Social Science Space

Several recent academic papers have listed ChatGPT as an author. But should the artificially intelligent writing bot be considered an academic author?

Now more than ever, writes Maura Scott, as business professors, we must generate and disseminate knowledge that can help inform and promote business, as well as society’s greater good.

From a journal editor’s perspective, top journals play a central role in recognizing societal impact of research.

Historically, there has been a tight link between journals, journal publications and a community of scholars working in specific fields of research who contribute to and manage them. Aileen Fyfe asks if we should rethink the structure of the learned societies that underpins this.

Peer Community In is a peer-review-based service for recommending preprints which greenlights articles and makes them and their reviews, data, codes and scripts available on an open-access basis.

Joel Baum at the University of Toronto discusses the origin story of the journal Strategic Organization in his paper, “Constructing Strategic Organization – A field whose time has come,” published in … Strategic Organization.

The next in SAGE Publishing’s How to Get Published webinar series focuses on promoting your writing after publication. The free webinar is set for November 16 at 4 p.m. BT/11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT.

Drawing on a recent survey of forty years of research papers in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and interviews with authors, Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Kean Birch, Thed van Leeuwen and Maria Amuchastegui observe an increasing homogenization of published work. Weighing up the pros and cons of this development, they discuss whether it has enhanced or limited intellectual innovations in STS.

One way or another, the Journal Citation Reports today play an outsized role in determining whose careers thrive and whose careers whither and which journals flourish or fade away.

Reflecting on their work to create a guide to fairer citation practices in academic writing, Aurélie Carlier, Hang Nguyen, Lidwien Hollanders, Nicole Basaraba, Sally Wyatt and Sharon Anyango*, highlight challenges to changing citation practices and point to ways in which authors and readers can work towards equitable citations.

The current convention that envisions the manuscript as a self-contained universe produces a range of negative consequences extending beyond papers’ obscene length: many scholars seem to cite papers based on their abstracts or even title alone; reviewing literature takes lots of time; noncore research communities are badly served; new requirements on research transparency and openness are difficult to meet; and, finally, our papers are not particularly enjoyable to read.

Using a dataset of journals from the field of business, management, and accounting research,  Julián D. Cortés explores how the title and aims and purposes varies across journal, prestige, geography and publication model.