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This study presents and explains the phenomenon of indexjacking, which involves the systematic infiltration of hijacked journals into international indexing databases, with Scopus being one of the most infiltrated among these databases. Through an analysis of known lists of hijacked journals, the study identified at least 67 hijacked journals that have penetrated Scopus since 2013. Of these, 33 journals indexed unauthorized content in Scopus and 23 compromised the homepage link in the journal's profile, while 11 did both. As of September 2023, 41 hijacked journals are still compromising the data of legitimate journals in Scopus. The presence of hijacked journals in Scopus is a challenge for scientific integrity due to the legitimization of unreliable papers that have not undergone peer review and compromises the quality of the Scopus database. The presence of hijacked journals in Scopus has far‐reaching effects. Papers published in these journals may be cited, and unauthorized content from these journals in Scopus is thus imported into other databases, including ORCID and the WHO COVID‐19 Research Database. This poses a particular challenge for research evaluation in those countries, where cloned versions of approved journals may be used to acquire publications and verifying their authenticity can be difficult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents analogies between the development of historical writing and of physical science during the early modern period. Its necessarily spotty coverage runs from the mid sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. The analogies include arising from practical concerns; preferring material documents and experimental inquiries over texts; making use of mathematical auxiliary sciences; distinguishing between primary and secondary elements; establishing new fundamental principles; undermining the traditional world system; and devising methods to control rapidly multiplying knowledge. A history of learning that meets today's standards of historical scholarship should identify and exploit such parallels, not only because of scholarly interest and responsibility, but also because an understanding of the historical importance of linkages between distant branches of learning may help redress the increasing imbalance in resources among the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities in our higher schools and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water management has always required more than physical science. This paper reviews the accomplishments of integrating social with physical sciences for water management in the last 50 years. Particular successes are highlighted to illustrate how fundamentals from both physical science and social science have been brought together to improve the performance of water management systems. Some forward-looking lessons for managing practical and academic interdisciplinary research for water management are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT With recent attention to improving scientific workforce development and student achievement, there has been a rise in effort to understand and encourage student engagement in physical science. This study examines the association of family influence and initial interest in science through multiple and logistic regression models. Research questions addressed include Controlling for demographic variables, are physical science doctoral students or scientists who report family as a primary source of interest in science, as opposed to those that do not, more likely to develop an early interest in science? And what specific forms of family support are associated with doctoral students or scientists who report family as a primary source of initial interest in science? The study uses survey data from Project Crossover ( n = 4,285), a sequential mixed methods study that examines factors influencing entrance into physical science doctoral programs as well as the transition from graduate students to independent researcher. Results suggest that family interest in science facilitates earlier initial interest in science. Further analyses show that family influence shifts from parental occupation as the primary source of interest for the older generation of scientists to one of three influences (occupation, diversion or hobby, and encouragement) among doctoral students. © 2013Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 97:395-409, 2013 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite over 10 years of research there is no agreement on the most suitable roles for Webometric indicators in support of research policy and almost no field-based Webometrics. This article partly fills these gaps by analyzing the potential of policy-relevant Webometrics for individual scientific fields with the help of 4 case studies. Although Webometrics cannot provide robust indicators of knowledge flows or research impact, it can provide some evidence of networking and mutual awareness. The scope of Webometrics is also relatively wide, including not only research organizations and firms but also intermediary groups like professional associations, Web portals, and government agencies. Webometrics can, therefore, provide evidence about the research process to compliment peer review, bibliometric, and patent indicators: tracking the early, mainly prepublication development of new fields and research funding initiatives, assessing the role and impact of intermediary organizations and the need for new ones, and monitoring the extent of mutual awareness in particular research areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-disciplinarity is widely accepted in the Development Studies (DS) community, but has principally been interpreted within the social sciences. However, much of the research, practical planning and evaluation studies, and teaching/training in DS involves cross-disciplinarity between the social and physical sciences. We consider the extent of this wider variant of cross-disciplinarity, review factors inhibiting cross-disciplinary collaboration, and explore implications relating to ‘single discipline analysis’ central to the interest of DS. Our main conclusions are that cross-disciplinarity between social and physical sciences is central to DS activity, and that disciplines, subject areas or knowledge communities need to be modest in defining their ‘boundaries’ and flexible in encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power-law frequency distributions characterize a wide array of natural phenomena. In ecology, biology, and many physical and social sciences, the exponents of these power laws are estimated to draw inference about the processes underlying the phenomenon, to test theoretical models, and to scale up from local observations to global patterns. Therefore, it is essential that these exponents be estimated accurately. Unfortunately, the binning-based methods traditionally used in ecology and other disciplines perform quite poorly. Here we discuss more sophisticated methods for fitting these exponents based on cumulative distribution functions and maximum likelihood estimation. We illustrate their superior performance at estimating known exponents and provide details on how and when ecologists should use them. Our results confirm that maximum likelihood estimation outperforms other methods in both accuracy and precision. Because of the use of biased statistical methods for estimating the exponent, the conclusions of several recently published papers should be revisited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the science indicators used in the literature for characterizing the research activity and performance of nations are based on journal articles and citations. As an alternative we have examined the use of journal gatekeepers as real and useful science indicators. As an example, gatekeepers of some analytical chemistry core journals were used. To reveal the changes in the contributions of different nations to the field studied, a comparison has been made between the 1970–1974 and the 2002 data on gatekeepers of the same journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part II is devoted to the epistemology and knowledge characteristics of the ‘new’ social sciences. Part II also explains epistemological and methodological differences and similarities among scientific disciplines such as the physical sciences and the social sciences and their respective fields of application. Part I treated the same topics in relation to the physical sciences, represented by modern physics. (See Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 19: 199–209 (2002)). Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on human knowledge. As formal fields inquiry in schools and universities, geography, history and the social sciences are relatively recent disciplines, since many of their questions were posed and answered previously under the rather spacious intellectual umbrellas of philosophy and theology. But in the same way that the individual physical sciences hived off from natural philosophy at the end of the seventeenth century, with the biological sciences following in the eighteenth, so the human sciences, including geography and history, began to define themselves as distinct areas of inquiry in the nineteenth century. It is then that one finds separate departments forming in universities, inevitably in some tension with established fields like philosophy, theology, medicine and jurisprudence. Today one finds constantly the emergence of new fields formed by the splitting off of subdisciplines, which sometimes strengthen into new disciplines in their own right.

