Retraction policies of top scientific journals ranked by impact factor

Objective

This study gathered information about the retraction policies of the top 200 scientific journals, ranked by impact factor.

Methods

Editors of the top 200 science journals for the year 2012 were contacted by email.

Results

One hundred forty-seven journals (74%) responded to a request for information. Of these, 95 (65%) had a retraction policy. Of journals with a retraction policy, 94% had a policy that allows the editors to retract articles without authors’ consent.

Conclusions

The majority of journals in this sample had a retraction policy, and almost all of them would retract an article without the authors’ permission.     

All against all competition: the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate in public high schools in Canada

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students’ performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students’ achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools’ marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students’ achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an ‘all against all’ competition.     

Alternative identities in multicultural schools in Israel: emancipatory identity,mixed identity and transnational identity 1

Economic and technological processes of globalization and the increasing migrations of people in the world undermine dominant national identities. One of the main characteristics of our time is the instability of identities and the continuous invention of new/old identities. Traditions and ethnic identities are deconstructed and reconstructed. Immigrants, first, second and also third generation, participate in the dynamic of identity production. It is as part of this global process of identity production that recently founded multicultural schools in Israel have to be understood. The Kedma, Shevach/Mofet and Bialik multicultural schools provide alternative identities to the prevailing national identity: an emancipatory identity to Mizrahi (Oriental) children, a mixed identity to children of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union and a transnational identity to the children of migrant workers. Rather than facilitating integration into the discriminatory hegemonic national identity, these alternative identities provide new empowering options for young immigrants within Israeli society.     

Introducing a neo‐Weberian perspective in the study of globalisation and education: structural reforms of the education systems in France and Israel after the Second World War

Only since the 1990s has the impact of globalisation on education drawn scholarly attention, primarily due to the impact of international school achievement surveys. This study argues that the globalisation of education began much earlier, with the establishment of intergovernmental agencies, such as UNESCO and the OECD, and the adoption of American educational models after the Second World War. The neo‐Weberian perspective I propose focuses on knowledge producers and education global networks and incorporates an analysis of the specific national context and their peculiarities without losing sight of the globalisation process and its homogenising character. Knowledge producers constitute a status group that increases its social and academic capital through advancing global education models locally. The analysis of reforms in the education systems of France and Israel after the Second World War shows how the diffusion of global educational models that stress equality of opportunity enhanced local transformations and affected national policies. Such an analysis elaborates the process whereby knowledge producers, linked to global networks, constructed ‘social problems’ according to the education knowledge production institutionalised in each country and the socio‐politic conditions of each society, and how their alliance with highly ranked functionaries brought about structural reforms aiming at the ‘democratisation of education’ in France and Israel.     

Struggling for recognition: access to higher education through the International Baccalaureate

The recognition of the DP (diploma programme) for university admission is crucial for the development of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools and the expansion of the IB network worldwide. In an era of higher education (HE) massification, accompanied by high failure and dropout rates, intense debates on access to HE are taking place in many countries. It is within this context that the IB organization struggles for the recognition of the DP for admission to universities throughout the world. Through a global comparative approach, this study analyzes the ‘DP-HE admission’ assemblages in Argentina, Canada, Chile, Spain and the United States. Based on interviews with senior IB officials and principals at the head of IB schools associations, this study intends to understand the way the IB network fosters the recognition of the DP for HE admission. The recruitment of new allies to the IB network includes a myriad of negotiations and translations whose results are unpredictable. In Argentina, Chile and Spain, the efforts for DP recognition failed but in Canada and the United States, the DP-HE admission assemblage shows that by translating the skills acquired by DP students as a way to improve retention rates at universities increased their support of IB programs.     

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION – GOOD FOR BUSINESS BUT NOT FOR THE STATE? THE IB CURRICULUM AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM

ABSTRACT:  In the 1970s and the 1980s, multicultural education spread in many countries. However, in the mid-1980s the golden age of multiculturalism came to an end. Neo-conservative political forces attacked multicultural policies and progressively a neo-liberal discourse pervaded economic and social policies, also affecting national education systems. In contrast, multicultural approaches have emerged with tremendous vigour in the field of business management. Juxtaposing cognitive, emotional and socio-communicative multiculturalism found in organisational studies onto multiculturalism in the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum indicates whether multiculturalism in international schools aims to respond to the needs of global capitalism. The findings show that emotional, cognitive and socio-communicative multiculturalism are seen as essential traits for good performance in transnational corporations, and they are strongly encouraged in the IB curriculum. The relevance of multicultural skills in global management alongside the decay of multiculturalism in public education systems entails a growing educational disparity between lower class and higher class children. A new educational structure in which two differentiated systems – a national system and an international system – emerges and redefines the terms of inequality of opportunities.