Subsequent Academic Career Research Articles

Doing reflexivity in educational research: identifying perspectives to inform positionality

ABSTRACT This paper presents an innovative approach to examine reflexivity in educational research. Adapting Brookfield’s autobiographical lenses to identify the four perspectives from a personal life history (as the mother of a child with multiple chronic illnesses who died aged 18) and professional perspectives (as a paediatric nurse, a teacher, and a researcher) provided a clear structure to identify and articulate reflexivity. The paper draws on my doctoral thesis, a case history which explored how practitioners in early childhood education and care settings created inclusive environments for young children with chronic health conditions. The participants included parents of children with chronic health conditions, thus presenting ethical dilemmas regarding reflexivity. The paper includes vignettes from my thesis which include deeply personal accounts to illustrate how the four perspectives influenced my research. This scholarly engagement set the foundations for my subsequent academic career and for my personal development. The paper concludes with the assertion that engaging with reflexivity is not only a vital ingredient of educational research but also has implications for improving practice, as well as being a tool for personal development.

Письма профессора И. В. Попова из научной командировки 1901–1902 гг. профессору С. И. Смирнову: к реконструкции академических связей

In this publication are presented the letters written by Prof. of Moscow Theological Academy I. V. Popov. The letters of Prof. I. V. Popov, written during the period of his internship in German universities (1901–1902), and addressed to his trusted friend, Prof. of Moscow Theological Academy S. I. Smirnov. These letters are interesting in two respects: on the one hand, because they provide Popov’s impressions of his trip abroad, which throw light on his subsequent academic career, particularly in the field of organization and reform of native theological education; on the other hand, because they reveal the nature of the relationship between the two professors, and clearly show Popov’s intellectual influence on his friend and colleague Smirnov during the preparation of his future dissertation “The Spiritual Father in in the Early Eastern Church” (1906). Popov helps to Smirnov to adjust his view of the chosen research problem, which, according to his original plan, should have concerned a more comprehensive treatment of the sources, and considerably broaden the subject of his research. The published letters are held in the manuscripts department of the Russian State Library in the collection of S. I. Smirnov.

What is the best article publishing strategy for early career scientists?

To date, it remains unclear how different approaches to early career publishing behaviors (e.g., publishing papers in the same journal or in different journals) may benefit a young scholar’s career success. In this paper, we develop a quantitative understanding of this question, analyzing 2982 qualified authorships who have academic ages ≥ 5 years and publications ≥ 3 during the first five years of their careers from 37,542 publications in three fields of science. We defined author categories by three particular publishing behaviors, and determined how authors performed in their subsequent academic careers by using six bibliometric proxies. From the results of Welch’s ANOVA and Games–Howell multiple comparisons test, we found that the best publishing choice included publishing some of the author’s papers in the same journal. This early career publishing choice may produce a dramatic increase in career success as seen in higher numbers of publications and collaborators, and a higher h-index, with different magnitudes for different scientific fields and authorships. Our findings illustrate the role that early career publishing behavior plays in relation to future career success and indicate that in order to maximize career outcomes, an advantageous publishing strategy for early career scholars is to publish some of their papers in the same journal.

Academic success in America: analytic philosophy and the decline of Wittgenstein

ABSTRACTThere is a rather widespread consensus, among historians of philosophy, concerning the decline of Wittgenstein amid recent analytic philosophy. However, the exact import of such a decline, its chronological development, as well as its causes and several other features, are difficult to ascertain with the traditional methods of the history of philosophy. In this article we applied a distant reading approach, and a variety of other quantitative methods, trying to provide a more reliable and accurate account of Wittgenstein’s decline. We focused on a corpus consisting of the metadata of US PhD dissertations in philosophy from 1981 to 2010 (although other kinds of data are also taken into consideration), and we tried to relate the topic of the dissertation to the success of the candidate in his/her subsequent academic career. The results of this analysis, corroborated by other evidence, allowed us to put forth the more reliable and accurate account just hinted at, and at the same time to suggest – as a contribution to external history of philosophy – a plausible mechanism at the basis of the decline itself, notably a process driven by those who controlled the recruitment policies in the philosophy departments.