By comparison with the physical sciences psychologists tend to pay little attention to ontology. This has had unfortunate consequences. Contemporary trends suggest a dual ontology, with psychology rooted in neurophysiology and social conversation. The notion of a `conversational skill' bridges the two basic categories of psychological reality. The use of causal concepts in writing up psychological research is to be avoided since it enshrines a misunderstanding of the kind of necessity that is important in the normative control of social activity including conversing. Classical psychological experimental methodology needs radical revision since it is not appropriate to the investigation of collective semiotic structures. These points are illustrated with examples from recent empirical work by social constructivist psychologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a number of important science policy issues have centered on questions about the social utility of science. While investments in the physical, biological, and social sciences continue to be viewed as a contribution to the growth of knowledge, per se, there is obvious growing concern that science policymakers and the public at large lack sufficient information to assess the social and economic impacts of science. In the absence of such information, policymakers cannot be expected to make decisions that yield advances in science. One response to this informational deficit is the development of the field of science indicators. Another response is the attempt to develop "knowledge systems accounting," a field that seeks to make estimates of the effects of science on society.

The article discusses the use of mathematical models in aiding management's goals of prescription for action and descriptive analysis. Focus is placed on numerical and non-numerical models in management science. The author believes that by manipulating the social system model, insight may be gained into the possible effects of a proposed change in methods of production or rewards. Opposing views of mathematical model building by individual theorists are looked at. The author notes that the mathematical language developed for the physical sciences centers upon the manipulation of concepts defined by a measurement.

