Opportunity knocks

Research on technological opportunity has typically focused on the impact of broad industry characteristics on R&D intensity of firms. This study complements such approaches by examining the impact of a multidimensional vector that measures technological opportunity on independent inventors’ decisions to patent and commercialize inventions. Using data from 559 inventions and controlling for demand, appropriability, and competitive conditions, we found two of four tested dimensions of technological opportunity - technical performance and technical uncertainty - to be significant and important determinants of the likelihood of commercialization. Technical feasibility appears important in affecting patenting but unimportant in affecting commercialization. Technical significance carries a negative, although insignificant, sign conditioning commercialization.     

Factors affecting journal submission numbers: Impact factor and peer review reputation

Previous research has found that researchers rank journal reputation and impact factor (IF) amongst the key selection criteria when choosing where to submit. We explored the actual effect upon submission numbers of several possible factors. We retrieved 10 years of submission data from over a thousand journals, as well as data on IF, retractions, and other factors. We performed statistical analysis and identified correlations. We also undertook case study research on the 55 most significant submission decreases. We found a statistically significant correlation between changes in IF, ISI percentage ranking, and changes in submissions numbers in subsequent years. We also found a statistically significant effect on submission numbers in the year following the publication of a retraction. Our case studies identified other factors, including negative feedback on the peer review process. Our findings regarding IF confirm previous indications about the significance of IF on submissions. We explain the correlation with retractions through the concept of ‘peer review reputation’. These results indicate that editors and publishers need to focus on a journal's peer review practices, as well as a journal's IF, if they are to maintain and grow submissions.     

Time for inclusion?

This article examines the constraints of modern temporality which are antithetical to the careful consideration that working with diverse learners requires for the development of inclusive, democratic education. We take up the conceptual construct of time to explore how it mediates systemic practices that impact policy positions of inclusion in initial teacher education and schooling. Our analysis demonstrates that temporality shapes the possibilities of inclusive practice within which a dominant agenda of compliance frames classroom complexities – both in schooling and higher education environments – into fragmented and preconceived responses to challenging situations. Education systems position educators in risk discourses concentrated on compliance and performance, in part through an emphasis that is placed on the diagnosis of learner differences and subsequent compartmentalised responses. Through schisms in modern time, we demonstrate the ways in which inclusion, like other educational demands, may be supported through a diffraction in time rather than subjugated to it.     

A Multipart Project Planning and Tracking Exercise

Project Management is an important skill for business students to develop. Although project‐oriented activity is very common, the success rate for projects is poor. Many projects fail due to poor planning. This article describes a multipart class exercise used to teach elements of a project management methodology to undergraduate and graduate business students. Over the course of the eight‐part exercise, student teams iteratively develop a project plan and Gantt chart, an initial and detailed project charter, a variance analysis model, and a status report. Students are taught an iterative top‐down planning process using a technique we term the ODW (Objectives–Deliverables–Workplan) model. Students are introduced to Microsoft Project and use the tool to develop a project plan that becomes part of a more detailed Project Charter. In the final stages of the exercise, students collect results, update their plan, and produce a project status report.     

Acquiring Clinical Knowledge from an Online Video Platform: A Randomized Controlled Experiment on the Relevance of Integrating Anatomical Information and Clinical Practice

Basic subjects in medical education, such as anatomy, are often taught through teaching formats that do not always sufficiently demonstrate the relevance of this basic information for clinical practice. Accordingly, it is a recent trend in anatomy education to link anatomical information more explicitly to clinical practice. This article presents an online video platform (Tuebingen’s Sectio Chirurgica [TSC]) as one means of explicitly integrating preclinical anatomical knowledge and clinical application. The purpose of the study presented here was to examine the effects of videos through which medical students were educated about Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction. A TSC video about this surgical procedure was compared to a video with a traditional lecture providing the identical information. Participants (n = 114) perceived the TSC video to be superior in comprehensibility of the presentation (P = 0.003) and conceivability of the surgical procedure (P = 0.027), and to be more entertaining (P < 0.001). Moreover, participants in the TSC condition acquired more clinical knowledge than in the lecture condition (P = 0.043) but did not differ in their acquisition of anatomical knowledge. Mediation analyses indicated that the effect on the acquisition of clinical knowledge was mediated by comprehensibility, conceivability, and entertainment. These findings are discussed regarding their implications for medical education in terms of contributing to the general trend of linking preclinical anatomical knowledge to clinical application. A discussion about the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also provided.     

Concurrent and predictive validity of the LET-II for average children

Memory tests, such as the Learning Efficiency Test-II (LET-II), have frequently been used to describe the memory characteristics of special populations such as persons with learning disabilities, brain damage, or Alzheimer's disease. Yet, few research studies have examined the memory characteristics of normally functioning children and compared these characteristics to their performance on ability tests or real-life achievement criteria. This study investigates the predictive and concurrent validities of the LET-II for performance on the Kuhlmann-Anderson Tests (K-A), class grades, and actual grade level functioning in reading and mathematics for third and fourth grade children of average intelligence. The LET-II memory factor scores correlated significantly with the K-A scores, class grades and actual grade level functioning in reading. The relevance of these findings for norm-referenced psychological tests, and in particular memory tests, in real-life settings is examined. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Variation in Valuation: How Research Groups Accumulate Credibility in Four Epistemic Cultures

Minerva - This paper aims to explore disciplinary variation in valuation practices by comparing the way research groups accumulate credibility across four epistemic cultures. Our analysis is based...