Examining Inter-disciplinary Commonalities in the Referents of I, We and You in Classroom Lecturer Talk

Studies have sought to establish the ‘territory of reference’ or ‘patterns of referentialities’ of I, we and you (tri-PP) in academic lectures across disciplinary supercommunities (DSs): Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences. These studies are largely from L1 context, and also report on only referents common to the three DSs, without giving attention to those at the interface of two DSs. This study, therefore, is the first attempt to examine the referents of the tri-PP at the interface of two DSs in academic lectures, using a corpus from the L2 context. A corpus of over one hundred thousand words was built for the study, and AntConc was used to search for the occurrences of the tri-PP. Drawing on the contexts and co-texts, the authors determined the referents of the tri-PP. It was found that across the tri-PP, some referents were shared by two DSs. The findings further deepen understanding of the ‘pointing’ role of personal pronouns in classroom lecturer talk and “degree of cross-disciplinary diversity…” Keywords: academic lectures, discourse referent, disciplinary variation, personal pronouns

Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds: The case of the social sciences and humanities

In this study we explore the disciplinary diversity present within subject specialties in the social sciences and humanities. Subject specialties are operationalized as textually coherent clusters of documents. We apply topic modelling to textual information on the individual document level (titles and abstracts) to cluster a multilingual set of roughly 45,000 documents into subject specialties. The dataset includes the metadata of journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters, and monographs. We make use of two indicators, namely, the organizational affiliation based on the departmental address of the authors and the cognitive orientation based on the disciplinary classifications at the publication level. First, we study the disciplinary diversity of the clusters by calculating a Hill-type diversity index. We draw an overall picture of the distribution of subject specialties over diversity scores and contrast the two indicators with each other. The goal is to discover whether some subject specialties are inherently multi- or interdisciplinary in nature, and whether the different indicators are telling a well-aligned, similar story. Second, for each cluster of documents we calculate the dominance, i.e. the relative size of the largest discipline. This proxy of disciplinary concentration gives an idea of the extent to which a specialty is disciplined. The results show that all subject specialties analyzed serve as interdisciplinary trading grounds, with outliers in both directions of the disciplinary-interdisciplinary continuum. For a large share of specialties, the dominant cognitive and organizational disciplinary classification were found to be well aligned. We present a typology of subject specialties by contrasting the organizational and cognitive diversity scores.

Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts

Situating Sustainability reframes our understanding of sustainability through related concepts, practices, and case studies. The point of departure is the continual need to be conscious of how environmental knowledge and sustainability are issues constituted by long-standing inequalities. This book addresses the necessity in sustainability science to recognize how diverse cultural histories define environmental politics today. The differing geographic scope of this volume is joined by the disciplinary diversity of the contributors and their wide-ranging areas of specialization, bringing together researchers from cultural studies, anthropology, literature, law, behavioral science, urban studies, design, and development. As a truly transdisciplinary work, Situating Sustainability calls for research guided by the humanities and social sciences in collaboration with local actors informed by histories of place. The authors of this volume believe that situating sustainability cannot limit itself to the geographic borders of nations, epistemic standpoints, or to unmasking perspectives that falsely present themselves as objective or universal. The approach includes not only material practices like extraction or disaster recovery, but extends into the domains of human rights, education, and academic interdisciplinarity. Researchers are joined by artists whose work provides a platform to conduct research at the edges of performance, knowledge production, and critical commentary on socio-ecological infrastructures. All this will enable readers to better understand what sustainability means (or might yet mean) in their own locations, and how work in one place might support the efforts of others in other places. Designed for students, scholars, and interested readers, Situating Sustainability introduces the conceptual practices that inform the leading edge of engaged research in sustainability.

The company you keep: How network disciplinary diversity enhances the productivity of researchers

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected most organizations' working environment and productivity. Organizations have had to make provision for staff to operate remotely following the implementation of lockdown regulations around the world, because the pandemic has led to restrictions on movement and the temporary closure of workplace premises. The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of the effect of this transition on the productivity of work during the pandemic, by studying a distributed network of research who collaborate remotely. We examine how the productivity of researchers is affected by the distributed collaborative networks in which they are embedded. Our goal is to understand the effects of brokerage and closure on the researchers’ publication rate, which is interpreted as an indicator of their productivity. We analyze researchers’ communication networks, focusing on structural holes and diversity, and we take into account the personal qualities of the focal researcher such as seniority. We find that disciplinary diversity among researchers' peers' increases the researchers’ productivity, lending support to the brokerage argument. In addition, we find support for two statistical interaction effects. First, structural holes moderate diversity so that researchers with diverse networks are more productive when their networks also have a less redundant structure. Diversity and structural holes, when combined, further researchers’ productivity. Second, seniority moderates diversity; so that senior researchers are more productive than junior researchers in less diverse networks. In more diverse networks, junior researchers perform as well as senior researchers. Social capital and human capital are complementary. We conclude that the benefits of diversity on researchers’ productivity are contingent on the personal qualities of the researchers and on network structure. The brokerage / closure debate needs a more nuanced understanding of causal relationships.