The article focuses on the application of thematic approach to the study of physics in or order to show its relationship to social sciences. One of the objective of the study of physics is to reveal to the student the essential content, significance and beauty in all of the physical sciences. In order to do this for all students science teachers must appeal to the complete spectrum of interests and abilities for all those who will be taking physics. This research will also be an attempt to give the reader an appreciation for periodic recurrence in nature.

The article reports that the distinctive aspect of an environmental policy is that it would strive for adequacy in the six processes in specific relation to values associated with the environment. An adequate environmental policy has to rely on technical data from the physical and biological sciences, as well as on supportive data from the social and behavioral sciences generally, for its knowledge content. Environmental policy has to be formulated and sanctioned by governmental systems if it is to be legitimate and effective.

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The article presents the background characteristics of the students enrolled in college physical science courses in the U.S. Examination reveals that physics science student were of great interest in the areas of social sciences, physical sciences, biology, and they were less interested in mathematics. Attitudes of students toward science were determined by the Scientific Attitude Inventory and by ten cluster scores of a semantic differential test and were used as criterion instruments. The areas of interests of students includes career plans, previous science training, and college status.

This article evaluates studies on accounting theory, conducted by a committee of the American Accounting Association in 1973. The most striking feature of the papers is their similarity. They are essentially two versions of the same work. Both preliminary papers consist of two principal sections: the nature of theories in the physical and social sciences; and the classes of accounting theories, as the authors are able to distinguish them. All of the papers survey pertinent works by mathematicians, philosophers and scientists, and conclude that accounting qualifies as an empirical discipline.

The article presents a comparison of scientific communication behavior of social and physical scientists. In studying nine disciplines over the past three years, authors have discovered that the communication process does differ among disciplines. In this article, they focuses on differences between the physical and the social sciences, in terms of three major communication characteristics associated with information dissemination and assimilation, lags in the information flow process, organization and effectiveness of informal networks, and the transfer of information from the informal to the formal domain. It has been the intention of this paper to demonstrate, by way of contrasting the physical and the social sciences, that although there are striking similarities in the communication processes and practices of various disciplines, there are also some major differences among them which are important.

The article discusses the contribution of social science in the educational process of the twentieth century. Social insight is as old as Greek philosophy, but, like chemistry or biology, it is now developed primarily by research methods. The good man and the good society are achieved only in relation to structures and methods that survive objective evaluation. In the future physical sciences will surely remain and they will be paramount in restricted zones of human activity. One may postulate that a stronger social science will make new demands upon the physical scientist. The biological sciences, like the physical, will remain basic, for there can be no thought of a return to the primitive in agriculture or medicine. It is when we turn to the social sciences that the problem becomes complex. Mathematicians, chemists, physicists, and biologists, carrying on work that only they themselves can master, are inevitably and permanently tied in with social and political economy. The future belongs to the social scientists. He will draw upon the labor of the physical and biological scientists as they now do upon the inert and the living materials of the earth.

The article presents information about the transfer of editorial post to Abbie Griffin, a co-editor of the Journal of Product Innovation. Her role has been to solicit new manuscript and take complete responsibility for reviewing all new submissions. The January 2000 issue of the journal starts the 17th year of publication. This journal has been rated as a leading journal in both fields of social science and physical science. It numbers readers from universities and companies, from marketing and engineering, from the U.S. and from nearly 40 other countries. The journal occupies a unique position as a research-based publication that supports communication among these otherwise diverse groups of new products people. The editor also showers praises upon Abbie. She has been tireless supporter of the Product Development & Management Association. She has been the principal investigator for the second best practices study and several task forces of the journal. She is a prolific author and a popular conference presenter.

Comparisons of hard and soft science in user (Garvey) and citation (Price) studies were shown to exhibit a previously unnoticed complementarity. In particular, the lower utilization of recent citations by social scientists may be shown to reflect the greater time required for scientific work and subsequent publication of a social science research contribution as opposed to one from the physical sciences. This analysis offers an alternative to the view of hard and soft science offered by Price and raises several research questions regarding the relation between use and citation of scientific literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]