Social Science Articles Research Articles

Unearthing the misconduct and inaccuracies in social science research: a trend analysis of retracted articles based on retraction watch database

Purpose The purpose of this study is to comprehensively analyze the research article retractions in social sciences over the past decade (2014–2023). Design/methodology/approach The study used scientometric methods to evaluate the prevalence, patterns and factors contributing to social sciences article retractions. Bibliographic data of retracted articles were collected from the Retraction Watch Database under an agreement signed with the database. Further, citations of the retracted articles were collected from Scopus and Google Scholar. The analysis encompasses performance assessment and citation-based analysis to reveal the trend of retraction and scrutinize the impact of retracted articles. Findings Over the past decade, article retractions have shown dynamic trends, with notable fluctuations in recent years. Further, investigating the time taken for article retraction reveals the urgency of addressing issues identified soon after publication. Scientific misconduct and publication-related concerns emerge as primary factors leading to retractions. Countries such as Russia, the USA, China and publishers such as Elsevier and Taylor and Francis led in the retractions of social science articles. A significant portion of retracted works had garnered academic attention prior to retraction and even after retraction. Originality/value This study can contribute to a better understanding among scholars and stakeholders of the trends and reasons for retractions of research articles in the social sciences.

Perception of competencies for writing scientific articles in social and human sciences researchers

Considering that scientific writing presents complex challenges, we sought to determine the level of perception that social and human science researchers have about their competencies to write scientific articles, through a cross-sectional descriptive study in which 129 researchers of both sexes with various years of research experience participated. They self-assessed their writing using the Scale for Evaluating Scientific Articles in Social and Human Sciences by López-López, Tobón and Hernández-Juárez (2019), and an overall result of high level in writing competence was obtained, with a significant effect size; scoring highest in the Results and Reference List sections; while the lowest were in Style and Format and Appendices. When comparing writing competence with the variables gender, research experience or the number of books and articles published, no significant differences were found, despite the fact that in this study males presented a greater number of publications. However, the Methodology section, evaluated with the scale, research experience, as well as belonging to the male gender, were the predictor variables for the publication of articles. Finally, it is recommended that more support be given to female researchers and that more methodological training be provided to new researchers in the interest of promoting educational equity.

Expanding the data Ark: an attempt to make the data from highly cited social science papers publicly available.

Access to scientific data can enable independent reuse and verification; however, most data are not available and become increasingly irrecoverable over time. This study aimed to retrieve and preserve important datasets from 160 of the most highly-cited social science articles published between 2008-2013 and 2015-2018. We asked authors if they would share data in a public repository-the Data Ark-or provide reasons if data could not be shared. Of the 160 articles, data for 117 (73%, 95% CI [67%-80%]) were not available and data for 7 (4%, 95% CI [0%-12%]) were available with restrictions. Data for 36 (22%, 95% CI [16%-30%]) articles were available in unrestricted form: 29 of these datasets were already available and 7 datasets were made available in the Data Ark. Most authors did not respond to our data requests and a minority shared reasons for not sharing, such as legal or ethical constraints. These findings highlight an unresolved need to preserve important scientific datasets and increase their accessibility to the scientific community.

CSP and articles in Social Sciences and Humanities in Health: what has been, what is to come

CSP and articles in Social Sciences and Humanities in Health: what has been, what is to come

CSP and articles in Social Sciences and Humanities in Health: what has been, what is to come

CSP and articles in Social Sciences and Humanities in Health: what has been, what is to come

Digital modernization and public management: A bibliometric review

Introduction: the article examines the issue of digital modernization in Latin America, where, despite over a decade of efforts, progress has been slow. It focuses on the importance of e-government for modern public administration, highlighting the limited digitization of activities.Objective: to evaluate the theoretical-conceptual development of the relationship between digital modernization and public administration.Methodology: the bibliometric technique was used, drawing from Scopus documents and employing a specific search protocol, resulting in 1,602 records with metadata.Results: there is shown growth in research since 2003, with studies primarily concentrated in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Original articles in social sciences are highlighted, emphasizing the role of digital modernization in transparency and democratization of public administration.Conclusion: while there have been advancements in research since 2003, Latin American countries face significant challenges compared to other regions. The need for greater collaboration and research in this area in Latin America is emphasized to leverage the benefits of digital modernization. It is suggested to establish specific policies and strategies to drive governmental digitization and enhance the efficiency of public services, closing the existing gap