Where is the evidence in evidence-based law reform?

Law reform bodies frequently express a commitment to evidence-based law and policy recommendations. They also readily endorse the importance of the transparency and democratization of their processes. They do not, however, connect these two goals of evidence-based policy and transparency. This stands in contrast to the ongoing revolution in several fields of research towards open science and synthesis, which envisions transparency and open access as a means to improve the reliability of science. In this article, we suggest that several recent concerns and controversies surrounding evidence-based law reform, such as allegations of bias among officials, can be addressed through open science and synthesis. We include a novel study of 22 research syntheses commissioned by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, finding uneven adoption of even the most basic transparency measures. We end with five proposals that advance transparent evidence-based law reform, including law reform bodies requiring that commissioned reports follow basic reporting guidelines and greater disciplinary diversity among law reform staff.

Le Corbusier’s Urban Planning as a Cultural Legacy. An Approach to the Case of Chandigarh

The uniqueness and importance of Le Corbusier’s work were ratified by the recognition and inclusion of 17 of his projects as heritage legacy on UNESCO’s (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage List in 2016. Despite the disciplinary diversity of his entire career, it is his architectural work that enjoys the greatest levels of dissemination and recognition. Consequently, it is assumed that Le Corbusier’s architectural work is more protected than its urban plans. This article aims to advance the recognition of the latter. To this end, it proposes a cartographic and documentary review of his projects, a specialized bibliographic review, as well as a review of national and international databases on his built work. Of 88 built works, at least 51 have some kind of heritage protection. In any case, less attention is paid to the urban dimension of his work. The city of Chandigarh presents a series of particularities, apart from being the only Corbusierian city built, which could raise the need for its safeguarding and recognition as a cultural legacy. 20th-century urban planning, and Chandigarh in particular, require the application of criteria complementary to those usually applied in heritage protection in object-based approaches.

A large-scale validation of the relationship between cross-disciplinary research and its uptake in policy-related documents, using the novel Overton altmetrics database

Cross-disciplinary research (multi-/inter-disciplinarity) is incentivised by funding agencies to foster research outcomes addressing complex societal challenges. This study focuses on the link between crossdisciplinary research and its uptake in a broad set of policy-related documents. Using the new policyoriented database Overton, matched to Scopus, logistic regression was used in assessing this relationship in publications from FP7- and H2020-supported projects. Cross-disciplinary research was captured through two lenses at the paper level, namely from the disciplinary diversity of contributing authors (DDA) and of cited references (DDR). DDA increased the likelihood that publications were cited in policy documents, with DDR possibly making a contribution, but only when publications result from the work of few authors. Citations to publications captured by Overton were found to originate in scientific advice documents, rather than in legislative or executive records. Our approach enables testing in a general way the assumption underlying many funding programmes, namely that cross-disciplinary research will increase the policy relevance of research outcomes. Findings suggest that research assessments could benefit from measuring uptake in policy-related literature, following additional characterisation of the Overton database; of the science-policy interactions it captures; and of the contribution of these interactions within the larger policymaking process. Peer Review https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00137

Exploring new opportunities through collaboration within and beyond sectoral systems of innovation in the fourth industrial revolution

This article investigates how a leading Chinese multinational enterprise in a core sector of the fourth industrial revolution manages research collaborations within and beyond its sectoral systems of innovation to create novel innovations and push the technological frontier of the industry. We find the firm expanded its technology boundaries through collaborations, particularly multidisciplinary collaborations in both core and noncore technological areas of the industry to establish and maintain its leadership in this dynamic sector. High disciplinary diversity in the company’s collaborative research portfolio is positively associated with the novelty of its innovation outputs. Promising noncore technologies have been integrated into its production through collaborative research, thus promoting technological convergence at both the firm and the sectoral levels. As a result, the boundary of the industry is expanded.

Authorship Policies at U.S. Doctoral Universities: A Review and Recommendations for Future Policies

Intellectual contribution in the form of authorship is a fundamental component of the academic career. While research has addressed questionable and harmful authorship practices, there has largely been no discussion of how U.S. academic institutions interpret and potentially mitigate such practices through the use of institution-level authorship policies. To gain a better understanding of the role of U.S. academic institutions in authorship practices, we conducted a systematic review of publicly available authorship policies for U.S. doctoral institutions (using the 266 2018 Carnegie-classified R1 and R2 Universities), focusing on components such as specification of authorship criteria, recommendations for discussing authorship, dispute resolution processes, and guidance for faculty-student collaborations. We found that only 24% of the 266 Carnegie R1 and R2 Universities had publicly available authorship policies. Within these policies, the majority (93%) specified criteria for authorship, but provided less guidance about actual processes for applying such criteria (62%), handling authorship disputes (62%), and managing faculty-student author teams (49%). Further, we found that any discussion of dispute resolution practices typically lacked specificity. Recommendations grounded in these findings are offered for institutions to leverage their ability to guide the authorship process by adopting an authorship policy that acknowledges disciplinary diversity while still offering substantive guidance.