Scientific journals must be alert to potential manipulation in citations and referencing

Citation is an essential practice in scientific publishing. However, it is mandatory that citing the sources in a scientific work is performed in a proper manner. Manipulating citations in research articles is one form of academic research misconduct that violates publication ethics. Citation manipulation simply occurs for the purpose of increasing the number of citations of a researcher or a journal. Unfortunately, there has been a growing trend for this type of misconduct recently and this has not received much attention from the science community. The most effective solution to prevent the growth of such unethical practices is for reputable journals to impose stricter rules on reference evaluation criteria in order to emphasize on the appropriateness of the citations.

Building Geometry as a Variable in Energy, Comfort, and Environmental Design Optimization—A Review from the Perspective of Architects

Due to negative environmental impacts caused by the building industry, sustainable buildings have recently become one of the most investigated fields in research. As the design technique itself is mainly responsible for building performance, building energy design optimization is of particular interest. Several studies concentrate on systems, operation, and control optimization, complemented by passive strategies, specifically related to the envelope. In building physics, different architectural considerations, in particular, the building’s shape, are essential variables, as they greatly influence the performance of a building. Most scientific work that takes into consideration building geometry explores spaces without any energy optimization or calculates optimization processes of a few basic variables of simplified space geometries. Review studies mainly discuss the historic development of optimization algorithms, building domains, and the algorithm-system and software framework performance with coupling issues. By providing a systemized clustering of different levels of shape integration intensities, space creation principals, and algorithms, this review explores the current status of sustainability related shape optimization. The review proves that geometry design variable modifications and, specifically, shape generation techniques offer promising optimization potential; however, the findings also indicate that building shape optimization is still in its infancy.

The speed of information propagation in the scientific network distorts biomedical research

Delays in the propagation of scientific discoveries across scientific communities have been an oft-maligned feature of scientific research for introducing a bias towards knowledge that is produced within a scientist’s closest community. The vastness of the scientific literature has been commonly blamed for this phenomenon, despite recent improvements in information retrieval and text mining. Its actual negative impact on scientific progress, however, has never been quantified. This analysis attempts to do so by exploring its effects on biomedical discovery, particularly in the discovery of relations between diseases, genes and chemical compounds. Results indicate that the probability that two scientific facts will enable the discovery of a new fact depends on how far apart these two facts were originally within the scientific landscape. In particular, the probability decreases exponentially with the citation distance. Thus, the direction of scientific progress is distorted based on the location in which each scientific fact is published, representing a path-dependent bias in which originally closely-located discoveries drive the sequence of future discoveries. To counter this bias, scientists should open the scope of their scientific work with modern information retrieval and extraction approaches.

The issue of the readiness of the Russian economy to implement digital transformation

In the article, the author carried out an integral qualitative assessment of the readiness of the domestic economy for the transition of its functioning to the format of industry 4.0. The degree of infrastructural and institutional compliance of the country’s economy with the criteria necessary for the implementation of the digital transition is investigated. The relevance of the article is due to the compression of the time available for the domestic economy to implement digital transformation, which are caused by the economic and infrastructural consequences of the Covid–19 pandemic and the tightening of competition between countries for the right to dominate the information space. The result of the scientific work done by the author is a comprehensive assessment of the readiness of the Russian economy for digital transformation, indicating its strengths and weaknesses. Taking into account the most significant factors determining Russia’s readiness for digital transformation, the framework directions for supporting the digital transformation of the country’s economy are proposed.

The relationship between sentiment score and COVID-19 cases in the United States

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to have devastating effects across the globe. No nation has been free from the uncertainty brought by this pandemic. The health, social and economic tolls associated with it are causing strong emotions and spreading fear in people of all ages, genders and races. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have expressed their feelings and opinions related to a wide range of aspects of their lives via Twitter. In this study, we consider a framework for extracting sentiment scores and opinions from COVID-19–related tweets. We connect users’ sentiment with COVID-19 cases across the United States and investigate the effect of specific COVID-19 milestones on public sentiment. The results of this work may help with the development of pandemic-related legislation, serve as a guide for scientific work, as well as inform and educate the public on core issues related to the pandemic.