Some Insights into the Factors Influencing Continuous Citation of Retracted Scientific Papers

Once retracted, the citation count of a research paper might be intuitively expected to drop precipitously. Here, we assessed the post-retraction citation of life and medical sciences papers from two top-ranked, multidisciplinary journals Nature and Science, from 2010 to 2018. Post-retraction citations accounted for a staggering 47.7% and 40.9% of total citations (median values), respectively, of the papers included in our analysis. These numbers are comparable with those from two journals with lower impact factors, and with retracted papers from the physical sciences discipline. A more qualitative assessment of five papers from the two journals with a high percentage (>50%) of post-retraction citations, all of which are associated with misconduct, reveal different contributing reasons and factors. Retracted papers associated with highly publicized misconduct cases are more prone to being cited with the retraction status indicated, or projected negatively (such as in the context of research ethics and misconduct discussions), with the latter also indicated by cross-disciplinary citations by humanities and social sciences articles. Retracted papers that retained significant validity in their main findings/conclusions may receive a large number of neutral citations that are somewhat blind to the retraction. Retracted papers in popular subject areas with massive publication outputs, particularly secondary publications such as reviews, may also have a high background citation noise. Our findings add further insights to the nature of post-retraction citations beyond the plain notion that these are largely made through sheer ignorance or negligence by the citing authors.

The Use of Reporting Verbs in Arabic-English Social Science Articles: A Contrastive Corpus-based Analysis

يعتبر تقسيم الأفعال اللغوية إلى أفعال تصريحية (إعلامية) وأدائية (بناءة) ذات صلة خاصة باللغويين. تطور هذه الأفعال فهما لكيفية تجميع الجمل معا والطرق العديدة التي يمكن من خلالها التعبير عن الأفكار باستخدام هياكل جمل مختلفة يتم نقل المعلومات من خلال الخطابات التصريحية، في حين يتم التعبير عن الإجراءات والطلبات من خلال الأدوات اللغوية الأدائية. يستطيع اللغويون فحص اللغة بشكل أفضل من أجل المعنى والوظيفة إذا كان لديهم فهم قوي للتمييز بين نمطي الجملتين. أفعال التقارير ذات صلة بنقل نية المتحدث حيث تلعب أفعال الإبلاغ دورًا مهمًا في التواصل اليومي من خلال جعل معنى المتحدث أكثر وضوحًا. يشير استخدام الفعل "أقترح" في جملة مثل "أوصي بأن نخرج لتناول العشاء الليلة" إلى أن العبارة يتم تقديمها كاقتراح وليس كأمر. يشير استخدام كلمة "أعتقد" في عبارات مثل "أعتقد أنه يجب عليك أداء واجبك" إلى أن المتحدث يعبر عن رأي بدلاً من ذكر حقيقة. تسمح أفعال الإبلاغ للمتحدثين بنقل أفكارهم ومشاعرهم بشكل أكثر دقة في المحادثة. في حين أن أفعال التقرير تشير إلى الاستجابة العاطفية للمتحدث للمفهوم المجادل المقدم في عمل أكاديمي. تلك الأفعال تساعد في نقل قناعة المتحدث في موقعه أو المقياس الذي يعطيه للحجة. تسمح أفعال الإبلاغ أيضًا للكتاب بإخبار القارئ إذا كانوا يوافقون أو لا يوافقون على عبارة ما. يمكن رؤية أفعال الإبلاغ في تعبيرات مثل "تقترح هذه الدراسة أن ..." و "هذا الدليل يشير إلى أن ...". وبقدر ما أعلم، فإن البحث وفق منهجيات المدونات اللسانية الحاسوبية حول الأفعال التقريرية، ولا سيما الدراسات التحليلية المقارنة بين العربية والإنجليزية، نادر. وعلى الرغم من وجود دراسات لكثير من الباحثين اللغويين حول كيفية استخدام هاتين اللغتين، فإن بعض الدراسات الحديثة ناقشت بعض النتائج التي تؤيد القول حول أن المتحدثين باللغة العربية يستخدمون عبارات فعل أكثر من المتحدثين باللغة الإنجليزية في نفس القضية، بينما تستخدم اللغة العربية أفعال توضيحية أقل من الإنجليزية. ومن باب التفريق، فإن هذه الدراسة تبحث في كيفية استخدام الكتاب الأكاديميين باللغتين العربية والإنجليزية في خطاب التقرير والإبلاغ عن الأفعال وظيفيًا وموقعيًا وذلك في نصوص العلوم الاجتماعية على وجه الخصوص. Word Sketch أداة تحليل المدونات النصية تستخدم من خلال تحديد أفعال التقارير الأكثر شيوعًا في كلتا اللغتين ومقارنة استخدامها. يتم استخدام البرنامج لتوفير التردد، والذي يتوافق مع عدد تكرارات الأفعال في مقالات اللغتين. باستخدام نموذج Hyland (2002)، تُظهر النتائج أن الإبلاغ عن الأفعال في كلتا اللغتين يمكن تصنيفها إلى ثلاثة أنواع: تنفيذ البحث، وأفعال الخطاب، وأفعال الإدراك.

