First Edition of Hahnemann's Organon: Celebrating its 200th Anniversary

With this special issue, IJHDR celebrates the 200th anniversary of the first edition of Hahnemann’s Organon, published in 1810. By 1796, in a previous foundational article published in Hufeland’s prestigious Journal of Practical Medicine [1], after criticizing with fine reasoning the usual ways of studying the “curative properties of medicinal substances”, namely according to their chemical actions, their effects on animals, their external aspect or sensitive properties, their taxonomic classification, or the random use of multiple drugs by the so called empiricists, Hahnemann stated what can be regarded as one of the cornerstones of homeopathy: “The true physician, whose sole aim is to perfect his art, can avail himself of no other information respecting medicines, than – first, what is the pure action of each by itself on the human body? Second, what do observations of its action in this or that simple or complex disease teach us?” ... ... To conclude, despite uncertainties and difficulties homeopaths still have to struggle with, we can only feel grateful to Hahnemann’s countless efforts to introduce homeopathy and everything what it means in medicine history and development.

Branding Scholarly Journals: Transmuting Symbolic Capital into Economic Capital

In this paper, we analyze a relatively recent commercial strategy devised by large academic publishers, consisting in the branding of their most prestigious scientific journals. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s model of capital conversion, we show how publishers transfer the symbolic capital of an already prestigious journal to derivative journals that capture part of the prestige of the original brand and transform it into new economic capital. As shown by their high impact factors, these new journals, bearing the mark of the original journal in their titles, are rapidly adopted by researchers. Through manuscript transfer mechanisms, publishers also use part of the papers rejected by their flagship and highly selective journals to recycle and monetize them in lower impact or open access derivative journals of their lists.

Professor Petre V. Ștefănucă - notorious personality of romanian folklore from interwar Bessarabia

In this article, the author explains the special role of the ethnologist Petre V. Ștefănucă in creating national folkloric archive. Petre V. Ștefănucă is an illustrious personality of the cultural life in Bessarabia from the first half of the XX century, who asserted himself through his program to substantiate a historiography of the traditional culture in Romanian. Preservation and promotion of the intangible cultural heritage has its roots in the interwar period, by the prodigious activity of the Romanian Social Institute in Basarabia, led by Professor Petre Ștefănucă – disciple of Romanian Sociological School of Academician Dimitrie Gusti, who organized monographic research in ethnographic areas: Valea Nistrului de Jos, Câmpia Sorocii, Zona Codrilor and valuable materials published in the prestigious journal “Anuarul Arhivei de Folclor”.

Contribuția lui Petre Ștefănucă la dezvoltarea folcloristicii românești din Basarabia interbelică

In this article, the author explains the special role of the ethnologist Petre V. Ştefănucă in creating national folkloric archive. Petre V. Ştefănucă is an illustrious personality of the cultural life in Bessarabia from the first half of the 20th century, who asserted himself through his program to substantiate a historiography of the traditional culture in Romanian. Preservation and promotion of intangible cultural heritage has its roots in the interwar period, by the prodigious activity of Romanian Social Institute in Basarabia, led by Professor Petre Ştefănucă - disciple of Romanian Sociological School of Academician Dimitrie Gusti, who organized monographic research in ethnographic areas: Valea Nistrului de Jos, Câmpia Sorocii, Zona Codrilor and valuable materials published in prestigious journal ,,Anuarul Arhivei de Folclor”.

Branding Spin-Off Scholarly Journals: Transmuting Symbolic Capital into Economic Capital

In this article, we analyse a relatively recent commercial strategy used by large academic publishers to capitalize on the brand names of their most prestigious scientific journals. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s model of capital conversion, we explain how publishers transfer the symbolic capital of an already prestigious journal to derivative journals that share in the prestige of the original brand and transform it into new economic capital. As shown by their high impact factors, these newly created journals benefit from the name recognition and reputation of the originals after which they are named. Plus, through a manuscript routing mechanism, the publishers recycle some of the submissions rejected by their highly selective flagship journal by redirecting those manuscripts, along with their re?views, to derivative journals or to one of the lower-impact journals on their list, which may require an article processing charge for publication.

An Analysis on English to Chinese Translation of Electrical Engineering Texts from the Perspective of Professionals under the Guidance of Skopos Theory

With the Skopos Theory as the theoretical foundation, this study aims at analyzing the specialized translation of electrical engineering texts from the professionals' perspective. To do this, we first conducted a questionnaire survey to collect the information on the professionals' needs and requirements on the translation of English texts in the realm of electrical engineering. Then, we selected an English academic paper published in a prestigious journal in this field and conducted a semi-structured interview on the Chinese translation of this paper with three professionals in this field. Based on the results of both questionnaire and interview, we analyzed the translation of electrical engineering texts from English to Chinese at lexical, syntactic and textual levels with the guidance of Skopos Theory. It is found from the questionnaire survey that electrical engineering professionals in China do have a need for translation of English texts in this field, and they emphasize the accuracy of terms and information integrity of the target text. From the interview, we also find that Skopos Theory has a strong guiding effect on the specialized translation of electrical engineering texts. Under the guidance of this theory, translators can adopt various translation strategies to enhance their translation output and optimize its communicative effect.

The Vatican Opinion on Gender Theory

This article is a reasoned response to the article by Timothy F. Murphy, recently published in the prestigious journal Bioethics, on the supposed opposition between the views of the Catholic Church and what he calls “contemporary science” in relation to certain anthropological issues linked to the gender perspective. To point to “the Vatican” as anchored in an unscientific and anachronistic position, using the term contemporary science to which he attributes a unanimous representation of current scientific thinking on the subject is, in our view, unfounded and completely unacceptable. In his reflection, he does not adequately distinguish between intersex and transgenderism, two clearly different realities with different needs. The author defends the obsolescence of the binary sex/gender model that, in his view, “betrays human sexuality.” Furthermore, he does so without providing a plausible justification or a definition of human nature that is able to support the plurality and indeterminacy of sexual conditions, without falling back on untenable dualisms or relativism devoid of scientific objectivity. In our response, we highlight how the dialogue between Faith and Reason, as developed in the recent Magisterium of the Catholic Church, is essential to explain nature, the human being and, in general, all creations. Finally, contemporary science does not provide a monolithic and unquestionable view of the nature of human beings and their sexual identity, as the author claims, with many scientists confirming evidence of a binary human sexuality genetically and phenotypically determined. Summary This paper is a reasoned response to the supposed opposition between the views of the Catholic Church and “contemporary science” in relation to certain anthropological issues linked to the gender perspective.The dialogue between Faith and Reason, as developed in the recent Magisterium of the Catholic Church, is essential to explain nature, the human being and, in general, all creation, against the opinion of those who defend the obsolescence of the binary sex/gender model that, in their view, “betrays human sexuality”.