Category Archives: science

Citation-infusion of research papers with AI?

Posted on January 7, 2024 by Ingo Rohlfing

Sourcely, an AI company, promises to streamline research by finding, summarizing, and adding credible sources in minutes. While this sounds appealing, skepticism arises as using such a tool may prioritize citing over genuine research. Initial tests revealed limited functionality, leaving doubts about its practical value in the research process. Continue reading →

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Is payment for publications and paying for citations a better to way to fund research? Most likely not

Posted on March 12, 2022 by Ingo Rohlfing

In place of a generic blog post, I am reposting a short Twitter thread here. The thread is a response to an opinion piece on the Times Higher Education website titled Pay researchers for results, not plans. (Posts on the … Continue reading →

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Correlation vs causation: The case of competitive funding and research quality

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Ingo Rohlfing

On September 27, the German Science Foundation (DFG) announced its decision to award the status of a research cluster of excellence (Exzellenzcluster) to 57 cluster proposals from all disciplines. This was the first step of its so-called excellence strategy, (Exzellenzstrategie/ExStra, … Continue reading →

Posted in causal inference, political science, science, Wissenschaftssystem | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The relevance of Political Science: Some thoughts on the recent critique

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Ingo Rohlfing

The charge that Political Science (or other non-STEM disciplines) is lacking relevance and does not produce interesting research is made then and again, with two new pieces published these days. One is written by a political economist, stating that most … Continue reading →

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Das EFI-Gutachten und die Ab- und Zuwanderung deutscher Wissenschaftler: Ein paar kritische Anmerkungen

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Ingo Rohlfing

Das 2014er Gutachten der Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI) schlug diese Woche einige Wellen, weil es nach wie vor eine Abwanderung der besten Wissenschaftler aus Deutschland konstatiert (brain drain, wenn man den Begriff mag). Nach einem Blick in das Gutachten … Continue reading →

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You may not like what Elsevier is doing, but…

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Ingo Rohlfing

Open access and gated publishing have been discussed at length by researchers, publishers, and the media. Still, the debate got more intense when Elsevier sent takedown notices to Academia.edu. Yesterday, it got even more intense when it became public that … Continue reading →

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Quality and quantity in publishing

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Ingo Rohlfing

At the end of last week, I came across a blog entry by Olaf Storbeck, reporting that a rising star from German business economics, Prof. Ulrich Lichtenthaler, is faced with numerous inquiries concerning his publishing record. Two journals have already … Continue reading →

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Live and let live, or: unity and diversity in the social sciences

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Ingo Rohlfing

The current version (vol. 10, issue 1) of the newsletter of the APSA Section on Qualitative Methods and Multi-Methods Research includes a symposium on John Gerring’s 2nd edition of Social Science Methodology (SSM2, for short). The various contributors to the … Continue reading →

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