On the Circumstances Conducive to World-class Publications Rotterdam, 17 June, 2014 On the Circumstances Conducive to World-class Publications Pearl A. Dykstra Seminar “Research Impact and Relevance – How to Publish a World-class Paper”

Institutional circumstances: KNAW’s quality assessment Across all areas of science Participation in ERiC* en SIAMPI** (focus on assessment social relevance) Standard Evaluation Protocol (with VSNU & NWO) *Evaluating Research in Context **Social Impact Assessment Methods through the study of Productive Interactions between science and society Click to add title

Social sciences Engineering/ design Humanities Different cultures of publishing For English version of reports: knaw.nl

Click to add title Shifting incentive structures From quantity to quality of publications Integrity increasingly subject to accountability Greater emphasis on social relevance Click to add title

Click to add title Infrastructural circumstances, an example Quality: achieved by addressing new research questions From the start: the NKPS is a multi-actor, multi-method, panel study on solidarity in family relationships As opportunities presented themselves: collaboration NKPS with historians, record linkage, Generations and Gender Programme Click to add title

25 dissertations to date

Click to add title Individual circumstances: crafting scholarship Writing is not easy! Schedule writing time Review other people’s work Collaborate with more experienced peers Prewrite, write, rewrite Click to add title

Click to add title Wrapping up World-class publications are a collective enterprise We all need to be quality watchdogs Click to add title

A World-Class Paper - I Click to add title Roscigno, V. J., & Danaher, W. F. (2001). Media and mobilization: The case of radio and southern textile worker insurgency. American Sociological Review, 66, 21-48. (Available here)   Why world class? Smart idea to use media technology as the bridge between two partial theories of collective action  (perceptions of opportunity and group identity) Creative combination of different kinds of existing data (historical data on strikes by textile factory workers, geographic information on the location of radio stations, content of FD Roosevelt’s fireside radio chats, song lyrics) Click to add title

A World-Class Paper - II Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat  agriculture, Science, 344, 603-608. (available here)   Why world-class? Three contrasting theoretical perspectives for why some cultures are more interdependent and others are more independent (modernization, pathogen prevalence, and rice versus wheat cultivation Excellent data to test the predictions (different regions in China) Creative measures of interdependence-independence Click to add title