One of Google Scholar's useful features

I recently made my citations profile on Google Scholar public. Even though I am not going to have the sort of prolific research program like those of my colleagues at R-1 institutions, I still find it helpful to track the impact of the articles I have either authored or coauthored. It is helpful to have data on the impact of one's articles for any of a number of reasons, ranging from curiosity to making a case for promotion or tenure. Some promotion committees will take into consideration not only the number of peer review publications a faculty member has generated, but also how often each article is cited. Article impact is not currently considered at my present institution, although as the institution becomes more "publish or perish" I can imagine issues regarding impact will emerge as faculty come up for promotion in the near future.

Beyond the need to make a case for promotion, I find it helpful to track new citations to my previously published work (something I refer to my methods students as "treeing forward") in order to conveniently discover other relevant research pertaining to my areas of expertise. Certainly, I want to keep up with any possible replications and extensions of my previous work, as well as to find out what new research avenues have been opened by my work and the work of my coauthors. Obviously, as a scientific writer, I publish to be read. Hence, I am now using the My Citations profile as a  diagnostic tool, in hopes of determining appropriate potential journals for future submissions, and to rule out journals that appear to be inadequately cataloged.

Although I usually consider the Social Science Citation Index as the definitive source for tracking new citations, the Google Scholar search engine is pretty impressive, and useful when working at a smaller university without SSCI access.

Measuring Social Class

I often don't have much to say with regard to social class, except to the extent that social stratification betrays a certain level of organizational and structural violence endemic to a particular nationality, but I do find Mark Rubin's commentary on the subject to be worth reading.

Recent Publication

Chasing the elusive left-wing authoritarian: An examination of Altemeyer’s Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Left-Wing Authoritarianism scales was published as of last Friday. It's a data set I have been meaning to have published for a while now, and one that essentially replicates Altemeyer's (1996) findings.

Back to more frequent blogging

Over the last several months, I have had a lot on my plate. In addition to the usual responsibilities that come with my typical work week, I was also up for promotion. The promotion process tends to be rather labor intensive and arduous, and in order to remain properly focused, something had to give. So, I decided to sacrifice blogging pending the outcome of the promotion process. The good news is that my promotion application was approved, and I get to move up in rank.

Slowly, but steadily, I will return to using this blog as a sounding board for research ideas, tentative findings from some of my ongoing data collection, and a few observations about the current state of academe.