Production Of Scientific Knowledge Research Articles

Practical Realism and the Philosophy of Science and Technology

In this article, I analyse the role of the concepts of ‘practice,’ ‘relations,’ and ‘process’ in Rein Vihalemm’s philosophy of science and the way he defined and articulated these concepts to study the production of scientific knowledge. Then, following Vihalemm’s line of reasoning, I will show how this approach is promising for thinking in a new way about some developments in contemporary sciences and technology.

The University As Infrastructure of Becoming: Re-Activating Academic Freedom Through Humility in Times of Radical Uncertainty

ABSTRACT Traditionally, the field of science and technology studies (STS) considered the scientific laboratory as the central site of knowledge production and technological development. While providing rich analyses of the social construction of scientific knowledge and the role of non-human actors, STS scholars have often neglected the university – the very context in which laboratories themselves are embedded – as a relevant object of research. In this paper, we argue for re-introducing the university as a relevant category and object of analysis by using the notion of epistemic virtues to link epistemic culture – traditionally the focus of STS – and epistemic structure – traditionally the focus of higher education studies. Advancing this line of argumentation, we make three analytical moves. First, we explore academic freedom as a specific version of negative liberty that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. We suggest that academics continuously negotiate academic freedom considering culturally and socially situated epistemic virtues such as objectivity and neutrality. Second, we introduce the notion of humility to revisit scientific knowledge production more generally and academic freedom in particular. Finally, we argue that practicing humility leads to enacting the university as an infrastructure of becoming otherwise, thereby enriching our understanding of universities as distinct and highly complex social spaces with a logic of their own.

INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS OF THE TECHNOLOGIC ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP DYNAMICS

The article deals with identifying the obstacles to the commercialization of academic research results generated by the differences in institutional environment for the production of scientific knowledge and the production of technological products by innovative start-ups. To do this, it gives the characteristics of the above-mentioned institutional environments, as well as patterns of behavior in them that do not have the character of formal or informal institutions. Particular attention is paid to psychological traits of entrepreneurs and their cognitive abilities, which may not be available to teachers and researchers at universities and research organizations. Comparison of the content of these environments gives grounds for distinguishing two types of institutional barriers: the first one is of a general economic nature and can generate significant costs for the work of innovative start-ups; the second one is intra-organizational in nature and can generate high risks of transition from science to commercial industry, preventing researchers and teachers from making decisions about creating innovative technology start-ups. The paper concludes with recommendations to reduce the level of barriers of the second type. In particular, to compensate for the risks associated with possible consequences of failure to create a startup and the difficulties of returning to the field of research activity, university management could legally guarantee a teacher or researcher a return to work in scientific or educational departments of faculties for at least five years after creating a startup.

To Catch a Cicada

This paper examines the role of tacit knowledge and embodied sonic skills involved in catching cicadas (Cicadoidea Latreille in the order Hemiptera) for scientific study in Australia. Cicada researchers rely on identifying the unique “call patterns” of male cicadas to locate populations and track individuals to net. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the authors’ own practices as cicada researchers, we demonstrate that cicada-catching involves tacit and embodied skills that are mastered in a community of practice that has a local epistemology centred on sonic skills for the multimodal production of knowledge. Through analysing their own cicada-hunting fieldwork, the authors demonstrate how sonic skills, as a form of active embodied knowing, enable the production of scientific knowledge.

Leaps of Knowledge

Chagas Disease is the main cause of heart failure in the Western Hemisphere. Initially restricted to the American continent, the people's migration to the Northern Hemisphere caused the disease to become present in the five continents. A scientific revolution occurs when an important discovery removes an obstacle to the serial production of new scientific knowledge of social interest. Such a revolution creates a paradigm accepted after experimental analysis and verification by scientists investigating the subject. An example of a leap in knowledge was the discovery of the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, its invertebrate and vertebrate hosts, an agent of a new human disease recognized by Dr. Carlos Chagas at the beginning of the twentieth century. Certainly, the seminal work of Carlos Chagas inseminates enthusiasm that is essential to disturb the minds of scientists who produce leaps of knowledge about recondite aspects of Chagas disease at the University of Brasilia.

