How to stop salami science: promotion of healthy trends in publishing behavior

The career of scientists often depends on the number of their published works. This fact leads to the overproduction of low-quality papers burying the important articles and making the knowledge less accessible. One of the methods to counteract these negative aspects might lie in the promotion of healthy trends in publishing behavior. In the present work, the theoretical analysis of a new bibliometric measure is presented, and its potential impact on the publishing strategies is carefully discussed.     

A note on a makespan minimization problem with a multi-ability learning effect

In the scheduling literature the learning effect is perceived as a process of acquiring experience by a processor (e.g. a human worker) in one ability. However, in many real-life problems the processor, during execution of jobs, increases its experience in different, very often independent, abilities (skills). In consequence, it causes the overall growth of the efficiency of the processor. According to this observation, in this paper, we bring into scheduling a new approach called multi-ability learning that generalizes the existing ones and models more precisely real-life settings. On this basis, we focus on a makespan minimization problem with the proposed learning model and provide optimal polynomial time algorithms for its special cases, which often occur in management.     

Estimation in singular partitioned,reduced or transformed linear models

A singular partitioned linear model, i.e. the singular model comprising the main parameters and the nuisance parameters, can be reduced, or transformed to the form in which only linear functions concerning main parameters are involved. In the paper some properties of the best linear unbiased estimators of these functions following from these models are considered.     

State of the art in U.S. multicultural social work practice: Client expectations and provider challenges

ABSTRACT

To obtain a comprehensive view of the level of knowledge and development achieved in multicultural social work practice, I conducted a scoping review of U.S. empirical literature for the 10-year period from 2007 through 2016. The review revealed that across the board racial and ethnic minority clients continue to experience marginalization and report low satisfaction with services. Conversely, providers are subject to some tensions and biases toward multicultural practice exacerbated by employers’ lack of emphasis on cultural competence. The problematic findings from the review suggest that our current approaches to cultural competence may need to be reexamined.     

Interval estimation of parameters in an unbalanced mixed two-fold nested classification-the last-stage uniformity case

A procedure for the construction of exact simultaneous confidence intervals on functions of the fixed-effects parameters and on functions of variance components in an unbalanced, mixed, two-fold nested classification is introduced. The type of model considered in this paper enables the construction of such intervals to be based on the corresponding ANOVA table using its mean square ratios.     

Bounds on dispersion of order statistics based on dependent symmetrically distributed random variables

We consider a fixed number of arbitrarily dependent random variables with a common symmetric marginal distribution. For each order statistic based on the variables, we determine a common optimal bound, dependent in a simple way on the sample size and number of order statistics, for various measures of dispersion of the order statistics, expressed in terms of the same dispersion measure of the single original variable. The dispersion measures are connected with the notion of M-functional of a random variable location with respect to a symmetric and convex loss function. The measure is defined as the expected loss paid for the discrepancy between the M-functional and the variable. The most popular examples are the median absolute deviation and variance.     

Simultaneous choice of time points and the block design in the growth curve model

The aim of this paper is to consider the optimality in the growth curve model with respect to two aspects: time and the block design and to show some relations between information functions for different designs. The A-, D- and E- optimality are studied.     

Order statistics from overlapping samples: bivariate densities and regression properties

In this paper, we are interested in the joint distribution of two order statistics from overlapping samples. We give an explicit formula for the distribution of such a pair of random variables under the assumption that the parent distribution is absolutely continuous. We are also interested in the question to what extent conditional expectation of one of such order statistic given another determines the parent distribution. In particular, we provide a new characterization by linearity of regression of an order statistic from the extended sample given the one from the original sample, special case of which solves a problem explicitly stated in the literature. It appears that to describe the correct parent distribution it is convenient to use quantile density functions. In several other cases of regressions of order statistics we provide new results regarding uniqueness of the distribution in the sample.