Beyond the Great Divide: Toward a Rapprochement of Science and the Humanities
2010-05
Occupying Accountability: Evaluation By Whom and For What?
2013-22-01
A video recording of this presentation is available at: http://www.researchtrends.com/virtualseminar/
Good Transformations: Ambiguity and the NSF's Experiment with 'Transformative' Research
2012-22-03
Re-engineering Ethics: Pushing Philosophy Outside of its Comfort Zone at the APPE Annual Meeting
2013-27-03
On the surface the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting, held February 28 to March 3 (2013) in San Antonio, Texas, appeared similar to any other philosophy conference. Contrary to what one might expect, however, the list of participants was remarkably and suggestively diverse. That so many non-philosophers attended what is, for all outward appearances, a philosophy conference has implications for the discipline itself, insofar as the participants’ diverse interests challenge typical assumptions regarding what kinds of topics should fall under the purview of “philosophy.” To be more specific, we found that APPE participants have a varied and mutable interpretation of what ethics is, how it is practiced, who ought to participate in discussions of it, and for what reasons it is important to every human being. Ethics is where the philosophical rubber meets the non-academic road. In the course of the essay, we analyze in greater detail several presentations exemplifying a heterodox approach to the practice of ethics. These examples offer an opportunity to discuss alternative practices of philosophy and how they contribute to destabilizing the disciplinary narrative defining what “philosophy” is.
On Returning Humans to the Natural Order
2010-06
The University, Metrics, and the Good Life
2012-22-05
The Role of altmetrics and Peer Review in the Democratization of Knowledge
2012-11-06
Why Philosophize About Metrics?: Measurement Is the Politics of Representation
2012-24-09
Research Impact: We Need Negative Metrics Too
2013-22-05
Research metrics are ambiguous — a paper may be cited for positive or negative reasons. Funding agencies and universities focus on positive impact in evaluating research, which increasingly includes alternative metrics ('altmetrics'). We think that researchers can generate a more complete account of their impact by including seemingly negative indicators — such as confrontations with important people or legal action — as well as those that seem positive. To explore this idea, we at the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity discussed ways to evaluate the impact of our research activities. Our thinking began with common quantitative indicators of scholarly impact (such as citation and publication counts) and expanded to other possible indicators, including negative ones (such as provoking angry letters from influential people). In this correspondence, we present a table of possible indicators for scholarly impact as a jumping-off point for expanding our thinking regarding what counts as scholarly impact.
