Rosyjski literaturocentryzm w kontekście postkolonialnym

The development of postcolonial studies as a research discipline to a large extent depends on their representatives’ ability to overcome their own post-colonial conditions. This particularly applies to researchers representing imperial cultures. Russian post-colonial studies develop their own cognitive categories in relation to the issue of Russian and Soviet imperialism, while avoiding many potential inspirations contained in the book by Ewa Thompson “Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism”, which became an important reference for postcolonial research in Poland and Ukraine. The author of the article outlines the shaping of Russian literaturocentrism, and then, tries to answer the question of whether and to what extent it can be a useful issue for research on the imperial determinants of Russian culture.

Gender Balance and Readability of COVID-19 Scientific Publishing: A Quantitative Analysis of 90,000 Preprint Manuscripts

Releasing preprints is a popular way to hasten the speed of research but may carry hidden risks for public discourse. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 infection highlighted the risk of rushing the publication of unvalidated findings, leading to damaging scientific miscommunication in the most extreme scenarios. Several high-profile preprints, later found to be deeply flawed, have indeed exacerbated widespread skepticism about the risks of the COVID-19 disease - at great cost to public health. Here, preprint article quality during the pandemic is examined by distinguishing papers related to COVID-19 from other research studies. Importantly, our analysis also investigated possible factors contributing to manuscript quality by assessing the relationship between preprint quality and gender balance in authorship within each research discipline. Using a comprehensive data set of preprint articles from medRxiv and bioRxiv from January to May 2020, we construct both a new index of manuscript quality including length, readability, and spelling correctness and a measure of gender mix among a manuscript's authors. We find that papers related to COVID-19 are less well-written than unrelated papers, but that this gap is significantly mitigated by teams with better gender balance, even when controlling for variation by research discipline. Beyond contributing to a systematic evaluation of scientific publishing and dissemination, our results have broader implications for gender and representation as the pandemic has led female researchers to bear more responsibility for childcare under lockdown, inducing additional stress and causing disproportionate harm to women in science.

Public Interest in Neurological Diseases on Wikipedia during Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic

Infodemiology is a research discipline that investigates parameters of information distribution in order to support public health and public policy. Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, is commonly used as a source of information for infodemiological studies. Using Pageviews analysis, we descriptively assessed the total monthly number of views of the Wikipedia articles in English describing main neurological diseases in the period from January 2018 to July 2020. Our results show a general trend of a decrease in interest in neurological disease-related pages throughout years and especially during the burst of interest towards coronavirus. The monitoring of infodemiological indicators shall be prioritized to reshape global campaigns and tailored advocacy programs.

Re-performing Design

Graphic design, as a specific research discipline, has been largely underrepresented in academia, with the literature suggesting this is partially due to difficulties in researching its professional practitioners. Acknowledging such hurdles, this article discusses an experimental study that used dramaturgy as a defamiliarising method for uncovering professional graphic designers’ perceptions of stakeholders. The study collected graphic designer narratives from online forums as well as dramaturgically informed interviews with professional practitioners. The graphic designers’ narratives were converted into a script and used to motivate a troupe of trained actors, who re-performed the narratives during a series of performance workshops. The article argues that this use of trained actors as ‘proxy designers’ created a refractive form of defamiliarisation, allowing previously obfuscated narratives about graphic designers’ perceptions of stakeholders to emerge. Presenting the study as a prototype to inform future research into graphic design and other elusive creative practices, the article also cautions that the amount of defamiliarisation used must be evaluated against the desired outcomes.

The role of Community Mental Health in a new architecture of World psychiatry and Global Mental Health

Introduction. The influx of new knowledge and scientific contributions into contemporary world psychiatry has counted on a vigorous dissemination through technology-inspired means. This process has led to the realities of Global Mental Health (GMH) inspired by “a new epistemology” of mostly positivistic roots. Objective. To explore the basis of these realities and the resulting homogenization attempts of psychiatry as a medical, clinical, and research discipline. Discussion and conclusion. The need for “a new architecture” of contemporary psychiatry is discussed as a reflection of a correct epistemological exercise and a renewed pact between professionals and communities, materialized in and enriched by the re-emerging Community Mental Health (CMH) movement. The essential bases of the movement are presented, and its mutually collaborative, multidisciplinary, integrated, and realistic nature, as reflected in national efforts like Peru’s in Latin America, is described.

NSF 19-501 AccelNet Proposal: Community of Open Scholarship Grassroots Networks (COSGN)

The Community of Open Scholarship Grassroots Networks (COSGN), includes 120 grassroots networks, representing virtually every region of the world and every research discipline. These networks communicate and coordinate on topics of common interest. We propose, using an NSF 19-501 Full-Scale implementation grant, to formalize governance and coordination of the networks to maximize impact and establish standard practices for sustainability. In the project period, we will increase the capacity of COSGN to advance the research and community goals of the participating networks individually and collectively, and establish governance, succession planning, shared resources, andcommunication pathways to ensure an active, community-sustained network of networks. By the end of the project period, we will have established a self-sustaining network of networks that leverages disciplinary and regional diversity, actively collaborates across networks for grassroots organizing, and shares resources for maximum impact on culture change for open scholarship.

Humour Translation Studies as a New Research Discipline: Approaches to Translating Humorous Texts

The paper offers an overview of the approaches to translating humour, with the intention of comparing the scope of interests and the selection of methods in a number of research reports (in English and in Polish). The overview focuses on the proposals concerning the translation of verbally expressed humour. The authors attempt to describe the status of humour translation studies as an emerging trend in Polish translation studies.

Usage of Human Labour in the History of Serbian Archaeology: Three Examples

Although archaeology is not the only research discipline where fieldwork is one of the tools in the process of acquiring knowledge, rare are the disciplines that harness and organize physical labour of non-professionals in the ways done by archaeologists during excavations. Throughout the history of archaeology the usage of physical labour has implied a firm hierarchical order in accordance to which archaeologists have bought or exploited human work during excavations. The physical effort to uncover the layers of earth covering archaeological sites is a tacitly implied part of the archaeological practice. The dichotomy and the relationship between an archaeologist/director of excavations/decision-maker, who considers, analyses and interprets the archaeological record, and the workers who undertake the more physically demanding tasks, has remained largely unchanged, conditioned by the traditional and commonsensical attitude towards archaeological practice. It is paradoxical that the research discipline, publicly mainly recognized through excavations, rarely investigates the conditions under which the human labour is organized and exploited during field campaigns. The paper treats some characteristic examples dating into the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, starting with the excavations at Viminacium, the works at Stobi between the two world wars, and finally the forced labour during the World War II harnessed during the works at Kalemegdan. By discussing the ways and conditions under which human labour was used during these archaeological excavations, the paper raises the issue of the intention of archaeology and who is it aimed for. The cited examples point to the conclusion that the conditions of an archaeological excavation reflect the society, and the way in which the human labour was organized here speaks of the ways of valorising work. The examples of Viminacium and Stobi indicate that the idea of cultural heritage as a common good was shared by a small number of representatives of middle and higher social statuses, while physical labourers possessed no right over it. The excavations at Kalemegdan quite explicitly speak of the many ways in which the Third Reich exploited forced labour.