Ocean-human relations in the Anthropocene: mapping trends in sustainability-related marine social sciences articles

Research about ocean-human relations has significantly increased in recent years. Compared to other disciplines in the oceanic realm, the marine social sciences, as an umbrella term for diverse disciplines and research streams dealing with ocean-human relations, however only recently gained more attention. In this light, the UN Ocean Decade stresses marine social science’s pivotal role in assessing future trajectories toward more sustainable ocean-human relations. Our study aims to identify research trends in sustainability-related marine social sciences. Therefore, we thoroughly analyzed the metadata of 1,215 peer-reviewed articles published between 1991 and 2023 and retrieved from the Web of Sciences (WoS) database by applying various bibliometric analysis methods. Our study provides insights into (1) the scientific production of sustainability-related marine social sciences and its evolution (2) the main topics and research streams of sustainability-related marine social sciences, and (3) how these topics developed over time. The findings demonstrate a significant increase in annual scientific production as time progressed, with some countries and institutions contributing more than others. We identified, discussed, and visualized six research streams: (1) Perceptions and benefits of marine conservation; (2) Fisheries, aquaculture, and food security; (3) Climate change and climate change responses; (4) Coastal landscape and land use change; (5) Coastal and marine management; and (6) Development and ocean-human health. Based on those discussions, our study points to four future avenues for research and discussions marine social sciences could potentially build on. These include (1) strengthening the capacity of sustainability-related marine social sciences; (2) enhancing cross-country studies and cooperation; (3) fostering dialogue between marine natural and social scientists; and (4) making (more) sense of sustainability-related marine social science’s epistemic features.

Linguistic and semantic characteristics of articles and peer review reports in Social Sciences and Medical and Health Sciences: analysis of articles published in Open Research Central

We aimed to examine the differences in articles, peer review and editorial processes in Medical and Health Sciences vs. Social Sciences. Our data source was Open Research Central (ORC) portal, which hosts several journal platforms for post-publication peer review, allowing the analysis of articles from their submission, regardless of the publishing outcome. The study sample included 51 research articles that had Social Sciences tag only and 361 research articles with Medical and Health Sciences tag only. Levenshtein distance analysis showed that text changes over article versions in social science papers were statistically significant in the Introduction section. Articles from Social Sciences had longer Introduction and Conclusion sections and higher percentage of articles with merged Discussion and Conclusion sections. Articles from Medical and Health Sciences followed the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRaD) structure more frequently and contained fewer declarations and non IMRaD sections, but more figures. Social Sciences articles had higher Word Count, higher Clout, and less positive Tone. Linguistic analysis revealed a more positive Tone for peer review reports for articles in Social Sciences and higher Achievement and Research variables. Peer review reports were significantly longer for articles in Social Sciences but the two disciplines did not differ in the characteristics of the peer review process at all stages between the submitted and published version. This may be due to the fact that they were published on the same publication platform, which uses uniform policies and procedures for both types of articles.

