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Volume 5, September
 
 

Publications, Volume 5, Issue 4 (December 2017) – 6 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): Compared with English-language scholarly journals, traditional journals published in Chinese have the disadvantage of visibility and academic impact. Open access offers a great opportunity for such journals to address these problems. The vast majority of open access journals in China are Chinese-language journals that converted their subscription models to open access. However, their survival is threatened as online publishing in China is not yet attracting sufficient prestigious Chinese academics, and the internationalization of these journals is hindered by financial instability. This paper proposes that the development of Chinese-language open access journals should embrace international standards of publishing in order to be indexed in DOAJ and other international journal indexes to obtain high visibility, and it requires a national open access publishing platform that helps to digitalise the [...] Read more.
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198 KiB  
Perspective
“It’s Not the Way We Use English”—Can We Resist the Native Speaker Stranglehold on Academic Publications?
by Pat Strauss
Publications 2017, 5(4), 27; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5040027 - 08 Dec 2017
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5123
Abstract
English dominates the academic publishing world, and this dominance can, and often does, lead to the marginalisation of researchers who are not first-language speakers of English. There are different schools of thought regarding this linguistic domination; one approach is pragmatic. Proponents believe that [...] Read more.
English dominates the academic publishing world, and this dominance can, and often does, lead to the marginalisation of researchers who are not first-language speakers of English. There are different schools of thought regarding this linguistic domination; one approach is pragmatic. Proponents believe that the best way to empower these researchers in their bid to publish is to assist them to gain mastery of the variety of English most acceptable to prestigious journals. Another perspective, however, is that traditional academic English is not necessarily the best medium for the dissemination of research, and that linguistic compromises need to be made. They contend that the stranglehold that English holds in the publishing world should be resisted. This article explores these different perspectives, and suggests ways in which those of us who do not wield a great deal of influence may yet make a small contribution to the levelling of the linguistic playing field, and pave the way for an English lingua franca that better serves the needs of twenty-first century academics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Writing and Publishing Scientific Research Papers in English)
160 KiB  
Book Review
On Being Stuck: Tapping into the Creative Power of Writer’s Block by Laraine Herring. 2016. Shambhala Publications, Boulder, Colorado. US$16.95. ISBN 978-1-61180-290-0 (Paperback)
by Stephen K. Donovan
Publications 2017, 5(4), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5040026 - 20 Nov 2017
Viewed by 2780
5674 KiB  
Article
Worldwide Scientific Production Indexed by Scopus on Labour Relations
by Esther Salmerón-Manzano and Francisco Manzano-Agugliaro
Publications 2017, 5(4), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5040025 - 13 Oct 2017
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 8382
Abstract
This article examines the features of the worldwide contributions to the specialized literature in labour relations in the period 1970–2016. The source considered has been the Scopus Elsevier database, together with bibliometric analysis techniques. Different aspects of the publications are analysed, such as [...] Read more.
This article examines the features of the worldwide contributions to the specialized literature in labour relations in the period 1970–2016. The source considered has been the Scopus Elsevier database, together with bibliometric analysis techniques. Different aspects of the publications are analysed, such as publication type, field, language, subcategory and journal type, as well as the keyword occurrence frequency. The results of this work show that the most popular keywords were Trade Union, Employment, Labour Market and Industrial Relations. It is observed how the United States, being the most productive country, leads in almost all the keywords except in two, “Labour market” and “Working Conditions”, which are led by UK. If the keywords are studied only as geographical terms we can find the United States, Eurasia and India. The contributions are geographically and institutionally broken down. The most active categories are Social Sciences, Business, and Management and Accounting. The evolution of the most popular keywords indicates how in the last years “Trade Unions” “Industrial Relations” and “Personnel” have lost importance against “Labor Market” and “Employment”, showing new concerns in the labour relations field. Full article
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823 KiB  
Article
Nemo Solus Satis Sapit: Trends of Research Collaborations in the Vietnamese Social Sciences, Observing 2008–2017 Scopus Data
by Quan-Hoang Vuong, Tung Manh Ho, Thu-Trang Vuong, Ha Viet Nguyen, Nancy K. Napier and Hiep-Hung Pham
Publications 2017, 5(4), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5040024 - 05 Oct 2017
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 6804
Abstract
Nemo solus satis sapit”—no one can be wise enough on his own. This is particularly true when it comes to collaborations in scientific research. Concerns over this issue in Vietnam, a developing country with limited academic resources, led to an in-depth [...] Read more.
