scholarly journals Further Research is Required to Determine Which Database Products Best Support Research in Public Administration

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
David Hook

A review of: Tucker, James, Corey. “Database Support for Research in Public Administration.” Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 24.1 (2005): 47-60. Objective – To examine the extent to which six commercial database products support student and faculty research in the area of public administration. Design – Bibliometric study. Setting – Academic library in the United States. Subjects – Six commercial business-related database products were examined: Proquest’s ABI/INFORM Global edition (ABI), EBSCO’s Business Source Premier (BSP), Gale’s General BusinessFile ASAP (GBF), EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier (ASP), EBSCO’s Expanded Academic Index (EAI) and Proquest’s International Academic Research Library (ARL). Three of the databases (ABI, BSP, GBF) were chosen because they address the management, human resource, and financing elements of public administration. The other three (ASP, EAI, ARL) were included because of their multidisciplinary coverage. Methods – A list of journal titles covering public administration was assembled from the Institute of Scientific Information’s Social Sciences Citation Index and previously published lists of recommended journals in the field. The author then compared the compiled list of journal titles against the journal titles indexed by the six database products. He further analyzed the results by level of journal coverage (abstract only, full-text, and full-text with embargo) and subject area based on categories described in Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory. Main Results – The study found that three of the six database products --EAI, BSP, and ARL -- provide indexing for the greatest number of public administration journals contained in the compiled list. EIA and ARL cover the greatest number of those that are full-text journals, while BSP and ASP cover the greatest number of those full-text journals limited by publisher embargoes. Conclusion – The author concludes that of the six databases examined, EAI, BSP, and ARL are the best for public administration research, based on their strength in the subject areas of public administration and public finance. The author also recommends that librarians in the field of public administration “carefully evaluate each database to see which one best fits the needs of the library and patrons” (56).

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula R. Dempsey

Purpose The purpose of this study is to learn what factors liaison librarians in academic research libraries consider in determining whether to refer chat reference patrons to subject specialists. Design/methodology/approach Subject specialists were asked what policies guided their decisions to refer to a specialist and then assessed unreferred chat session transcripts both within and outside their specializations to determine need for a referral. Findings Few respondents were guided by formal policies. Contrary to an initial hypothesis, subject area was not a key factor in referring chat. A broader set of criteria included reference interviewing, provision of relevant resources and information literacy instruction. Respondents valued both the depth that subject specialists can provide to reference interactions and the ability of a skilled generalist to support information literacy. Research limitations/implications Findings are most applicable to large, public doctoral universities with liaison librarian programs. Assignment of respondents to subject specialist categories was complicated by their broad range of background and expertise. Practical implications The study contributes new understanding of referrals to subject specialists who have potential to guide development of formal referral policies in academic library virtual reference services. Originality/value The study is the first empirical examination of chat reference referral decisions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56
Author(s):  
Soumya George ◽  
M. Sudheep Elayidom ◽  
T. Santhanakrishnan

Research trends are dynamic, changing from time to time. It is an indicator of the latest innovations in each field of research, current areas of research, the latest technologies, and developments in each field of research. It also helps with future innovations and developments by providing current challenges and opportunities. This article proposes an efficient method to find research trends in each field of research of any subject area by using the graph-based subject classification of published papers. This methodology can be efficiently used to find research trends at any point of time, based on the published year of academic publications. A study of change in research trends in three subject areas - physics, mathematics, and computer science have been successfully conducted based on a total of 4500 publications since 2004.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 859-866
Author(s):  
Kenneth E. Fernandez ◽  
Jason A. Husser ◽  
Mary G. Macdonald

ABSTRACTOrganizations conducting survey research have remained of vital importance to the social sciences. However, these organizations increasingly face new challenges and opportunities. Survey operations housed in universities and colleges may face special challenges. We present a poll of pollsters, an original survey of leaders of academic survey organizations in the United States. Results explore the various methods used by academic survey organizations and perceptions of challenges in today’s academic and research environments. Responses provide an overview of the career path of academic survey leaders and how those leaders understand the primary missions of their organizations. We conclude with a discussion relevant to social scientists interested in the dynamics of operating these important academic research centers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudolska ◽  
Lis ◽  
Chodorek