Evolutionary Study of Three Decades Literatures Related to Disaster Management Agency and Public Policy: A Bibliometric Study

This study is aimed at examining scientific literatures written by international authors focusing on disaster management agency topic that are related to public policy from the first paper published in 1995 to 2022 using bibliometric study employing a database from Scopus. To visualize the results, this study utilizes VOSviewer version 1.6.17. The results showed that this topic emerged in Thailand which focused on roles of local level disaster management agency in carrying out rehabilitation and reconstruction activities in district level. However, Federal Emergency Management Agency, or the United States Disaster Management Agency, was considered to be the most researched disaster management agency. Besides, open-access social science articles dominated the type of publications in this research area. Moreover, the United States and its authors were perceived as the most productive and influential country and authors. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom was recognized as the most influential sources title with Journal “Disasters” served the most productive and influential source title. Besides, the affiliation among Austria, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States were acknowledged as the most productive and influential affiliations. The analysis also indicated that this topic developed and strongly connected to disaster and disaster management research areas. Considering the comprehensive nature of bibliometric analysis, this study may help scholars get a broad view of the relevant issues, while at the same time identifying reputable publications worth studying for reference.

Reprint of: The privilege of learning and serendipity: My principles of publishing research for a new academic era

The research community is swimming in a flood of published papers. The publishing system is vast, with more than 17 million contributors and 5500 items added daily to Scopus, building on some 15,000 years' worth of work put into the peer review system every year. These statistics make me often wonder: Why do I spend so much of my life writing and publishing papers? The answer, for me, lies in the five principles of responsibility, advancement, serendipity, mentoring, and personal growth. These are my own principles for publishing, and they explain my own fecundity in publishing articles, as well as why I so strongly support and volunteer thousands of hours of time managing a journal that publishes a large volume of social science articles every year.

Can Retracted Social Science Articles Be Distinguished from Non-Retracted Articles by Some of the Same Authors, Using Benford’s Law or Other Statistical Methods?

A variety of ways to detect problems in small sample social science surveys has been discussed by a variety of authors. Here, several new approaches for detecting anomalies in large samples are presented and their use illustrated through comparisons of seven retracted or corrected journal articles with a control group of eight articles published since 2000 by a similar group of authors on similar topics; all the articles involved samples from several hundred to many thousands of participants. Given the small sample of articles (k = 15) and low statistical power, only 2/12 of individual anomaly comparisons were not statistically significant, but large effect sizes (d > 0.80) were common for most of the anomaly comparisons. A six-item total anomaly scale featured a Cronbach alpha of 0.92, suggesting that the six anomalies were moderately correlated rather than isolated issues. The total anomaly scale differentiated the two groups of articles, with an effect size of 3.55 (p < 0.001); an anomaly severity scale derived from the same six items, with an alpha of 0.94, yielded an effect size of 3.52 (p < 0.001). Deviations from the predicted distribution of first digits in regression coefficients (Benford’s Law) were associated with anomalies and differences between the two groups of articles; however, the results were mixed in terms of statistical significance, though the effect sizes were large (d ≥ 0.90). The methodology was able to detect unusual anomalies in both retracted and non-retracted articles. In conclusion, the results provide several useful approaches that may be helpful for detecting questionable research practices, especially data or results fabrication, in social science, medical, or other scientific research.

External trade and foreign investment policy reforms in economic growth of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

Impact of social media on business performance: with reference to small and medium enterprises, Western Province, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

Why Social Science viewpoints are necessary for addressing the multistranded crisis in Sri Lanka?

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

Ibn Khaldun’s contribution and its criticism: a Sociological review

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

Patterns of romantic relationships and dating among youth in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

Determinants of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures of top 100 Standard and Poor’s Bombay Stock Exchange firms listed in India

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

The tea dance: a choreographic representation of Tamil tea plantation workers within the modern Sri Lankan folk dance repertoire

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.