Abstract This study investigates the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) fluctuations and altmetrics source stability in Information Science & Library Sciences publications, analyzing 26,474 documents ...from 2012 to 2021. It finds that 23.7% of these publications experienced AAS fluctuations over a year. Significant influences on AAS variability include Twitter mentions and policy documents, with Twitter mentions showing high volatility, affecting nearly 30% of papers. The removal of the Analysis & Policy Observatory as a policy source led to a notable drop in policy document mentions. Various types of mention vanishing are identified, such as administrative decisions by altmetrics aggregators, technological issues, user actions on digital platforms, and natural changes on platforms like Wikipedia. In response, the study proposes modifications in the tracking and monitoring system of mentions to not overlook these vanishings. This aims to enhance the reliability and stability of altmetrics at a time when there is a call for their use in the research evaluation.
•Identifying the core policies, core institutions, and core policy targets of China's AI policy.•Exploring the policy-isssuing trends and policy distribution changes.•Analysis of the evolution of ...China's AI policy targets.•Identifying the characteristics and trends of the policy process.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology policy plays a critical role to steer its applications to broadly relevant endpoints, and contributes to critical governance of innovations by governments, industry and society at large. In this paper, we adopt a bibliometrics-based research framework to characterize the development and evolution of China's AI policy. The framework integrates bibliometric methods, semantic analysis, and network analysis for identifying core policy elements and their evolution in the AI policy process. Specifically, we first collect China's central-level AI-related policies and identify four stages of its evolution based on policy-issuing frequency, policy trends, and core policy issuing time nodes. We then identify the core policies, core institutions, and core policy targets in each stage. Then we explore the policy issuing trends, policy distribution changes, and evolution of policy targets. Finally, patterns and characteristics of the policy process are identified, and trends are predicted. We used the PKULaw database to collect the policy-relevant data on AI in China, and the time frame is from 1990 to 2019. Our findings and the reported quantitative map might usefully inform AI policy in China and elsewhere around the world. It could also help broader stakeholder engagement in policy discussions on AI technology, industry and society.
Climate migration is an emerging policymaking area not yet regulated by European Law. Given the absence of a legally-binding treaty governing this phenomenon, the scope of this study focuses on ...policy documents issued by the most relevant European Institutions: the EU Commission, EU Parliament, and the Council. Thanks to this document-based analysis, the present contribution will show the different roles the selected EU institutions played and whether they have a common denominator. The main findings show that despite the different ontologies and approaches, the selected EU institutions seem to converge into a significant securitization of climate migration, with scant attention to gender and environmental justice within the most relevant EU documents concerning migration and asylum. Indeed, such perspectives are more likely to be mentioned in EU policy documents dedicated to gender but are not integrated into the migration policies where they would matter. A detailed analysis of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum reveals its substantially gender and environmental justice-blind approach despite the gender mainstreaming ontology that has been invoked in numerous policy documents largely focused on gender.
The needs of a globalized economy are rapidly changing what is legitimated as school knowledge and values, and calling up new understandings of teachers' role in stimulating democratic spaces. We ...have termed this Teachers' Democratic Assignment. We examine changing notions of teachers' democratic assignment in Ireland and Sweden using a Critical Discourse Analysis. We tested our hypothesis that teachers' democratic assignment has changed in unprecedented ways using an analysis of policy documents in teacher education. Our findings reported a substantive converging paradigm shift from a predominantly progressive (reconstructivist) curriculum discourse where democracy was seen as inextricably linked to everyday practice in the early years of this century, to a more essentialist (perennialist) discourse in recent times. The findings will have interest for a wider audience and have implications for the role of democracy in teacher education as well as the question of education as a social responsibility for a vibrant democracy.
Policymakers are increasingly focusing on the participation of children in the child protection system (CPS). However, research shows that actual practice still needs to be improved. Embedding ...children’s participation in legislation and policy documents is one important prerequisite for achieving meaningful participation in child protection practice. In this study, the participation of children in the Dutch CPS under the new Youth Act 2015 is critically analyzed. National legislation and policy documents were studied using a model of “meaningful participation” based on article 12 of the UNCRC. Results show that the idea of children’s participation is deeply embedded in the current Dutch CPS. However, Dutch policy documents do not fully cover the three dimensions of what is considered to be meaningful participation for children: informing, hearing, and involving. Furthermore, children’s participation differs among the organizations included in the child protection chain. A clear overall policy concerning the participation of children in the Dutch CPS is lacking. The conclusions of this critical analysis of policy documents and the framework of meaningful participation presented may provide a basis for the embedding of meaningful participation for children in child protection systems of other countries.
In the current UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) and the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), societal impact measurements are inherent parts of the national evaluation systems. In this ...study, we deal with a relatively new form of societal impact measurements. Recently, Altmetric—a start-up providing publication level metrics—started to make data for publications available which have been mentioned in policy documents. We regard this data source as an interesting possibility to specifically measure the (societal) impact of research. Using a comprehensive dataset with publications on climate change as an example, we study the usefulness of the new data source for impact measurement. Only 1.2 % (
n
= 2341) out of 191,276 publications on climate change in the dataset have at least one policy mention. We further reveal that papers published in
Nature
and
Science
as well as from the areas “Earth and related environmental sciences” and “Social and economic geography” are especially relevant in the policy context. Given the low coverage of the climate change literature in policy documents, this study can be only a first attempt to study this new source of altmetrics data. Further empirical studies are necessary, because mentions in policy documents are of special interest in the use of altmetrics data for measuring target-oriented the broader impact of research.
