Organizational Power and the Institutional Review Board

In this essay, we respond to the narratives and essays in this issue by examining organizational power issues related to researchers and institutional research boards (IRBs). Rather than taking a singular perspective on power, we use multiple perspectives and suggest that the cumulative analyses provide the best understanding of IRBs and organizational power.     

Analysis of Statistical Question Classification for Fact-Based Questions

Question classification systems play an important role in question answering systems and can be used in a wide range of other domains. The goal of question classification is to accurately assign labels to questions based on expected answer type. Most approaches in the past have relied on matching questions against hand-crafted rules. However, rules require laborious effort to create and often suffer from being too specific. Statistical question classification methods overcome these issues by employing machine learning techniques. We empirically show that a statistical approach is robust and achieves good performance on three diverse data sets with little or no hand tuning. Furthermore, we examine the role different syntactic and semantic features have on performance. We find that semantic features tend to increase performance more than purely syntactic features. Finally, we analyze common causes of misclassification error and provide insight into ways they may be overcome.     

Disciplined freedom,branded authenticity,and dependable independence: how tensions enact flexibility in lifestyle blogging careers

Analyzing 219 blog posts from 52 self-employed women lifestyle bloggers in North America, this study shows how these digital professionals navigate tensions and communicatively constitute work flexibility. In their narratives, women bloggers employed tension management approaches such as reframing, continual connections, and reflective practice in response to tensions in enacting temporal–spatial, identity, and financial flexibility. Specifically, women followed oxymoronic constructions – disciplined freedom, branded authenticity, and dependable independence – to embrace and transform competing poles of fluidity?structure, authenticity?marketability, and independence?interconnection. Expanding work–life research to the self-employed digital labor context, this study responds to recent calls to uncover more-than tension management strategies in empirical settings and contributes to a tension-centered, contextual, and processual analysis of workplace flexibility construction.     

The impact of coworker support and stigma on breastfeeding after returning to work

This study assessed the impact of coworker support on lactating mothers’ breastfeeding self-efficacy after maternity leave. A cross-sectional survey of 1000 working adults assessed effects of perception of fairness, coworkers’ support for breastfeeding colleagues, and ick response on willingness to help mothers needing breaks to pump breastmilk at work. The study also examined how coworker support affected mothers’ self-efficacy to continue breastfeeding. One out of four coworkers showed moderate to strong stigma, saw breaks to pump breastmilk as unfair, and showed less intention to help new mothers. These results suggest that while the majority of coworkers are generally supportive, lactating women are likely to encounter disapproving coworkers who may discourage them from continuing to breastfeed. The data showed that the majority of organizations included in this study have only passively fostered mother-friendly workplaces and could do more to encourage employees to be supportive of lactating colleagues.     

Some Aspects of the Development of the All-Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information

Although the USSR and the United States had a comparable number of employees in the field of scientific information, there was a substantial difference in funding, which resulted in a lack of information support for Soviet scientists. While 90% of the publications in the United States were available almost immediately after their release, in the USSR they were delayed by 1.5 to 2 years. Since the publication of the Abstracts Journal by VINITI (AJ), its content was consistently expanding and reached its peak in 1990 (1.5 million documents per year). The next quarter of a century was characterized by a decline in both the composition of the AJ and the time required for its document coverage. The steps for restructuring VINITI activities are discussed. The focus is made on improving the limited coverage of the Russian-language part of the global flow of scientific information by Western information systems.     

Scientometric Instruments of Research Funding

The issues related to funding of public research organizations are explored. The history of scientometric information systems is outlined. The advantages and disadvantages of a bibliometric approach to financing of research organizations are analyzed. The link between the assessment of the scientific and technological potential of an institution and the optimal allocation of funds is investigated. Recommendations on how to improve the efficiency of public resources allocated for scientific research are presented.