A Short History of Bernard Fisher’s Contributions to Randomized Clinical Trials

Dr. Bernard Fisher (1918-2019) was an early proponent of evidence-based medicine using the mechanism of prospective, multicenter, randomized clinical trials to test biological and clinical hypotheses. In this article, I trace how his early scientific work in striving to understand the nature of cancer metastasis through animal experiments led to a new, testable, clinical hypothesis: that surgery to remove only the tumor and a small amount of tissue around it was as effective as the more disfiguring operations that were then the standard treatment. Fisher’s work with the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) using large, randomized clinical trials to demonstrate the veracity of this hypothesis led to a new paradigm in which the emphasis was placed on how systemic therapies used at an early stage of disease could effectively eradicate breast cancer for many patients. This new therapeutic approach led to the successful development of new treatments, many of which are widely used today. Ultimately, the new paradigm led to successfully preventing breast cancer in women who were at high risk for the disease but who had not yet been diagnosed with the disease. Throughout his entire career, Fisher championed the use of large prospective, randomized clinical trials despite criticism from many in the medical community who strongly criticized his use of randomization as a mechanism for testing clinical hypotheses. The approach he and the NSABP employed is still considered to be the highest standard of evidence in conducting clinical studies.

Theories of Institutions

The human condition teems with institutions – intertemporal social arrangements that shape human relations in support of particular values – and the social scientific work developed over the last five decades aimed at understanding them is similarly vast and diverse. This book synthesizes scholarship from across the social sciences, with special focus on political science, sociology, economics, and organizational studies. Drawing out institutions' essentially social and temporal qualities and their varying relationships to efficiency and power, the authors identify more underlying similarity in understandings of institutional origins, maintenance, and change than emerges from overviews from within any given disciplinary tradition. Most importantly, Theories of Institutions identifies dozens of avenues for cross-fertilization, the pursuit of which can help keep this broad and inherently diverse field of study vibrant for future generations of scholars.

The Development of Learning Material Model in Writing Scientific Papers by Using Guided Inquiry Method at Universitas PGRI Sumatera Barat

This research is motivated by the difficulties of students in determining the topic of scientific writing, difficulties in conveying ideas and limitations of references. This study aims to develop a learning model for writing scientific papers using the guided inquiry method. This type of research is development research. This study uses a 4-D development research design. The results of this study are as follows: (1) the material for writing scientific papers is difficult because students do not understand the concept of Scientific Writing. (2) in developing scientific work students do not yet know the systematics of scientific writing and students often make ineffective sentences (3) students really need freedom in determining writing topics and ideas (4) most students need the concept of learning to write scientific papers, (5) most students need lecturer guidance in their writing, (6) most students need systematic scientific work concepts, (7) most students need lots of references to write scientific papers. Based on the analysis of student needs, it is necessary to develop a Guided Inquiry-Based Scientific Writing Textbook that provides opportunities for students to find their own concept of learning to write scientific papers. Through Guided Inquiry, students are trained to think critically with teacher guidance.

Is the Gamification of Scientific Work a Good Idea?

This chapter shows that, contrary to what some researchers claim, setting up the conditions for a “playful environment” is not so simple, in particular when it comes to organizing a new competition for the popularization of science (MT180®). In fact, we will see that popularization does not fit so easily into the “playful environment” desired by the organizers due to the gamified nature of the approach, which gradually colonizes the initial desire to present one's scientific work and pushes some participants to exaggerate their results in order to go as far as possible in the competition. It is therefore feared that the gamification of scientific work, while compatible with neoliberal expectations, will in fact lead to the production of bad science. The question then arises as to whether the need to turn researchers into effective communicators with a view to building the “knowledge society” advocated by international institutions can be achieved through gamified approaches, with the risk of creating an ever-greater distance between (real) scientific knowledge and citizens.

Avatars as Bodiless Characters

In this chapter, the author introduces the reader to the importance of virtual reality in human life, avatars, and communicating with digital characters and demonstrates the pervasiveness of technology's penetration into our lives, not only physically, cognitively, and emotionally, but also environmentally. As the created interpreters and representatives of scientific work as the substance subject of scientific history, avatars participate, along with robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence, in the desubjectivization, biological denaturalization, and despiritualization of man and death of biological life. The ‘cyborgization' of humans in virtual space extends the landscape of the discussion on cyborgoethics.