RSS 1.0Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences
Recent Submissions
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Football and fetishismProfessional association football functions as a fetish which disavows both the foundational loss inherent to subjectivity and more subsidiary forms of symbolic castration produced by contemporary capitalism. This article analyses the various forms of castration and its disavowal inherent to the game and its fandom, and argues that football ritualises and reinforces the ideological illusion of the subject as an active rational agent within an actuality of passivity and loss.
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Can first or last name uniqueness help to identify diaspora researchers from any country?Purpose: Diaspora researchers work in one country but have ancestral origins in another, either through moves during a research career (mobile diaspora researchers) or by starting research in the target country (embedded diaspora researchers). Whilst mobile researchers might be tracked through affiliation changes in bibliometric databases, embedded researchers cannot. This article reports an evidence-based discussion of which countries’ diaspora researchers can be partially tracked using first or last names, addressing this limitation. Design/methodology/approach: A frequency analysis of first and last names of authors of all Scopus journal articles 2001-2021 for 200 countries or territories. Findings: There are great variations in the extent to which first or last names are uniquely national, from Monserrat (no unique first names) to Thailand (81% unique last names). Nevertheless, most countries have a subset of first or last names that are relatively unique. For the 50 countries with the most researchers, authors with relatively national names are always more likely to research their name-associated country, suggesting a continued national association. Lists of researchers’ first and last name frequencies and proportions are provided for 200 countries.
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In which fields do higher impact journals publish higher quality articles?The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and other indicators that assess the average citation rate of articles in a journal are consulted by many academics and research evaluators, despite initiatives against overreliance on them. Undermining both practices, there is limited evidence about the extent to which journal impact indicators in any field relate to human judgements about the quality of the articles published in the field’s journals. In response, we compared average citation rates of journals against expert judgements of their articles in all fields of science. We used preliminary quality scores for 96,031 articles published 2014-18 from the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021. Unexpectedly, there was a positive correlation between expert judgements of article quality and average journal citation impact in all fields of science, although very weak in many fields and never strong. The strength of the correlation varied from 0.11 to 0.43 for the 27 broad fields of Scopus. The highest correlation for the 94 Scopus narrow fields with at least 750 articles was only 0.54, for Infectious Diseases, and there was only one negative correlation, for the mixed category Computer Science (all), probably due to the mixing. The average citation impact of a Scopus-indexed journal is therefore never completely irrelevant to the quality of an article but is also never a strong indicator of article quality. Since journal citation impact can at best moderately suggest article quality it should never be relied on for this, supporting the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
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In which fields are citations indicators of research quality?Citation counts are widely used as indicators of research quality to support or replace human peer review and for lists of top cited papers, researchers, and institutions. Nevertheless, the relationship between citations and research quality is poorly evidenced. We report the first large-scale science-wide academic evaluation of the relationship between research quality and citations (field normalised citation counts), correlating them for 87,739 journal articles in 34 field-based UK Units of Assessment (UoAs). The two correlate positively in all academic fields, from very weak (0.1) to strong (0.5), reflecting broadly linear relationships in all fields. We give the first evidence that the correlations are positive even across the arts and humanities. The patterns are similar for the field classification schemes of Scopus and Dimensions.ai, although varying for some individual subjects and therefore more uncertain for these. We also show for the first time that no field has a citation threshold beyond which all articles are excellent quality, so lists of top cited articles are not pure collections of excellence, and neither is any top citation percentile indicator. Thus, whilst appropriately field normalised citations associate positively with research quality in all fields, they never perfectly reflect it, even at high values. Keywords: Research evaluation; Citation
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Predicting article quality scores with machine learning: The UK Research Excellence FrameworkNational research evaluation initiatives and incentive schemes choose between simplistic quantitative indicators and time-consuming peer/expert review, sometimes supported by bibliometrics. Here we assess whether machine learning could provide a third alternative, estimating article quality using more multiple bibliometric and metadata inputs. We investigated this using provisional three-level REF2021 peer review scores for 84,966 articles submitted to the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021, matching a Scopus record 201418 and with a substantial abstract. We found that accuracy is highest in the medical and physical sciences Units of Assessment (UoAs) and economics, reaching 42% above the baseline (72% overall) in the best case. This is based on 1000 bibliometric inputs and half of the articles used for training in each UoA. Prediction accuracies above the baseline for the social science, mathematics, engineering, arts, and humanities UoAs were much lower or close to zero. The Random Forest Classifier (standard or ordinal) and Extreme Gradient Boosting Classifier algorithms performed best from the 32 tested. Accuracy was lower if UoAs were merged or replaced by Scopus broad categories. We increased accuracy with an active learning strategy and by selecting articles with higher prediction probabilities, but this substantially reduced the number of scores predicted.
