The quackathon: quantitative and qualitative hacking

Last September we organised the first research retreat at CWTS. Away from our normal workplace and usual thinking patterns we spent two days full of pitches, workshops, presentations, and fun of course. One special element of the research retreat was the so-called "quackathon".

Juan reads a paper part 2: The experience

Quantitative and qualitative scientists write, work and think differently. This division creates an intellectual rift between scientists, but we still need each other! I am a quantitative scientist, will I be able to read a qualitative paper?

Juan reads a paper part 1: The blame

University rankings are frequently misused by the public, but is it their fault or the fault of the ranking creators? Join me as I discover a paper that could answer this question.

Happy holidays!

Local Citation Network and Citation Gecko: making literature discovery fun

Literature review can be tedious and often involves manually checking a paper's references. Two recent web apps, Local Citation Network and Citation Gecko, aid this process by constructing and visualizing citation networks that help to identify the most influential papers in a given topic or field.

The challenge of categorizing research

Assigning publications to research fields can be a challenge. While the demarcation of fields can be supported by algorithms, labeling fields properly requires to know what holds them together. I investigated this problem and discovered interesting reasons for publications to form a research field.

Recommendations to Crossref from a Science Studies Perspective

In a recent talk at a Crossref meeting, Ludo Waltman spoke about open citations and made three recommendations to Crossref.

New interactive website to visualize Big Pharma’s publication landscape

This blog post presents and describes a newly created interactive website on the publication activity of some of the most important pharmaceutical companies worldwide.

Welcome to Leiden Madtrics!

Madtrics is a portmanteau, a blend of words between mad and metrics. We hope that Leiden Madtrics serves as a way to inspire and educate about topics such as the (mis)use of research metrics, indicators, and rankings in academia. Here are 5 reasons why you should frequent our blog!