When students write research papers they use a variety of sources in their paper. These sources range from web pages to research articles. The purpose of this study was to decide whether or not undergraduate students would choose to use scholarly or non-scholarly sources when presented with both types of sources in a set of search results. Twenty Duke University students were recruited for the study. They were given a research topic and asked to perform a search. Both the search results and interface were fabricated by the researcher in order to control the experimental environment. The students were asked to rate the sources found in the results, choose four sources to use for their research scenario, and finally, were asked to explain reasoning behind their choices. The findings concluded that the students in this study were more likely to choose scholarly sources over non-scholarly sources and give these scholarly sources higher ratings.

The ISI provides librarians with tools such as the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the institution specific Local Journal Utilization Report (LJUR) to aid in the management of serials collections. These tools enable librarians to respond quickly to changes in publishing practices and purchasing options. While available literature often criticizes ISI data, few studies provide concrete recommendations for improvement. This study explores two extensions to LJUR: (1) adding citation date and (2) creating institution specific impact factors. In addition, I explore the degree to which self-citations influence the ISI impact factor. Publication and citation calculations are made for three prominent southern universities’ research chemists using a corpus of full text articles drawn from 27 American Chemical Society (ACS) journals and stored in an Oracle database. The ACS research corpus impact factor simulation and ACS research corpus self-citation omission impact factor are also created and compared with current JCR data.

This thesis provides an in-depth study of the possibilities of applying bibliometric methods to the research field of literary studies. The four articles that constitute the backbone of this thesis focus on different aspects of references and citations in literary studies: from the use of references in the text to citation patterns among 34 literature journals. The analysis covers both an Anglo-Saxon context as well as research in Swedish literary studies, and the materials used include Web of Science data, references in the Swedish literature journal TFL (Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap) and applications to the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). A study is also made of the influence of one single publication—Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations—and its impact in literary studies and in wider academia. The results from the four articles are elaborated upon using a theoretical framework that focuses on differences in the social and intellectual organization of research fields. According to these theories literary studies can be described as a fragmented, heterogenic, interdisciplinary and ‘rural’ field with a diverse audience. The fragmented and rural organization of the field is reflected in low citation frequencies as well as in the difficulties in discerning research specialities in co-citation mappings, while the analysis of the intellectual base (highly cited authors) is an example of the heterogenic and interdisciplinary character of the field, as it includes authors from many fields across the humanities and the social sciences. The thesis emphasizes that bibliometric studies of research fields in the humanities need to incorporate non-English and non-journal publications in order to produce valid and fair results. Moreover, bibliometric methods must be modified in accordance with the organization of research in a particular field, and differences in referencing practices and citation patterns ought to be considered. Consequently, it is advised that bibliometric measures for evaluating research in these fields should, if used at all, be applied with great caution. / © Björn Hammarfelt 2012