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The concurrence of anti-racism and anti-casteismThe article considers three interlocking ways in which we can understand the concurrence of anti-racism and anti-casteism in the Indian diaspora. First, at the level of experience—of UK activists and campaigners—it has been found that the concurrence of anti-racism and anti-casteism is not conclusively determined at this level. Second, by a juxtaposition of the conceptual apparatus of ‘caste’ and ‘race’ the article considers the fault lines—illuminating or obfuscating—that appear in conceptualising anti-casteism as a form of anti-racism. Here, the sociality of caste is found to be important, the operation of racialisation underpinning anti-racist practice. Finally, by considering the legal apparatus available in a given jurisdiction (UK), the article evaluates the feasibility of measures that might facilitate the actualising of anti-casteism as a form of anti-racism through the practice of litigation to allow a pragmatic capturing of the experience of casteism as a form of racism.
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Is research funding always beneficial? A cross-disciplinary analysis of UK research 2014-20Whilst funding is essential for some types of research and beneficial for others, it may constrain academic choice and creativity. Thus, it is important to check whether it ever seems unnecessary. Here we investigate whether funded UK research tends to be higher quality in all fields and for all major research funders. Based on peer review quality scores for 113,877 articles from all fields in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, we estimate that there are substantial disciplinary differences in the proportion of funded journal articles, from Theology and Religious Studies (16%+) to Biological Sciences (91%+). The results suggest that funded research is likely to be higher quality overall, for all the largest research funders, and for 30 out of 34 REF Units of Assessment (disciplines or sets of disciplines), even after factoring out research team size. There are differences between funders in the average quality of the research supported, however. Funding seems particularly associated with higher research quality in health-related fields. The results do not show cause and effect and do not take into account the amount of funding received but are consistent with funding either improving research quality or being won by high quality researchers or projects.
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Does the perceived quality of interdisciplinary research vary between fields?Purpose: To assess whether interdisciplinary research evaluation scores vary between fields. Design/methodology/approach: We investigate whether published refereed journal articles were scored differently by expert assessors (two per output, agreeing a score and norm referencing) from multiple subject-based Units of Assessment (UoAs) in the REF2021 UK national research assessment exercise. The primary raw data was 8,015 journal articles published 2014-20 and evaluated by multiple UoAs, and the agreement rates were compared to the estimated agreement rates for articles multiply-evaluated within a single UoA. Findings: We estimated a 53% agreement rate on a four-point quality scale between UoAs for the same article and a within-UoA agreement rate of 70%. This suggests that quality scores vary more between fields than within fields for interdisciplinary research. There were also some hierarchies between fields, in the sense of UoAs that tended to give higher scores for the same article than others. Research limitations/implications: The results apply to one country and type of research evaluation. The agreement rate percentage estimates are both based on untested assumptions about the extent of cross-checking scores for the same articles in the REF, so the inferences about the agreement rates are tenuous. Practical implications: The results underline the importance of choosing relevant fields for any type of research evaluation. Originality: This is the first evaluation of the extent to which a careful peer review exercise generates different scores for the same articles between disciplines.
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Can social protection tackle emerging risks from climate change, and how? A framework and a critical reviewClimate change is transforming the risks individuals and households face, with potentially profound socioeconomic consequences including increased poverty, inequality, and social instability. Social protection is a policy tool that governments have used to help individuals and households manage risks linked to income and livelihoods, and to achieve societal outcomes such as reducing poverty and inequality. Despite its potential as a policy response to climate change, the integration of social protection within the climate policy agenda is currently limited. While the concept of risk is key to both sectors, different understandings of the nature and scope of climate change impacts, their implications, and of the adequacy of social protection instruments to address them, contribute to the lack of policy and practice integration. Our goal is to bridge this cognitive gap by highlighting the potential of social protection as a policy response to climate change. Using a climate risk lens, we first explore how climate change drives risks that are within the realm of social protection, and their implications, including likely future trends in demand for social protection. Based on this analysis, we critically review existing arguments for what social protection can do and evidence of what it currently does to manage risks arising from climate change. From the analysis, a set of reconceptualised roles emerge for social protection to strategically contribute to climate resilient development.
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Why are co-authored academic articles more cited: Higher quality or larger audience?Collaboration is encouraged because it is believed to improve academic research, supported by indirect evidence in the form of more co-authored articles being more cited. Nevertheless, this might not reflect quality but increased self-citations or the “audience effect”: citations from increased awareness through multiple author networks. We address this with the first science wide investigation into whether author numbers associate with journal article quality, using expert peer quality judgements for 122,331 articles from the 2014-20 UK national assessment. Spearman correlations between authors numbers and quality scores show moderately strong positive associations (0.2-0.4) in the health, life, and physical sciences, but weak or no positive associations in engineering and social sciences, with weak negative/positive or no association in various arts and humanities, and a possible negative association for decision sciences. This gives the first systematic evidence that greater numbers of authors associates with higher quality journal articles in the majority of academia outside the arts and humanities, at least for the UK. Positive associations between team size and citation counts in areas with little association between team size and quality also show that audience effects or other non-quality factors account for the higher citation rates of co-authored articles in some fields.