Nemo solus satis sapit”—no one can be wise enough on his own. This is particularly true when it comes to collaborations in scientific research. Concerns over this issue in Vietnam, a developing country with limited academic resources, led to an in-depth study on Vietnamese social science research, using Google Scholar and Scopus, during 2008–2017. The results showed that more than 90% of scientists had worked with colleagues to publish, and they had collaborated 13 times on average during the time limit of the data sample. These collaborations, both domestic and international, mildly boosted author performance. On the other hand, the modest number of publications by Vietnamese authors was reportedly linked to Vietnamese social scientists’ heavy reliance on collaborative work as non-leading co-authors: for an entire decade (2008–2017), the average author assumes the leading role merely in two articles, and hardly ever published alone. This implies that policy-makers ought to consider promoting institutional collaborations while also encouraging authors to acquire the experience of publishing solo. Full article
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1578 KiB  
Article
Computer Science Papers in Web of Science: A Bibliometric Analysis
by Dalibor Fiala and Gabriel Tutoky
Publications 2017, 5(4), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5040023 - 29 Sep 2017
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 11092
Abstract
In this article we present a bibliometric study of 1.9 million computer science papers published from 1945 to 2014 and indexed in Web of Science. We analyze both the quantity and the impact of these publications according to document types, languages, disciplines, countries, [...] Read more.
In this article we present a bibliometric study of 1.9 million computer science papers published from 1945 to 2014 and indexed in Web of Science. We analyze both the quantity and the impact of these publications according to document types, languages, disciplines, countries, institutions, and publication sources. The most frequent author keywords, cited references, and cited papers as well as the distribution of the number of references and citations per paper and of the age of cited references are also explored. Since conference proceedings play a tremendous role in this scientific field, we investigate the time and place of computer science conferences in terms of the most prolific months and locations. And, last but not least, the production of journal articles and conference papers over the whole time period and the level of collaboration in different computer science disciplines are inspected. One of the main results is the finding that “Artificial Intelligence” is the most productive subfield of computer science, but “Interdisciplinary Applications” has the highest relative impact. Full article
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1019 KiB  
Article
Open Access Scholarly Journal Publishing in Chinese
by Cenyu Shen
Publications 2017, 5(4), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/publications5040022 - 29 Sep 2017
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 9560
Abstract
The research literature on open access (OA) publishing has mainly dealt with journals publishing in English, and studies focusing on OA journals in other languages are less common. This article addresses this gap via a case study focusing on Chinese-language OA journals. It [...] Read more.
The research literature on open access (OA) publishing has mainly dealt with journals publishing in English, and studies focusing on OA journals in other languages are less common. This article addresses this gap via a case study focusing on Chinese-language OA journals. It starts with the identification of the major characteristics of this market, followed by eight semi-structured interviews to explore the key motivations behind Chinese-language OA publishing and perceived barriers. The majority of Chinese OA journals are published in Chinese, and most of them are published by universities and scholarly societies. Nearly 80% of journals were launched before the digital age and were converted to OA later. The subject distribution is highly skewed towards the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) fields. Publishers are motivated to convert journals to OA by an expected increase in academic impact, which would also attract more submissions. The lack of a sufficient number of high-quality submissions is perceived as the largest barrier to the successful publishing of journals. The financial instability of journals is identified as the main obstacle hindering internationalisation. The central conclusions of the study are that Chinese-language OA journals need to increase their visibility in journal indexes such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and that an OA publishing platform (similar to the Latin American SciELO) should be established for Chinese-language OA journals. Full article
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