Supply chains have expanded rapidly over the decades, with the aim to increase productivity, lower costs and fulfil demands in emerging markets. The increasing complexity in a supply chain hinders visibility and consequently reduces one’s control over the process. Cases of disruption such as the ones faced by Ericsson and Enron, have shown that a risk event occurring at one point of the supply chain can greatly affect other members, when the disruption is not properly controlled. Supply chain management thus faces a pressing need to maintain the expected yields of the system in risk situations. To achieve that, we need to both identify potential risks and evaluate their impacts, and at the same time design risk mitigation policies to locate and relocate resources to deal with risk events. This dissertation aims to analyse how supply chain risks could be effectively managed. This is done firstly by positioning the research agenda in supply chain risk management (SCRM). Then, methods for effective management of supply chain risk are identified and analysed. In order to find these, we develop a research framework in which the supply chain system is divided into subsystems based on the operations of make, source and deliver; as well as on material, financial and information flows. Furthermore, research questions are raised in order to understand the impact of risks on supply chains, to identify the performance measures for monitoring supply chains, and to determine risk mitigation strategies for improving system performances. This dissertation includes a bibliometric analysis of relevant literature of SCRM published in recent years. Based on the co-citation analysis, we identify the changing interest in SCRM, from performance-focused individual issues in the early years to integrated system issues with management perspective in recent years. We also identify the growing importance of information issues in SCRM. However, there is a relative lack of research into risk mitigation focusing on information flows in the literature. This dissertation also develops a conceptual model for analysing supply chain risk. The adoption of tools from the established field of reliability engineering provides a systematic yet robust process for risk analysis in supply chains. We have found that the potential use of a stand-alone tool of Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA) or a hybrid application of Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), will be most appropriate in SCRM. Apart from above mentioned studies, this dissertation then includes three manuscripts respectively investigating the risk mitigation policies in SCRM. First, we suggest a dynamic pricing policy when facing supply yield risk, such as price postponement, where price is determined only after receiving the delivery information. This postponed pricing, can improve the balance between supply and demand, especially when the delivery quantity is small, demand has a low uncertainty and there is a wide range when demand is sensible to price change. In another paper, a system dynamics model is developed to investigate the dispersion of disruption on the supply chain operation as well as along the network. Based on this simulation model, policies are tested to observe their influence to the performance of the supply chain. The study results support the benefit of a dual-sourcing strategy. Furthermore, information sharing, appropriate order splitting and time to react would further improve the supply chain performance when disruption strikes. In the last paper, we study how capacity should be expanded when a new product is introduced into the market. The major risk here is due to a quick capacity expansion with large investments which could be difficult to recover. Using the Bass diffusion model to describe demand development, we study how capacity expansion, together with sales plan could affect the economics of the system. Using sales information for the forecast, delaying the sales and adding initial inventories, should create a better scheme of cash flows. This dissertation contributes in several ways to the research field of SCRM. It plots research advancements which provide further directions of research in SCRM. In conjunction with the conceptual model, simulations and mathematical modelling, we have also provided suggestions for how a better and more robust supply chain could be designed and managed. The diversified modelling approaches and risk issues should also enrich the literature and stimulate future study in SCRM.

Knowledge, learning, and innovation are vital elements in facilitating economic development and growth. Technological change, which is a synonym for generating knowledge, the diffusion thereof, and subsequent application in the marketplace in the form of novel products and processes, i.e. innovations, has a strong effect on the collective wealth of regions and nations. Knowledge spillovers, which are unintended knowledge flows that take place among spatial (geography) and sectoral (industry) units of observation, provide a rationale for diverging growth rates among spatial units, well beyond what might be explained by variations in jurisdictional factor endowments, and thus are of particular interest in this context. Measuring and quantifying the creation and diffusion of knowledge has proven to be a challenging endeavor. One way to capture technical and economically valuable knowledge is by means of patent and patent citation analysis. Following this approach, and utilizing a novel patent database that has been specifically developed for this purpose, the present dissertation investigates the spatio-sectoral patterns of knowledge spillovers in the Canadian economy over the time period 1983 to 2007. The employed research methodology addresses existing limitations in this stream of research, and contributes to the continuing debate regarding the significance of sectoral specialization versus diversity, and local versus non-local knowledge spillovers as the main driver of knowledge formation processes leading to innovation at the sub-regional scale. The findings indicate that knowledge spillovers are localized, and furthermore, that this localization effect has increased over time for both spillovers within a particular industry, as well as between industry sectors. The analysis of micro-geographic industry specific spatio-sectoral knowledge formation processes, and the inquiry into local sectoral knowledge spillover patterns, outlines how regional evolutionary technology trajectories potentially shape the rate and direction of technological change, and consequently influence economic growth, at a particular place.

Knowledge, learning, and innovation are vital elements in facilitating economic development and growth. Technological change, which is a synonym for generating knowledge, the diffusion thereof, and subsequent application in the marketplace in the form of novel products and processes, i.e. innovations, has a strong effect on the collective wealth of regions and nations. Knowledge spillovers, which are unintended knowledge flows that take place among spatial (geography) and sectoral (industry) units of observation, provide a rationale for diverging growth rates among spatial units, well beyond what might be explained by variations in jurisdictional factor endowments, and thus are of particular interest in this context. Measuring and quantifying the creation and diffusion of knowledge has proven to be a challenging endeavor. One way to capture technical and economically valuable knowledge is by means of patent and patent citation analysis. Following this approach, and utilizing a novel patent database that has been specifically developed for this purpose, the present dissertation investigates the spatio-sectoral patterns of knowledge spillovers in the Canadian economy over the time period 1983 to 2007. The employed research methodology addresses existing limitations in this stream of research, and contributes to the continuing debate regarding the significance of sectoral specialization versus diversity, and local versus non-local knowledge spillovers as the main driver of knowledge formation processes leading to innovation at the sub-regional scale. The findings indicate that knowledge spillovers are localized, and furthermore, that this localization effect has increased over time for both spillovers within a particular industry, as well as between industry sectors. The analysis of micro-geographic industry specific spatio-sectoral knowledge formation processes, and the inquiry into local sectoral knowledge spillover patterns, outlines how regional evolutionary technology trajectories potentially shape the rate and direction of technological change, and consequently influence economic growth, at a particular place.