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First approaches to an underexplored dialect region: Trudgill’s Upper SouthwestAlthough dialectology in England received two major boosts at the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century (Ellis 1889 and Orton & Barry 1956-8), discussion of dialect change since that time has avoided discussion of many areas, concentrated as it was in those Universities with a tradition of dialectology (Essex, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle). Though many areas have since been re-examined in England; notably Bristol dialect (Blaxter & Coates 2019), Newcastle dialect (Milroy 1994, Milroy et al. 1999) Sunderland dialect (Burbano-Elizondo 2007), and Manchester dialect (Baranowski & Turton 2015, Bermúdez-Otero et al. 2015) there remain many areas which were never fully explored at the time of the Survey of English Dialects (Birmingham as an urban area for example was completely bypassed by that survey), as well as many areas which remain little known and studied. This paper brings together what is known about the dialects of the Upper Southwest and suggests pointers for directions in future research there based on the data from Worcestershire and Herefordshire that we discuss.
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‘Pack up your blarting’: The language of the senses in Black Country dialectThis chapter examines literary and vernacular sources to consider how sensory experiences become encoded in dialect; looking at how words change meaning over time, how the dialect remains vital, and at the kinds of sensory experiences residents reported having. I explore the Aristotelian model of the senses, relating it to words which were present in my doctoral fieldwork and broaden the discussion of these words and their history. Using speech and writing by Black Country people, drawing on poetry, fiction and spoken data I critique the idea that the dialect is in any greater danger of becoming less vital than any other regional dialect of the UK. Using current linguistic research, I consider the future of the dialect, questioning what experiences speakers may wish to encode through language in a changing Black Country.
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Verbal negation strategies in the Black Country- spatial and temporal variationThis paper examines data from the traditional language variety of the Black Country area of the west Midlands of England; an area lying directly to the west of the city of Birmingham. I introduce the strategies which have been used over time to mark negation of modal and auxiliary verbs in Black Country English, drawing on historical and present-day sources and to inform this introduction. I then outline the phonological rules which have governed the two main competing strategies, one of which continues to govern the present-day localised system of negation. I next examine the rise of one strategy over the other and discuss the timeframe in which this might have occurred, using both dialect surveys and literary sources to strengthen my case. I finally examine the sociolinguistic stratification of the local negative forms, and their sociolinguistic significance within the modern speech community. For this last section I draw on a modern corpus of 39 Black Country residents which was collected between 2003 and 2006.
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Reading Kazuo Ishiguro in times of crisisInternational crises are central to Kazuo Ishiguro's work. This introduction situates Ishiguro alongside contemporary global emergencies, including the COVD-19 pandemic, climate change, and reactions to emancipatory movements. It suggests that Ishiguro's work interrogates ‘crisis' by confronting his characters with both individual and collective crises, a theme explored in Catherine Charlwood's essay here. It shows how Ishiguro's work indirectly relates to the vast health crisis of COVID-19, which Sebastian Groes explores in his essay on empathy, (robot) ethics, digital well-being, and inequality. Connected to the pandemic, the introduction traces how Ishiguro's writing evidences growing concern for the climate crisis. The politics of migration are a key theme in Ishiguro: here Dominic Dean explores their longstanding and dangerous relationship with conspiracy theories, while Ivan Stacy, Melinda Dabis and Richard Robinson all connect Ishiguro to anxieties over resurgent nationalisms, cosmopolitan internationalisms, and complex transnationalisms. This introduction sets out how the essays in this Special Issue collectively explore the ethical difficulties in Ishiguro's crisis narratives, their refusals of easily satisfying resolutions, and their implicit critique of crisis frameworks for understanding political and historical problems. Sharply distinct from passivity or disinterest, Ishiguro’s work elicits an attitude of humility against apparently perpetual, end-dominated crises.
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‘What did you do to them Klaus?’: The Klaus Fuchs atomic espionage case and its impact on the scientific community in early Cold War BritainThe atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, was one of the most notorious figures of the early Cold War. The story of his espionage and the impact it had has been the subject of extensive historical research. This article provides a new angle on the Fuchs case by examining the repercussions of his actions on his friends, colleagues, and the wider scientific community in Britain that have previously been overlooked. It argues that the subsequent fall-out led several atomic scientists to have their own loyalties questioned and be subjected to extensive and sustained surveillance. As the article will show, the inevitable era of suspicion that the Fuchs case ushered in did damage to the reputations, careers, and prospects of certain scientists. By examining the repercussions, the article helps to provide a first insight into the experience of some British scientists during the early years of the Cold War.
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Transformation or retaining the status quo: Multinational hospitality companies and SME collaboration on sustainability in emerging countriesThis chapter focuses on the dynamics of MHC-SME collaboration on sustainability in an emerging country context. The findings show that MHC sustainability policy is generally driven from headquarters and that economic sustainability has priority over environmental and social sustainability. By contrast, SMEs appear to be able to initiate fully sustainable strategies based on the culture, tradition, family history, industry, and ethical standing of the owners. The interaction of MHCs and SMEs in relation to sustainability involves varying factors at the macro, meso, and micro levels. However, the micro level factor (i.e., human agency) seems to be the determining factor of the relationship. The authors provide rich contextual data by adopting a qualitative research method (case study) based on primary data, which is rare in international business literature.
