The first week have been really hectic since I am attending two other courses as well and the 70 or so pages we had to read and reflect over took a lot of time. I would say that the time for reading the text was to short for me to actually be able to digest and produce something good out of it since I am not used to read philosophical texts in English. But everything wasn't bad about the first week, I did actually learn about something I found very useful and relevant for my education. This was how to select a research journal/research paper, what the term impact factor means and some new sites where I can look for good papers or other studies.
Short description of Impact factor from Wikipedia:
The term Impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. In a given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years. To calculate the 2011 impact factor of a journal you can use the following method:
A = the number of times articles published in 2009 and 2010 were cited by indexed journals during 2011.
B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2009 and 2010. ("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or letters to the editor.)
2011 impact factor = A/B.
I think the impact factor can be a good thing to use, however I see some problems with it as well.
It does only measure the overall quality of the journal, not the articles by themselves. Also it takes 2 years before you get any facts regarding the journal if it is of good quality. This is a problem when studying Media Technology since many of its subjects is changing at a very fast phase. The same problem can be found when looking on articles at for example Google Scholar, a paper with a lot of citations can be old and outdated and therefore it doesn't always work as a good indicator if it’s good or bad.
My feelings towards the book The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russel is kind of mixed, sometimes I “zoned out” when reading it since I didn't find it interesting enough but on the other hand I found it interesting at times when Russel would describe different examples which was easy to follow and understand.
It was interesting to read your reflection on impact factor and citations. It is true that media technology is field that is changing and developing rapidly. However, a question is if the journals can be stable? Many journals have been around for many years, and then I guess impact factor is a quite good measure? Or what do you think? I agree that some paper with many citations could be outdated, but many old papers are still relevant today...!
SvaraRadera