations (as adopted by the Ministry of Universities and Research) and those possible from a bibliometric approach (as developed by the authors). The aim is to understand to what extent bibliometric methodology, which is noted as relatively inexpensive, time-saving and exhaustive, can complement and integrate peer review methodology in research evaluation.