Who Authors Social Science? Demographics and the Production of Knowledge

Author demographics are of key epistemic importance in science—shaping the approaches to and contents of research—especially in social scientific knowledge production, yet we know very little about who produces social scientific publications. We fielded an original demographic survey of nearly 20,000 sociology, economics, and communication authors in the Web of Science from 2016–2020. Our results include not only details about gender and race/ethnicity but also the first descriptive statistics on social science authors’ sexuality, disability, parental education, and employment characteristics. We find authorship in the social sciences looks very different from other measures of disciplinary membership like who holds PhDs or faculty positions. For example, half of the authors in each discipline’s journals say that they are not a member of the discipline in which they published. Moreover, social science authors are considerably less diverse than other measures of disciplinary membership. In sociology, women constitute a majority of PhDs, faculty, and American Sociological Association members; by contrast, men make up a majority of sociology’s authors. Additionally, we include a wide array of descriptive statistics across a range of demographic characteristics, which will be of interest to inequality scholars, science scholars, and social scientists engaged in diversifying their disciplines.

A study on comparison of economic and scientific performances of BRICS countries

PurposeThis study investigates the correlation between economic development and scientific knowledge production indicators in the BRICS countries from 2000 to 2020, highlighting the importance of human resources, natural resources, and innovation. Addressing a gap in the existing literature, this study aims to contribute significantly to understanding this relationship.Design/methodology/approachEmploying a descriptive statistical approach, this study utilizes GDP and per capita income as economic indicators and scientific data from WoS and SCOPUS databases, focusing on scientific document production and citations per document.FindingsThe analysis reveals a strong correlation between economic development and scientific performance within the BRICS nations during the specified period. It emphasizes the interdependence of economic progress and scientific prowess, underscoring that they cannot be considered independently.Research limitations/implicationsHowever, limitations exist, notably the reliance on specific databases that might not cover the entire scientific output and the inability to capture all factors influencing economic and scientific development.Originality/valueUnderstanding this interdependence has crucial originality. Policymakers and stakeholders in BRICS countries can leverage these insights to prioritize investments in human capital development and scientific research. This approach can foster sustainable economic growth by reducing reliance on natural resources.

Networked research and open science: the WEIWER® experience

ABSTRACT This text addresses the importance of scientific collaboration networks in the context of open science, presenting the experience achieved within the International Academic Network WEIWER®. From this particular case, it will be possible to show that scientific entrepreneurship initiatives, based on collaborative research, are an effective way to overcome the individualism still present in many university institutions, e.g. due to their traditional or conventional features. Therefore, we aim to reflect on the contribution of these research networks to the policies that sustain the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. In a current situation, in which there is a consolidation of the culture of openness, both at the governmental and academic levels, the WEIWER® experience allows us to conclude that networked research enables the construction of an open, collaborative and social space for science, respecting the autonomy, reflection and independence of each researcher. In short, we argue that in the context of open science, these research networks contribute to promote the construction of knowledge in collective settings, creating enriching dialogues and understandings on the complexity of both the research objects and designs dealt with.

Science as exploration in a knowledge landscape: tracing hotspots or seeking opportunity?

The selection of research topics by scientists can be viewed as an exploration process conducted by individuals with cognitive limitations traversing a complex cognitive landscape influenced by both individual and social factors. While existing theoretical investigations have provided valuable insights, the intricate and multifaceted nature of modern science hinders the implementation of empirical experiments. This study leverages advancements in Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to investigate the patterns and dynamic mechanisms of topic-transition among scientists. By constructing the knowledge space across 6 large-scale disciplines, we depict the trajectories of scientists’ topic transitions within this space, measuring the flow and distance of research regions across different sub-spaces. Our findings reveal a predominantly conservative pattern of topic transition at the individual level, with scientists primarily exploring local knowledge spaces. Furthermore, simulation modeling analysis identifies research intensity, driven by the concentration of scientists within a specific region, as the key facilitator of topic transition. Conversely, the knowledge distance between fields serves as a significant barrier to exploration. Notably, despite potential opportunities for breakthrough discoveries at the intersection of subfields, empirical evidence suggests that these opportunities do not exert a strong pull on scientists, leading them to favor familiar research areas. Our study provides valuable insights into the exploration dynamics of scientific knowledge production, highlighting the influence of individual cognition, social factors, and the intrinsic structure of the knowledge landscape itself. These findings offer a framework for understanding and potentially shaping the course of scientific progress.