The Long-term Impact of International Study: Indonesian Graduate Students in Japan and Their Subsequent Academic Careers in Indonesia

This paper examines the international-student perspective of the long-term impact of international study. Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study, this paper focuses on the learning by Indonesian graduate students in the Japanese research and teaching koza communities at Japanese higher-education institutions, and it examines the long-term influence of studying in Japan on their subsequent academic careers in Indonesia. It was found that alumni selectively chose to adapt to the teaching and research practices that they had positively valued in their respective koza when settling into their subsequent academic careers in Indonesia. Overall, the former international students that were interviewed gave a positive evaluation of their experiences in Japan and had adapted the Japanese koza methods that they felt would work well in Indonesia. This paper clarifies some of the long-term impacts of international study on international students.

Successful mentors in academia: are they teachers, sponsors and/or collaborators?

ABSTRACTMentors in academia may act as teachers, sponsors and/or collaborators. However, so far there was no evidence on which role mentors should enact to best promote their mentees’ careers. This paper focuses on mentors in academia who are not the academic advisor. We provide first evidence on the relationship between the perceived role of mentors as teachers, sponsors and/or collaborators and mentees’ subsequent academic career success. Specifically, we find that mentees who perceive their mentors as sponsors who extend their social networks are most successful – in particular if they perceive their mentors also as teachers. Further, we find that collaborating with mentors who are not their academic advisors on joint research projects has negative implications for mentees’ subsequent career success.

Gender differences in higher education from a life course perspective: transitions and social inequality between enrolment and first post-doc position

In the last decades, a vast number of post-industrialised economies have experienced a growing participation of women in higher education. However, men and women still differ with regard to their subsequent academic careers and labour market prospects. While several studies have disentangled the cumulative process of gender inequalities along the path to higher education, few studies cover two or more subsequent transitions in the academic career following graduation from upper-secondary education. We have investigated gender differences at five educational stages between graduation from upper-secondary education and the first post-doc position. To explain gender differences, we have integrated arguments of individual decision-making and educational, familial and work context conditions. This life course perspective leads us to propose several hypotheses on why the academic careers of men and women would differ in terms of transitions to the next education stage and graduation. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset which covers a large part of individual educational and academic careers of a cohort of students, beginning at the age of 20 years and extending up to the age of 40 years. Our results show that gender differences are more pronounced at the beginning of the academic career and tend to fade out at later stages. In particular, gender differences occur most strongly at transitions to the next educational stage rather than being caused by different graduation rates. These differences can be explained only to a very minor extent by performance. Separated analysis shows that men and women differ in their reasons to start or stop an academic career, with family circumstances in particular having different consequences.

The role of OM EDEN in building the EurOMA community

PurposeDoctoral education (DE) is central to the development and application of operations management (OM) thinking. The European Doctoral Educational Network (EDEN) seminar on research methodology in OM is a structured initiative developed in 1999 by European Operations Management Association (EurOMA) and European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM). This intensive five-day seminar has run annually since and, to date, has engaged 486 students. The purpose of this paper is to ask: what role has the OM EDEN seminar played in the formation and academic career development of doctoral researchers, and how has it contributed to the development of EurOMA as a community of practice?Design/methodology/approachThe authors developed a retrospective case on the design, launch and growth of the OM EDEN seminar employing two data gathering methods (collecting secondary and archival data, and a survey of four selected seminar participants) and a social network analysis.FindingsThe EDEN seminar is an effective educational intervention in developing doctoral researchers and their subsequent academic careers. The seminar has also contributed to EurOMA as a community of practice, bringing faculty together to teach, write and publish leading edge contributions in research methods for OM.Research limitations/implicationsThe case is focused on the OM EDEN seminar only, within which the survey is limited to four of the early participants. While another set of participants might respond differently in detail, the authors’ expectation is that participant perception of the role of the seminar would not change. The paper provides an exemplar for European academic associations to guide how they might explore the formation and academic career development of doctoral candidates within a community of practice.Practical implicationsThe seminar merits the ongoing support of EurOMA and EIASM, not just in educating doctoral students but also in bringing faculty together to publish leading edge contributions to the OM domain.Social implicationsThe paper draws on the areas of student formation, academic career development and communities of practice to illustrate the role played by the OM EDEN seminar.Originality/valueThis paper is the first description, analysis and reflection on the role played by the OM EDEN seminar.

