How accurate are cited references in Iranian peer‐reviewed journals?

The references cited in scientific articles are as important as any other part of the paper, because of their usefulness to the scientific community and to abstracting and indexing services and citation databases. I studied inaccuracies in references and in‐text citations in sample of 97 of the 519 peer‐reviewed journals accredited by the Iranian National Commission for Journal Accreditation Policy (Ministry of Research, Science and Technology). The target journals published 2,980 articles with 74,577 cited references and 108,151 in‐text citations. The results showed 36.6% as the average percentage error rate (range 5.6% to 61.3%). The mean number of errors in cited reference and in‐text citations was 2.7 per article, and the mean number of errors per journal was 690. For the entire sample of articles, 4,369 in‐text citations did not match any source in the list of references (4%), and 8,683 cited references did not match any in‐text citation (11.6%). The stakeholders in scholarly communication, especially authors, pay insufficient attention to the accuracy of bibliographic references. Peer‐reviewed journals should encourage the use of standardized journal policies and quality‐control measures regarding peer review, data quality and accuracy.     

School-university partnerships: a new recipe for creating professional knowledge in school

This paper first reviews the literature on school-university partnerships to evaluate and describe challenges and paradigms of Japanese approaches to school-university partnerships in theory and practice. Secondly, it clarifies the role of three-year school-university partnership between the Nagoya University and the Tokai City Board of Education in the central Japan for creating an effective environment in schools for teachers to learn from each other and for developing more learning-centered education that focuses on the real needs of students. From this study it can be claimed that more effective relationships between Japanese school teachers and university researchers can be established through developing collaborative a school-based research framework especially through the process of jugyou kenkyuu (lesson study).     

Design and comparison of LQG/LTR and H∞ controllers for a VSTOL flight control system

In this paper two robust controllers for a multivariable vertical short take-off and landing (VSTOL) aircraft system are designed and compared. The aim of these controllers is to achieve robust stability margins and good performance in step response of the system. LQG/LTR method is a systematic design approach based on shaping and recovering open-loop singular values while mixed-sensitivity H_∞ method is established by defining appropriate weighting functions to achieve good performance and robustness. Comparison of the two controllers show that LQG method requires rate feedback to increase damping of closed-loop system, while H_∞ controller by only proper choose the weighting functions, meets the same performance for step response. Output robustness of both controllers is good but H_∞ controller has poor input stability margin. The net controller order of H_∞ is higher than the LQG/LTR method and the control effort of them is in the acceptable range.     

Academic oral presentation self-efficacy: a cross-sectional interdisciplinary comparative study

Despite the significant role of oral presentation in the academic context, many university students evade opportunities for participation due to low self-efficacy. The present study has been conducted to compare oral presentation self-efficacy of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners with undergraduates and postgraduates of Non-EFL majors, and to investigate the relationship of this construct with their teaching and prior academic oral presentation experiences as two modes of Bandura’s [(1995). Exercise of personal and collective efficacy in changing societies. In A. Bandura (Ed.), Self-efficacy in changing societies (pp. 1–45). New York: Cambridge University Press] mastery experience. Extracting the oral presentation sub-skills from the literature, an oral presentation self-efficacy questionnaire with 38 five-Likert scale items was constructed. A two-way between-group ANOVA was run on the responses of a total 48 postgraduates (25 EFL and 23 Non-EFL) and 63 undergraduates (28 EFL and 35 Non-EFL) selected randomly from two of the universities in Iran. The results indicated no difference between EFL and Non-EFL students, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level, in terms of their oral presentation self-efficacy. Spearman’s correlation coefficient, however, showed a strong positive correlation between the two modes of mastery experience and oral presentation self-efficacy (r?=?.44, n?=?111, P?r?=?.42, n?=?111, P?相似文献   

Developmental patterns of privatization in higher education: a comparative study

In most developing countries, as the young population increase in number and consequently, the demands for higher education rise, the governments cannot respond to all demands. Accordingly, they develop private higher education sectors as an alternative solution. In developed countries, some moving factors are influential in creation and the increase of private institutions but there are scarce evidences and comparative results about developing countries. The current comparative study seeks to investigate and analyze the main factors of privatization in higher education of three developing countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Kenya. After a short outline of theoretical foundations, this study provides more in-depth explanations of the principal and common effective factors.     

Education in Europe and Muslim Demands for Competitive and Moral Education

International Review of Education - While European education systems fundamentally rest on a rather monolithic world-view, some of them are explicitly oriented towards Christianity and others are...