Non-institutional model of social sciences and humanities: to the question of import of pedagogical technologies

In postmodern reality the methods of production and transmission of scientific knowledge are being transformed: along with the academic model of the social sciences and humanities, there are also non-institutional channels of humanities, which are characterized by their own ways of intellectual dialogue, pedagogical techniques and technologies. In the period of sociocultural transformation and complex challenges, it is important for academic humanists to import technologies and methods accumulated in the field of non-institutional humanities.

Indigenous DNA as a metaphor: Nation-building and scientific debates on the rediscovery of Taiwanese ancestry.

In this paper, I investigate the co-production of genetic research and national politics in post-martial law Taiwan. This entails analyzing two co-produced phenomena: the nationalization of biomedicine-in which the national discourse over racial/ethnic categories and ancestral origin increasingly shapes scientists' biomedical research; and the biomedicalization of the nation-in which people in public discourse increasingly use biomedical categories in characterizing national differences and identities. I analyze how the production and representation of scientific knowledge of the ancestral origins and genetic make-up of Taiwan have been embedded in Taiwanese politics. This includes the emergence of a new categorization into four great ethnic groups, multiculturalism, and the assertion of a distinct Taiwanese national identity, particularly in response to the People's Republic of China's claims of common ancestry. I also examine how the scientific findings produced in the lab have spilled out into both Taiwan and China through journals, media, history textbooks, and public disputes since the 1990s and brought about significant social impact.

Ethical considerations in utilizing artificial intelligence for analyzing the NHGRI’s History of Genomics and Human Genome Project archives

Understanding “how to optimize the production of scientific knowledge” is paramount to those who support scientific research—funders as well as research institutions—to the communities served, and to researchers. Structured archives can help all involved to learn what decisions and processes help or hinder the production of new knowledge. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs), we recently created the first structured digital representation of the historic archives of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health. This work yielded a digital knowledge base of entities, topics, and documents that can be used to probe the inner workings of the Human Genome Project, a massive international public-private effort to sequence the human genome, and several of its offshoots like The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE). The resulting knowledge base will be instrumental in understanding not only how the Human Genome Project and genomics research developed collaboratively, but also how scientific goals come to be formulated and evolve. Given the diverse and rich data used in this project, we evaluated the ethical implications of employing AI and LLMs to process and analyze this valuable archive. As the first computational investigation of the internal archives of a massive collaborative project with multiple funders and institutions, this study will inform future efforts to conduct similar investigations while also considering and minimizing ethical challenges. Our methodology and risk-mitigating measures could also inform future initiatives in developing standards for project planning, policymaking, enhancing transparency, and ensuring ethical utilization of artificial intelligence technologies and large language models in archive exploration.Author Contributions: Mohammad Hosseini: Investigation; Project Administration; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing. Spencer Hong: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Thomas Stoeger: Conceptualization; Investigation; Project Administration; Supervision; Writing – original draft; Writing – review & editing. Kristi Holmes: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Luis A. Nunes Amaral: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Christopher Donohue: Conceptualization, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Kris Wetterstrand: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration.