L’IMPORTANZA DEI PREREQUISITI E DELLO SCREENING PRECOCE NELLA SCUOLA DELL’INFANZIA

Questo contributo si propone di sottolineare l’importanza di alcune competenze cognitive, detti prerequisiti, che sono implicate nell’acquisizione delle abilità di lettura e scrittura come ad esempio: la conoscenza dell’alfabeto; la consapevolezza fonologica; la denominazione rapida automatica (RAN); la memoria fonologica e la processazione visiva. Numerose ricerche, anche internazionali, mostrano l’importanza dell’esercizio di tali abilità all’interno della scuola dell’infanzia anche ai fini della prevenzione dello sviluppo di difficoltà di apprendimento e/o di veri e propri disturbi nella successiva carriera accademica del bambino. Inoltre, la realizzazione di interventi didattici mirati allo sviluppo di tali prerequisiti cognitivi favorisce l’incremento e/o il recupero delle strumentalità della lettoscrittura. In tale scenario, diviene fondamentale riflettere sulle modalità di screening precoce che è possibile attivare all’interno della scuola dell’infanzia e sui relativi strumenti di assessment che è possibile utilizzare. Di conseguenza, sono passati in rassegna alcuni dei principali strumenti psicometrici editi in Italia, dal 1999 ad oggi, per la valutazione dei prerequisiti delle abilità di letto-scrittura in allievi a partire dai 5 anni di età.

The autobiography of an African princess

The Autobiography of an African Princess by Fatima Massaquoi is the third literary effort chronicling the Massaquoi family from Sierra Leone and Liberia. The two previous works described the lives of male family members. The first narrated the story of Hans J. Massaquoi (1926–2013), a mixed-race youth who came of age in Nazi Germany. The second book was a biography of Hans Massaquoi’s grandfather, Momulu Massaquoi (1870–1938), a Vai nobleman and high-ranking Liberian government official. Fatima Massaquoi (1904–1978) was the daughter ofMomoluMassaquoi. She was also dean of the Liberal Arts College at the University of Liberia and the founder of the University of Liberia’s Institute of African Studies. The Autobiography recounts her childhood in Liberia and subsequent academic career as a teenager and young woman in Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. Massaquoi’s personal experiences and observations as a young village girl in Liberia are an invaluable account of the Vai and otherWest African people’s methods of socializing and educating young people to take their place in society. The Sande society for young girls and the Poro society for youngmen are the traditional vehicles for passing on cultural and spiritual knowledge that prepare youngsters for the responsibilities of adult life. Fatima discusses how the Sande society teaches girls child rearing, cooking, fishing, dancing, knowledge of herbs, and how to care for her future home and husband. According to Fatima, a young girl would learn from Sande “everything she needs to become a well-bred and functional woman in the community.” One unfortunate aspect of traditional society, however, is that it could be rigorous. It has the tendency to mete out corporal punishment for relatively minor offenses. For example, Fatima’s stepmother punished her for taking food BOOK REVIEW

Academic genealogy as an indicator of interdisciplinarity: An examination of dissertation networks in Library and Information Science

Interdisciplinarity has been studied using cognitive connections among individuals in corresponding domains, but rarely from the perspective of academic genealogy. This article utilizes academic genealogy network data from 3,038 PhD dissertations in Library and Information Science (LIS) over a span of 80 years (1930–2009) to describe interdisciplinary changes in the discipline. Aspects of academic pedigree of advisors and committee members are analyzed, such as country, school, and discipline of highest degree, to reveal the interdisciplinary features of LIS. The results demonstrate a strong history of mentors from fields such as education and psychology, a decreasing trend of mentors with LIS degrees, and an increasing trend in mentors receiving degrees in computer science, business, and communication, among other disciplines. This work proposes and explores the use of academic genealogy as an indicator of interdisciplinarity and calls for additional research on the role of doctoral committee composition in a student's subsequent academic career.

