Articles by authors with foreign-sounding names are cited far less than those written by people with “typically-American” names.
What is in a Name? Additional Sources of Bias in Citation Counts
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Recent Posts
What Makes a Good Book Review: Some Editorial Advice
The following is a guest post by Andrew Owsiak, Associate Professor at the University of Georgia and Book Editor for International Studies Review. The race to push scholarly research into the world...
(The ultimate) Trump Tweet Bingo
Following the Trump administration is really tiring. And I’m not talking about the last two years -- it’s a challenge to survive single weeks of their news cycle. Hell, a Friday afternoon is already...
No reading list is perfectly inclusive. Here’s one small step I’ve learned to address that.
This is a guest post from Zoe Marks. Zoe Marks is currently Director of the Global Development Academy at the University of Edinburgh and Program Director of the MSc in African Studies; in September...
More Recent Posts
Happy quacking anniversary
Seven years ago today, 28 May 2005, is the day that this blog was, in an important sense, born. The previous day the day Dan officially posted the announcement that The Duck of Minerva was henceforth a collective enterprise (he said "collaborative endeavor," but whatever), and on the 28th, Bill...
“A Little Too Softhearted”: Cheney on Mearsheimer
You don't understand the power of offensive realism. From Steve Coll's Private Empire:Vice President Cheney seemed particularly interested in China's vulnerability to U.S. naval power. His experience of the global oil market while running Halliburton had left him with a deep understanding of oil's...
Sunday Nerd Blogging
Say Ron Paul Won…Which US Allies would get Retrenched? (1)
Here is an answer to Jon Western’s good question. Here is Steve Walt saying nice things about Ron Paul, and Layne has a nice recent piece in the National Interest, and another at ISQ, about looming US retrenchment. Earlier I argued that I think lots of people in IR now both expect and want some...
There Are Two Kinds of Countries in the World: ____ and _____
This is a cross-post from my solo blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.A few days ago, Sean Langberg blogged about a subject that's long been a pet peeve of mine: how we classify countries when we try to talk about the international system, and the labels we apply to the resulting groups. I thought I'd take...
Bark like a dog!
I'd write a lengthy comment on this, but with my new administrative responsibilities, I have a full day of meetings on liberal arts assessment and impact -- oh, and some kind of silly discussion on the instrumentalization of education and the vocational turn. Whatever. I'll just say that this...
Right to the razor’s edge…or not
With Obama's proposed $487bn cuts in defense spending over the next ten years and the potential for another $500bn in cuts through sequestration set to kick in next January if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach the grand bargain compromise on the budget, lots of folks are now harping about...
What Exactly is the Social Science Citation Index Anyway?
Yeah, I don’t really know either. I always hear the expression ‘SSCI’ thrown around as the gold standard for social science work. Administrators seem to love it, but where it comes from and how it gets compiled I don’t really understand. Given that we all seem to use this language and worry about...
Repealing the First Law of Petropolitics
I'm totally not bitter that Tom Friedman'selementary correlations have 165citations on Google Scholar!Kindred Winecoff, who is both very smart and possessed of good taste in linking, discusses the value of social science.Winecoff discusses a recent splenetic venting by a philosopher claiming that...
Networks in Arms
This video is part of an advocacy strategy launched by a new NGO, Article36, whose focus is the humanitarian control of weapons technology. The organization takes its name from the provision in the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions that requires governments to consider the...
Friday Anti-Nerd Blogging: For Those About to Teach!
This is me with Rick Allen, the drummer for Def Leppard who lost his arm in the 1980s but retooled his drum kit and life to adjust to his injury. He now runs the Raven Drum Foundation, which focuses on helping veterans with PTSD and other mental and physical injuries heal as they return home....
HBO Has Solved Its Spoiler Problem.
David Birtley's to-die-for posts chronicling HBO's deviations from the Song of Ice and Fire book series get longer each week over at Wired.Some fans are annoyed at the significant and at times random plot innovations in Game of Thrones (in Season 2 Tywin has come off as a loving grandfather, Arya...