The issues of responsible and sustainable innovations have been attracting the growing attention of the ranks of scholars in recent years. However, this amassing productivity in the field has not been mapped and profiled thoroughly, yet. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to map the research output related to the concepts of responsible and sustainable innovations with the method of research profiling. The analysis consists of three components: general research profiling, subject area profiling and topic profiling conducted with the use of Scopus database. The research process is directed at answering three research questions: (1) who are the main contributors within the scholarly community? why? so what? (2) how is the research output distributed among subject areas? why? so what? (3) what are the central topics and issues discussed within the research field? why? so what? First of all, key contributing countries, research institutions, journals, and authors are identified in order to characterize the scholarly community working in the field. Secondly, research output is profiled through the prism of respective subject areas. This type of profiling aims at discovering varieties among key journals, authors and core references distributed across various subject areas. Thirdly, topic analysis is conducted in order to point out most crucial aspects studied in the body of literature in the field. The research sample consists of 1,083 publications indexed in Scopus database, including the phrases ‘responsible innovation’ or ‘sustainable innovation’ within their titles, keywords, and abstracts (topic search). The findings from the general research profiling confirm the growing interest of academia in exploring and investigating the issues of responsible and sustainable innovations. The leading contributors in the field are scholars and research institutions from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Dutch universities and research centers occupy three top three positions in regard to the number of publications. Among them, Delft University of Technology is the unquestionable leader. Journal of Cleaner Production and Journal of Responsible Innovation are found to be the most prolific and highly recognized source titles in the field. Subject area profiling shows a relatively high level of interrelatedness among the four leading subject areas i.e., Business, Management and Accounting, Engineering, Social Sciences, and Environmental Science in regard to authors, source titles and core references. Topic profiling indicates two leading thematic streams in the research field focused on the features and core aspects of responsible and sustainable innovations, and the relationships of the concept with people (human, humans), research, ethics, and technology. Discussion of research findings is focused around comparing and contrasting three overlapping concepts (i.e., responsible research and innovation, responsible innovation, and sustainable innovation), providing the critical assessment of the reasons for the scholarly research to have developed along with certain patterns and identifying unexplored aspects or possible future avenues of research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-294
Author(s):  
Alessandro Braga

This article aims to discuss the health of the public administration discipline in the US higher education system. In particular, it debates two possible alternatives: decline or reposition. The paper analyzes the academic offers of political science, public policy, and public administration programs at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The Results highlight that the public administration discipline is currently at a crucial point. The core attention within both governments and higher education is more focused on politics and policies than on management. Accordingly, this scenario has two main effects. First, it creates an imbalance between the political discourse, the formulation/execution of public policies, and the managing of effective public sector organizations. Second, it might lead the discipline of public administration into a decline. Nevertheless, public administration can find a reposition within social sciences by developing more openness and a process of cross-contamination with other humanistic disciplines.


1986 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Naomi Wish

The United States is increasingly becoming an information society. Over half of the labor force is now engaged in work requiring some level of information processing. Computers are the “engines” powering this information society and consequently, their diffusion is considerable and growing (Kraemer and Northrop, 1984:2).University professors, especially those who teach the social sciences, recognize that an understanding of computerized society is not enough. Students should be prepared to use these “engines of the information age.“For those of us who teach public administration, especially on the graduate level, the task of preparing our students for the computerized world is even of greater urgency and somewhat different in nature. Professors of public administration are not only preparing students for a computerized future, but more importantly, a computerized present.


Author(s):  
Santiago DE FRANCISCO ◽  
Diego MAZO

Universities and corporates, in Europe and the United States, have come to a win-win relationship to accomplish goals that serve research and industry. However, this is not a common situation in Latin America. Knowledge exchange and the co-creation of new projects by applying academic research to solve company problems does not happen naturally.To bridge this gap, the Design School of Universidad de los Andes, together with Avianca, are exploring new formats to understand the knowledge transfer impact in an open innovation network aiming to create fluid channels between different stakeholders. The primary goal was to help Avianca to strengthen their innovation department by apply design methodologies. First, allowing design students to proposed novel solutions for the traveller experience. Then, engaging Avianca employees to learn the design process. These explorations gave the opportunity to the university to apply design research and academic findings in a professional and commercial environment.After one year of collaboration and ten prototypes tested at the airport, we can say that Avianca’s innovation mindset has evolved by implementing a user-centric perspective in the customer experience touch points, building prototypes and quickly iterate. Furthermore, this partnership helped Avianca’s employees to experience a design environment in which they were actively interacting in the innovation process.


Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo

This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Mordecai Lee

The United States Bureau of Efficiency (BOE), which had been established in 1916, was abolished in 1933 when President Hoover signed an omnibus appropriation bill on his last full day in office. Given Hoover's commitment to businesslike and efficient management and his ongoing support for the work of the Bureau throughout his presidency, what if he had acted differently and prevented its abolition? This fictional public administration history explores how Hoover could have kept BOE in existence and, if he had, how six of his successors might have treated the agency as part of their administrations.


Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.


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