Cette thèse propose une étude exhaustive de l'oeuvre du philosophe allemand contemporain, Peter Sloterdijk, et des débats qu'elle soulève. En tant que figure de proue d'un renouveau remarqué du courant phénoménologique, la pensée politique de l'auteur milite en faveur de l'existence d'une gauche de tradition nietzschéenne-heideggérienne. Le phénomène « Sloterdijk » comme événement littéraire n'est pas seulement appréhendé par un strict travail d'exégèse, car il est d'abord considéré comme un phénomène social et politique qui révèle l'état du champ intellectuel allemand et qui témoigne des stratégies qui s'offrent aux acteurs intellectuels en lutte pour y obtenir (conserver) une niche. Pour ce faire, l'analyse de l'oeuvre relève d'une double lecture, politique et philosophique, textuelle et sociale. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Sloterdijk Peter, Pensée politique, Philosophie, Sociologie, Théorie, Champ intellectuel, Réseau intellectuel, Bibliométrie, Allemagne, Europe.

As the Web has become more and more important to our daily lives, algorithms that can effectively utilize the link structure have become more and more important. One such task has been to find communities in social network data. Recently, however, there has been increased interest in augmenting links with additional semantic information. We examine link classification from the point of view of scientometrics, with an eye towards applying what has been learned about scientific citation to Web linking. Some community detection algorithms are reviewed, and one that has been developed for topical community finding on the Web is adapted to typed scientific citations.

As the Web has become more and more important to our daily lives, algorithms that can effectively utilize the link structure have become more and more important. One such task has been to find communities in social network data. Recently, however, there has been increased interest in augmenting links with additional semantic information. We examine link classification from the point of view of scientometrics, with an eye towards applying what has been learned about scientific citation to Web linking. Some community detection algorithms are reviewed, and one that has been developed for topical community finding on the Web is adapted to typed scientific citations.

This thesis features a qualitative study of student source use and speech representation in two corpora of review essays that acknowledges the complexity of classroom writing contexts and the rhetorical nature of school genres. It asks how students engage with the texts they review, for what reasons, and in response to what aspects of the writing context. When considered as a distinct genre of student assignment, review essays make for a particularly interesting study of source engagement because they challenge students to maintain an authoritative voice as novices evaluating the work of an expert. In addition, citation issues in the review assignment might not be as obvious to students or their instructors as they would be, for instance, in a research paper for which multiple sources are consulted and synthesized. The review essays interrogated in this study were collected with appropriate ethics clearance from two undergraduate history courses. The analysis is extended to a small corpus of published reviews assigned as model texts in one of these courses. The study features a robust method that combined applied linguistics and discourse analysis to tease out connections between the grammatical structures of speech reports and their argumentative roles. This method involved a recursive process of classifying speech reports using Swales’ (1990) concepts of integral and non-integral citation, Thompson and Yiyun’s (1991) classifications of speech act verbs, and Vološinov (1929/1973) and Semino and Short’s (2004) models of speech reporting forms. In addition, the analysis considered the influence of the writing context on the students’ citation practices and took into account theories of rhetorical genre and student identity. The results show connections between assignment instructions and the effective and problematic ways students engaged with the texts they reviewed, such as a correlation between a directive to reduce redundancy and the absence of in-text attributions. Most notably, this study offers a fluid set of descriptors of the forms and functions of speech reports in student coursework that can be used by students, educators, plagiarism adjudicators, as well as scholars of rhetoric and composition, to illuminate some of the methods and motives of student source use.