scholarly journals The Uses and Disuses of Doctoral Degrees in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: The Case of Hungary

Triple Helix ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Annamária Inzelt ◽  
László Csonka

This study offers a contribution to our existing knowledge of the impacts of Hungarian social science and humanities PhDs on the graduates themselves and on their own personal and social environments. We employ new empirical findings—gained from an e-survey and from structured interviews—in an attempt to understand and explain impacts and lacks. Empirical analysis allowed us to identify certain differences in terms of usefulness in several respects, such as the specific sector of employment, mobility or the actual level of impact. The PhD education process and the degree itself have a more positive impact on personal satisfaction and on an individual’s career than on the employing organisation. A PhD degree in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) fields seems to generate more in the way of benefit and impact in the academic field than in non-academic jobs—a difference which reflects on the academic orientation of Hungarian PhD education. All stakeholders need to devote further major efforts into developing the “dual” form of PhD education, so clearly benefitting the whole of the Hungarian economy and society.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Rigby ◽  
Barbara Jones

This paper reflects on alternatives to the traditional form of doctoral thesis which are emerging to reflect a new approach to the valuation and designation of scientific outputs. We examine the changes and consider some implications. We suggest that the adoption of co-citation as underpinning principle for the measurement of knowledge structures has led to re-designation of the value of knowledge and knowledge producers in increasingly quantitative terms. We use notions of ‘institution’ and ‘logic’ to better understand such a change and its implications. Under a new logic that is gradually embedding itself across the higher education sector, the ‘constitutive rules’ concerned with the value of research now prioritize quantification, and tangibility of output, and quality is increasingly equated with citation. Whilst the scientific disciplines have traditionally been closer to this model, albeit with significant national variations, subjects within the Social Sciences and Humanities are now being affected. We present evidence from a small study of the UK higher education sector of university regulation of doctoral degree submission format in two disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences (History and Sociology). Our evidence shows the recent and gradual adoption of a practice, previously more common in scientific disciplines, that allows the doctoral thesis to be constituted by a series of publishable papers, known by a variety of names, the most common being ‘Thesis by Published Papers’, ‘Journal Format Thesis’, ‘Alternative Format Thesis’, and ‘Integrated Thesis’. As the thesis of the Social Sciences and Humanities – itself an important institution in the academic field - begins to reflect a greater emphasis upon quantity of knowledge outputs, a tension emerges with the most central of all scientific institutions, the peer-reviewed journal paper.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veli-Matti Karhulahti ◽  
Hans-Joachim Backe

Openings of research results, datasets, and scientific practices in general are currently being implemented across fields. Especially strongly data-driven areas like medicine are discussing publishing transparency too – in a context where open review formats now dominate. Social sciences and humanities (SSH), in turn, still rely on closed systems. In this study, we draw on 12 semi-structured interviews with chief editors of leading journals in SSH fields to better understand the transparencies of such review processes. We find that, within SSH, ‘double blind’ peer review represents a gold standard that credible journals follow by default. However, the actual review processes of these journals are multi-stage and largely open with the authors’ names standardly visible to decision-making peers, with ‘double blind’ principles forming but part of it. We recommend journals to communicate the transparencies of their review in more detail, also and especially if they are ‘double blind’.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veli-Matti Karhulahti ◽  
Hans-Joachim Backe

Abstract Openings of research results, datasets, and scientific practices in general are currently being implemented across fields. Especially strongly data-driven areas like medicine are discussing publishing transparency too – in a context where open review formats now dominate. Social sciences and humanities (SSH), in turn, still rely on closed systems. In this study, we draw on 12 semi-structured interviews with chief editors of leading journals in SSH fields to better understand the transparencies of such review processes. We find that, within SSH, ‘double blind’ peer review represents a gold standard that credible journals follow by default. However, the actual review processes of these journals are multi-stage and largely open with the authors’ names standardly visible to decision-making peers, with ‘double blind’ principles forming but part of it. We recommend journals to communicate the transparencies of their review in more detail, also and especially if they are ‘double blind’.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Kulczycki ◽  
Ewa Aleksandra Rozkosz ◽  
Aneta Drabek

This article discusses the transformations of Polish journals caused by the Polish Journal Ranking evaluation system. We focused on the internationalization of journals in the social sciences and humanities (N = 801), with the goal of investigating how science policy has transformed editorial practices at Polish journals. We used a mixed-method approach involving both one-way analysis of variance, two-way mixed design analysis of variance, and semi-structured interviews. Our findings showed that science policy has transformed editorial practices, but that there is no actual internationalization in Polish social sciences and humanities journals. Rather, there is only the ostensible internationalization that manifests in “gaming” the journal evaluation system. We found that the editors of Polish journals do not discuss the challenges of internationalization, and implement only those internationalization practices that are explicitly required in the system regulations. We conclude with recommendations for how to motivate the internationalization of journals and stem the corruption of parameters measuring internationalization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Brahimi ◽  
Houssem Ben Lazreg

The advent of the 1990s marked, among other things, the restructuring of the Muslim world in its relation to Islam. This new context has proved to be extremely favorable to the emergence of scholars who define themselves as reformists or modernists. They have dedicated themselves to reform in Islam based on the values of peace, human rights, and secular governance. One can find an example of this approach in the works of renowned intellectuals such as Farid Esack, Mohamed Talbi, or Mohamed Arkoun, to name a few. However, the question of Islamic reform has been debated during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article aims to comprehend the historical evolution of contemporary reformist thinkers in the scientific field. The literature surrounding these intellectuals is based primarily on content analysis. These approaches share a type of reading that focuses on the interaction and codetermination of religious interpretations rather than on the relationships and social dynamics that constitute them. Despite these contributions, it seems vital to question this contemporary thinking differently: what influence does the context of post-Islamism have on the emergence of this intellectual trend? What connections does it have with the social sciences and humanities? How did it evolve historically? In this context, the researchers will analyze co-citations in representative samples to illustrate the theoretical framework in which these intellectuals are located, and its evolution. Using selected cases, this process will help us to both underline the empowerment of contemporary Islamic thought and the formation of a real corpus of works seeking to reform Islam.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.


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