Abstract Equity is considered a key element to ensure universal access to high‐quality education and equal treatment in the higher education system. This study investigates the construction of equity ...in Ecuadorian higher education through two sets of policy documents—higher education and language policies, both relevant in considering the direction and structure of the higher education sector. The coherence or deficiencies in the construction of equity are important for this concept to be exercised and properly enacted. To this end, five national policy documents related to higher education were selected to be analyzed through a critical discourse analysis lens to determine whether the policy documents are framed with a limited or more expansive interpretation in relation to theoretical elements of equity. Critical discourse analysis was chosen as the main analysis tool since it permits the identification and critical examination of similarities and differences in two or more sets of documents. The study identifies autonomy, identity, and equality as prevalent elements of equity in the general laws regulating higher education and the national educational plan, whereas the language policy documents are more focused on competitiveness and aspects of globalization. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of coherence in policy documents to achieve more equitable practices.
公平被认为是确保高等教育系统中普遍获得高质量教育和平等待遇的关键要素。本研究通过两套政策文件（高等教育和语言政策）调查了厄瓜多尔高等教育中对公平的建构，这两套政策文件都与“考量高等教育部门的方向和结构”一事有关。公平建构的一致性或缺陷对于这一概念的运用和正确制定非常重要。为此，我们选择了五份与高等教育相关的国家政策文件，通过批判性话语分析的视角进行分析，以确定这些政策文件在公平理论要素方面的解释是否存在有限或更为广泛的诠释。批判性话语分析被选为主要分析工具，因为它允许识别和批判检验两组或多组文档中的相似性和差异。本研究将自治、身份和平等视为高等教育一般法律和国家教育计划中公平的普遍要素，而语言政策文件则更关注竞争力和全球化要素。总之，本研究强调了政策文件一致性对于实现更公平实践的重要性。
La equidad se considera un elemento clave para garantizar el acceso universal a una educación de alta calidad y la igualdad de trato en el sistema de educación superior. Este estudio investiga la construcción de equidad en la educación superior ecuatoriana a través de dos grupos de documentos de política pública: educación superior y políticas del lenguaje, ambos relevantes al considerar la dirección y estructura del sector de educación superior. La coherencia o deficiencias en la construcción de equidad son importantes para que este concepto se ejerza y se implemente adecuadamente. Con este fin, se seleccionaron cinco documentos de políticas nacionales relacionados con la educación superior para ser analizados a través de una lente de análisis crítico del discurso para determinar si los documentos de política pública están enmarcados con una interpretación limitada o más amplia en relación con los elementos teóricos de la equidad. Se eligió el análisis crítico del discurso como principal herramienta de análisis ya que permite la identificación y el examen crítico de similitudes y diferencias en dos o más grupos de documentos. El estudio identifica la autonomía, la identidad y la igualdad como elementos prevalentes de equidad en las leyes generales que regulan la educación superior y el plan educativo nacional, mientras que los documentos de política relacionados a la lingüística se centran más en la competitividad y los elementos de la globalización. En conclusión, este estudio destaca la importancia de la coherencia en los documentos de política pública para lograr prácticas más equitativas.
•Proposing a bibliometrics-based research framework for studying changes in policy.•Building joint policy-issuing networks to identify the core government ministries, and how these ministries change ...over time.•Identifying the policy target keywords and constructing the policy target keyword co-occurrence network.•Identifying core policy targets and the evolution of a specific policy domain.
Qualitative methods for analyzing policy evolution are often unequipped to process high volumes of policy texts that involve many domains and long timespans. This makes it difficult to take full advantage of the semantic information contained in policy literature. It is also difficult to use traditional qualitative methods to systematically analyze the characteristics of a complex policy mix network, such as the locations, evolution, and relationships between policy actors/targets. In order to address these issues, we propose a bibliometrics-based research framework for exploring policy evolution. We first collect all relevant policy documents from a target domain. We then construct networks of policymaker based on co-occurrence relationships in policy promulgation, in order to determine core policymakers, as well as changes in their status in the networks over time. Lastly, we use semantic analysis to identify policy targets and construct policy target keyword co-occurrence networks for discrete time periods. The evolution of a specific policy domain can then be examined based on changes in network centrality. Information technology policies in China were used as a case study to demonstrate the reliability of our method. The results reflect the practical value of using this method for the quantitative analysis of policy documents.
The protection of children from maltreatment has become extremely challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. The public's gaze is focused on the urgent health crisis, while many children are at risk ...due to social isolation and reduced social services.
Examine child protection in Israel during COVID-19, as portrayed in mainstream news media and government policy documents.
The study analyzed all policy documents and mainstream media reports published in Israel from March to May 2020, during the initial mandatory nationwide quarantine.
(1) Search of relevant articles in mainstream news websites; (2) Search of documents in official websites of relevant government ministries and agencies.
28 government policy documents and 22 media articles were found relevant. When examined chronologically, what stood out was the initial decision to shut down social services, including some of the residential care units for youth at risk, and declare social workers “non-essential”. These decisions were revoked a few weeks into the quarantine, following persistent media pressure by child advocates, resulting in minor changes in policy.
Children were initially invisible to Israeli policymakers facing the pandemic, highlighting the centrality of advocates promoting children's rights and of mainstream news media in disseminating the discourse of protecting children from maltreatment, especially in times of crisis. Moreover, the study points to the heightened threat to at-risk children due to inadequate policies, and to the urgent need to develop child protection policies in order to avoid further risk in future global crises.
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