Eğitim Yönetiminde Kavramın Kuramsal Temeli ve Gelişim Süreci

People learn and use concepts, the words that refer to them, and the relationships between concepts at every age, starting from childhood. Dec. As they Decipher the relationships between concepts, they also generate new concepts and create new information, information networks and information clusters. Therefore, they make the concepts permanent by structuring them in their minds. Concepts are the basic means of thinking and can change at any time of life. Although a person has a limited amount of concept knowledge at first, he can change it through chance, experience and planned education. But while concepts learned by chance may be incomplete or incorrect, concepts can be learned correctly through education. Since it is more difficult to correct incorrect information than teaching something new, correcting misconceptions is also useful in terms of preventing information pollution and misunderstandings, understanding universal events and achieving goals. Therefore, it is of great importance to reduce misconceptions to the lowest level from childhood. However, according to the literature, although people have many misconceptions, they do not make efforts to correct them. Concepts were used in the production of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century, while they served the function of representation in the mind. In this period, information production was being produced in line with certain theories, especially positivism, with the aim of an objective knowledge that is universally valid. However, from the 1980s onwards, postmodern and poststructuralists began to criticize objectivity. Accordingly, two opinions arose. According to the absolute subjectivists, the first view, the production of scientific knowledge was impossible, while according to the critical reality, the second view, hermonotic-based concepts required a harmony between Deceptions. People are expected to come to an agreement about concepts, otherwise the concepts would have no value. For this reason, concepts positively affect scientific activities in a field, as well as provide communication between the epistemic community. Dec. Therefore, social sciences is a field of production based on partnership, which includes reconciliation and sharing of concepts. Key Words: Educational Management, Concept, Theoretical Basis of the Concept

RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT: THE ROLE OF FUNDING AGENCIES FOR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT IN BRAZIL

One of the main objectives of scientific production is to contribute to the scientific and technological development and growth of a country. To achieve this, research must go through several stages until it is published and subsequently applied in a concrete way. Therefore, it is important to know the trajectory of such studies. In this sense, the value of funding agencies in scientific production stands out. Therefore, this article provides a brief discussion about the production of scientific knowledge in research centers and the role of funding agencies in promoting them. To this end, strictly bibliographical research was carried out using articles in magazines and periodicals in order to provide readers with a perspective on funding institutions and their importance for the scientific and technological world.

Lived Experience as the Basis of Collaborative Knowing. Inclusivity and Resistance to Stigma in Co-Research

Social scientific research has become increasingly aware of power asymmetries and the elitist and exclusive nature of scientific knowledge production. These debates have resulted in more inclusive and participatory research practices. In this article, we focus on co-research, which is a participatory and multi-perspective research strategy that invites the people whom the research concerns to participate as active and influential agents throughout the research process as experts on ‘the studied world.’ Co-research is increasingly being adopted in research involving people who belong to marginalised groups or who face the threat of stigmatisation. Despite its increasing applications, engaging in co-research requires reflection on several methodological and ethical questions that so far have been underexplored in the methodological literature. In this article, we address challenges in practicing inclusion and overcoming power asymmetries in co-research, particularly when it is conducted with people who inhabit societal positions with institutionalised stigma and whose participation in research is usually highly limited. In this article, building on our own experiences from different co-research projects—with care leavers, experts-by-experience with a history of crime and mental health recoverers—we aim to contribute to this literature by specifically focusing on issues of inclusion of co-researchers who face the need to negotiate with institutionally stigmatised positions. We suggest that reflexivity on positionalities and attending to plurality in identity work could provide a fruitful tool for increasing inclusivity in co- (and peer) research. We claim that such reflexivity is crucial from the very beginning of a co-research process (including ways of inviting and recruiting co-researchers) because this stage is crucial, as it forms the basis for the following stages and for the possibility of practising inclusion—even if imperfect—throughout the process.

Teaching Constructive Replications in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Using Quantitative Data

Introduction The replication crisis in the behavioral and social sciences spawned a credibility revolution, calling for new open science research practices that ensure greater transparency, including preregistrations, open data and code, and open access. Statement of the Problem Replications of published research are an important element in this revolution as part of the self-correcting process of scientific knowledge production; however, the teaching value of replications is still underutilized thus far. Literature Review Pedagogical knowledge points to the value of replication as critical to the scientific method of test and retest. Psychology has already begun mass efforts to reproduce previous experiments. Yet, we have very few examples of how analytical and reanalysis replications, after the data come in, contribute to the reproducibility crisis and can be integrated into undergraduate and graduate courses. Teaching Implications Replications with quantitative data can be a pedagogical tool for improving student research method skills and introducing them to best research practices via learning-by-doing. Conclusion This article aims to start filling this gap by offering guidance to instructors in designing and teaching replications for students at various levels and disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences, including a supplementary teaching companion.