The Italian Veterinary Medicine Admission Test: Analysis of Student Intake in the Years 2007, 2008, and 2009, and of the Test's Relationship with Students' Academic Careers

The present paper analyzes the admission test administered to candidates to the veterinary medicine program in Italy for the academic years 2007-2008, 2008-2009, and 2009-2010 nationwide as well as the University of Pisa student intake from 2001-2002 through 2009-2010, comparing the relationship between the admission test and students' academic careers at Pisa. This paper finds that the Italian system of a locally enforced fixed intake number does not select the best possible candidates for admission because (1) there are significant variations in the candidates' preparation among the different locations where the test is held, (2) the subjects tested are not equally selective in identifying the best candidates, and (3) there is a very strong relationship between candidates' performance on the admission test and the subsequent academic career of the admitted candidates. In its findings, this study in part contradicts what is commonly believed by the Italian veterinary medicine community, and, as a result, it is extremely important that care is taken in the decision-making process-in the process, that is, of identifying a fixed intake number and of selecting the subjects to be tested on the admission test.

Predictors of Successful Completion of Gastroenterology Research

Purpose: The American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) and other professional gastroenterology organizations provide annual funding for gastroenterology research. The optimal use of resources mandates understanding of predictive factors associated with successful completion of funded research projects and subsequent academic career advancement. The goals of our study were to evaluate a) features of ACG-funded clinical research grant applications that are associated with subsequent completion and publication of the study, and b) features of the grant recipient that predict subsequent career advancement in academic medicine. Methods: All grants awarded by the ACG for clinical research projects between 1983 and 2002 were identified. Subsequent publication of study findings in manuscript form in the peer-reviewed medical literature was assessed. An analysis of the CRISP data was searched to assess the success in receiving independent funding from the NIH. The current institution of the Primary Investigator, academic or non-academic, was identified using directories of the major gastrointestinal professional organizations. Results: The ACG bestowed 307 clinical research awards with a total value of $3595954 (2002 value, $4269894) on 277 investigators from 1983 to 2002. Of the 307 awardees, 38% were trainees, 51% had completed training and 11% unknown. Over half of the award recipients came from institutions ranked in the top 50 organizations receiving NIH funding. The area of research most commonly funded was endoscopy (23.5%), followed by hepatology (19.0%) and motility (18.0%). Overall, 59.4% of funded studies proceeded to publication with a mean time to publication of 3 years. Only current position in an academic institution (67% vs. 44% of non-academic, p= 0.0002) and non-trainee status (70% vs. 53%, p= 0.007) were associated with publication. Of the 277 funded investigators, 66.3% subsequently remained in academic medicine. Investigator gender, rank of institution and area of research were not predictive of remaining in academic medicine, using multivariate logistic regression analysis. Conclusions: Over half of ACG clinical research awards ultimately parlay into published manuscripts. Non-trainees and members of academic institutions appeared more likely to complete their studies to publication. The majority of recipients of research grants remain in academic medicine.

Richard F. Edlich, MD, PhDRecipient of Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota Medical Alumni Society

On May 20, 2005, Dr. Richard F. Edlich, MD, PhD, was the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Minnesota Medical Alumni Society. It is the purpose of this report to review his academic contributions, which have resulted in dramatic improvements in healthcare in our nation. Dr. Edlich began his general surgical training at the University of Minnesota under the guidance of his beloved mentor, Dr. Owen H. Wangensteen. During his 8-year surgical residency, Dr. Edlich spent 4 years in Dr. Wangensteen's multidisciplinary research laboratory. This unique research opportunity allowed him to initiate a wide variety of important clinical investigations involving the biology of wound repair and infection, the control of gastrointestinal hemorrhage, as well as the revascularization of the ischemic myocardium. After Dr. Edlich completed his 8-year surgical residency training, Dr. Wangensteen selected a 2-year plastic surgical residency at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center for Dr. Edlich, which would allow him to complete his plastic surgical training. During his plastic surgical training and subsequent academic career at the University of Virginia, Dr. Edlich modeled his clinical and research training after that of Dr. Owen Wangensteen. Working with gifted scientists, Dr. Edlich championed the development of revolutionary advances in emergency medical care as well as burn care in our nation. He left the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center in 2001 to expand his research interest by participating in a unique multicenter evaluation of surgical products, to accept the special opportunity of being Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Long-Term Effects of Medical Implants, and to assume a leadership position as Director of Trauma Research, Prevention and Education at Legacy Emanuel Hospital (Portland, Oregon). His academic journey that involves his beloved 2000 students is outlined in this report.

