Critical citations in knowledge construction and citation analysis: from paradox to definition

Nobody doubts the importance of the scientific performance’s evaluation. At the same time its way divides the group of experts. The present study mostly deals with the models of citation-analysis based evaluation. The aim of the authors is to present the background of the best known tool – Impact factor – since, according to the authors’ experience, to the many people use without knowing it well. In addition to the „nonofficial impact factor” and Euro-factor, the most promising index-number, h-index is presented. Finally new initiation – Index Copernicus Master List – is delineated, which is suitable to rank journals. Studying different indexes the authors make a proposal and complete the method of long standing for the evaluation of scientific performance.

AbstractIn the field of scientometrics, the principal purpose for author co-citation analysis (ACA) is to map knowledge domains by quantifying the relationship between co-cited author pairs. However, traditional ACA has been criticized since its input is insufficiently informative by simply counting authors’ co-citation frequencies. To address this issue, this paper introduces a new method that reconstructs the raw co-citation matrices by regarding document unit counts and keywords of references, named as Document- and Keyword-Based Author Co-Citation Analysis (DKACA). Based on the traditional ACA, DKACA counted co-citation pairs by document units instead of authors from the global network perspective. Moreover, by incorporating the information of keywords from cited papers, DKACA captured their semantic similarity between co-cited papers. In the method validation part, we implemented network visualization and MDS measurement to evaluate the effectiveness of DKACA. Results suggest that the proposed DKACA method not only reveals more insights that are previously unknown but also improves the performance and accuracy of knowledge domain mapping, representing a new basis for further studies.

In the present paper I will study conversations in front of museum showcases as a specific form of knowledge communication. After presenting my understanding of the concepts“knowledge communication” and “knowledge”, which are informed by conversation analysis, I will explore two characteristic aspects of the ‘showcase conversations’ by means of a number of detailed analyses of short extracts of these conversations. First, I will show how knowledge is interactively produced and made publicly visible, and second, how people use the complex multimodal environment of the showcase as a basis for their knowledge construction, and how they manage to ‘tie together’ different semiotic “modes” which are visible and readable in display cases. The analyses of this paper are based on a corpus collected in a paleontological museum. The conversations have been recorded in a kind of ‘field experiment’: Probands have been asked to watch a showcase together and to summarize its content. While doing so they were filmed.

Resumen: Los procesos de formación de profesores han estado fuertemente influenciados por una lógica aplicacionista y una visión fragmentada y prescriptiva de la naturaleza del conocimiento. Se puede observar una enseñanza basada en la oralidad, en un bajo trabajo práctico y una escasa vinculación con la realidad educativa y los requerimientos del contexto. Se hace necesario que en dichos procesos se reconozca a los futuros profesores como sujetos de conocimiento con quienes se debiese generar una estructura curricular práctica activa y reflexiva.El reconocer la complejidad de los procesos que se llevan a cabo en el contexto educacional, hace necesario transitar desde una lógica instrumental/mecanicista, proceso-producto a una perspectiva epistemológica donde se rescate el dinamismo del ámbito educacional y la complejidad del sistema social en que éste se encuentra inserto. Palabras clave: Formación Inicial Docente - Construcción de Conocimiento Profesional – Prácticas – Reflexión Profesional Abstract Teacher education processes have been heavily  influenced by application logic, as well as, to a fragmented and prescriptive vision of the nature of knowledge, instead of the construction of it. A teaching process based on the predominance of oral discourse, low practical work, and a limited relation with educational reality and context needs, has been  observed. It seems necessary to recognize student - teachers as knowledge subjects with whom there should be an active/reflective curricular activity, and also recognize the complexity of the processes that take place in the educational context. In other words, it is necessary to move from an instrumental, process/ product perspective towards an epistemological perspective able to recognize the dynamism in the educational system and the complexity of the social system in which it is immersed. Key Words: Initial Teacher Formation- Professional Knowledge Construction- Practicum- Professional Reflection