Pluriverse in science: Discourses of Amazonian land-use change and socio-environmental (in)justice

In the Brazilian Amazon region, social, economic, and political changing structures have increased the pressure on land, generating inequalities for the region's most vulnerable residents. Simultaneously, scientific knowledge production has increased and documented the region's different realities. This document presents a scientific discourse analysis of land-use change in the Amazonian region and its interaction with socio-environmental (in)justice, considering the pluriversal perspective. We respond to the main questions: Do hierarchies in scientific knowledge production contribute to silencing subaltern voices and hiding a pluriverse approach when writing about Amazonia land issues? And if so, how? A systematic literature review was conducted using the scientific dissemination platforms Scielo, Scopus, and WoS. The results show a disproportionate representation of some stakeholders, and some states are used as near-total representatives for the Amazonia region. Furthermore, consideration of pluriversal perspectives in the articles does not guarantee high sensibility for heterogeneity of local contexts or for making subaltern voices heard.

Translating academia. Implications for knowledge production in the social sciences and the humanities

This introduction to the special issue provides some context on the linguistic landscape that characterizes contemporary academia and on the significance of academic translation for knowledge production. It elaborates on how the adoption of English as academic lingua franca, one of the most pervasive aspects of a global university system shaped by neoliberalism, has led to the coexistence of differently placed languages in a competitive market. Most of the world’s researchers in the social sciences and the humanities today exist in highly multilingual spaces where the simultaneous use of different languages for research, writing and teaching has become routinized. However, the preponderance of English as the universal medium of what counts as globally relevant knowledge also determines the nature of mostly covert, yet widespread academic translation practices without which the functioning of the lingua franca would be impossible. These ordinary yet widely ignored translation practices are constitutive of knowledge production in a global academic space. Reflecting on the politics of translation in this highly unequal field becomes, in this context, a necessary undertaking. Such a reflection entails, on one hand, a recognition of the continuity and inseparability of writing, interpreting, and translating in shaping the production of social scientific and humanistic knowledge and, on the other, a critique of assimilatory forms of translation through which the dominance of plain English as the language of science is constructed.

ПРОБЛЕМЫ ГУМАНИЗМА В ТРУДАХ Ю.А ЖДАНОВА

The article actualizes the humanistic pathos of the legacy of the prominent scientist, educator Yuri Andreevich Zhdanov, known as the rector of Rostov State University. In his works, great attention is paid to the problem of humanism and the education of the younger generation. Culture as a technology of human activity is the basis of upbringing, education and production of scientific knowledge. The scientist foresaw that culture is the sphere that is affected from the outside. And it is she who is the defining "core", thanks to which societies preserve themselves. All natural science and humanities nourish culture with their ideas, thereby determining the value vector of civilizations.

The “Cartographic Impulse” and Its Epistemic Gains in the Process of Iteratively Mapping M87’s Black Hole

After the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released in April 2019 the first empirical images of a black hole, an astrophysical object previously thought “unseeable,” much of the public discourse has approached these images as straightforward visual depictions of a black hole. This article challenges this view by showing that the first images of a black hole went beyond merely making an invisible cosmic object visible and that the images published in April 2019 were just the first in a series of black hole images the researchers continue producing. Drawing primarily on Sybille Krämer’s concept of the cartographic impulse, the article demonstrates that the Event Horizon Telescope images are, first and foremost, epistemic tools. These epistemic tools enable researchers to actively explore various physical aspects and dynamic properties of a black hole’s immediate environment and test theoretical predictions about it, thus making this elusive environment empirically knowable. To demonstrate this, the article analyses the mapping operations that combined automated algorithmic procedures with expert human judgment and through which these images were produced, read, and interpreted. It also examines how the different Event Horizon Telescope images relate to one another, which particular epistemic functions they fulfil in the research context, under which conditions, and with which limitations, thus tracing how these images facilitate the production of new scientific knowledge about black holes.