Streptomycin, Schatz v. Waksman, and the Balance of Credit for Discovery

A recent article in Nature, arguing that “the misallocation of credit is endemic in science,” used Selman Waksman as an illustration, claiming that the true discoverer of streptomycin was one of his graduate students. The article received wide publicity and seriously damaged Waksman's great reputation. What actually happened was that the success of penicillin stimulated Merck to fund research by Waksman, a soil scientist, into the collection of actinomycetes that he had assembled over thirty years. He applied the systematic, uncreative testing techniques that had made the German pharmaceutical industry so successful to these, and streptomycin was discovered within a matter of months. Work in the Mayo Institute then showed that it was marvelously effective against tuberculosis, and Waksman received the Nobel Prize for it in 1952. The test that turned out to be the crucial one could have been carried out by any of several students, but the lucky one was Albert Schatz. He then sued the university for a share of the royalties payable by Merck and also petitioned the Nobel committee to include him in the award. Although he obtained a very substantial out-of-court settlement, this probably damaged his subsequent academic career, and he has never ceased to argue his case for recognition, of which the Nature article is a reflection. To claim that Waksman took credit properly due to Schatz is to fail to understand that once pharmaceutical research had become primarily a matter of large-scale, routine testing, little individual creativity was left in this work. Credit for any successful results must therefore be given to whoever is the originator or director of a particular program. Nature refused to publish evidence that this case could not be used as an example of misallocation of credit for discovery. This in itself illustrates that editors of scientific journals should be every bit as mindful of scientists' reputations as they are of scientific facts.

Streptomycin, Schatz v. Waksman, and the balance of credit for discovery.

A recent article in Nature, arguing that "the misallocation of credit is endemic in science," used Selman Waksman as an illustration, claiming that the true discoverer of streptomycin was one of his graduate students. The article received wide publicity and seriously damaged Waksman's great reputation. What actually happened was that the success of penicillin stimulated Merck to fund research by Waksman, a soil scientist, into the collection of actinomycetes that he had assembled over thirty years. He applied the systematic, uncreative testing techniques that had made the German pharmaceutical industry so successful to these, and streptomycin was discovered within a matter of months. Work in the Mayo Institute then showed that it was marvelously effective against tuberculosis, and Waksman received the Nobel Prize for it in 1952. The test that turned out to be the crucial one could have been carried out by any of several students, but the lucky one was Albert Schatz. He then sued the university for a share of the royalties payable by Merck and also petitioned the Nobel committee to include him in the award. Although he obtained a very substantial out-of-court settlement, this probably damaged his subsequent academic career, and he has never ceased to argue his case for recognition, of which the Nature article is a reflection. To claim that Waksman took credit properly due to Schatz is to fail to understand that once pharmaceutical research had become primarily a matter of large-scale, routine testing, little individual creativity was left in this work. Credit for any successful results must therefore be given to whoever is the originator or director of a particular program. Nature refused to publish evidence that this case could not be used as an example of misallocation of credit for discovery. This in itself illustrates that editors of scientific journals should be every bit as mindful of scientists' reputations as they are of scientific facts.

Discriminant analytic determination of prognostic variables from child psychiatric examination for school achievement in special education studies

Scores on tests administered to learning disabled children in grade one during their examination by a child psychiatrist were analyzed for their predictive value with regard to the children's subsequent academic careers and type of school later attended. Upon starting school the learning disabled children exhibited marked deficits in intelligence and language and motor development. Variables predictive of the type of school to be attended later were intelligence scores and motor performance.