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Topic Review
Academic Journals
Many academics are critical of the current publishing system, but it is difficult to create a better alternative. The perspective relates to the sciences and social sciences, and discusses the primary purpose of academic journals as providing a seal of approval for perceived quality, impact, significance, and importance. The key issues considered include the role of anonymous refereeing, continuous rather than discrete frequency of publications, avoidance of time wasting, and seeking adventure. Here we give recommendations about the organization of journal articles, the roles of associate editors and referees, measuring the time frame for refereeing submitted articles in days and weeks rather than months and years, encouraging open access internet publishing, emphasizing the continuity of publishing online, academic publishing as a continuous dynamic process, and how to improve research after publication. Citations and functions thereof, such as the journal impact factor and h-index are the benchmark for evaluating the importance and impact of academic journals and published articles. Even in the very top journals, a high proportion of published articles is never cited, not even by the authors themselves. Top journal publications do not guarantee that published articles will make significant contributions, or that they will ever be highly cited. The COVID-19 world should encourage academics worldwide not only to rethink academic teaching, but also to re-evaluate key issues associated with academic journal publishing in the future.   
  • 1.3K
  • 13 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Visual Ageism
The concept of “visual ageism” describes the media practice of visually underrepresenting older people or misrepresenting them in a prejudiced way. Visual ageism refers to visual representations of older people being in peripheral or minor roles without positive attributes; non-realistic, exaggerated, or distorted portraits of older people, and over-homogenized characterizations of older people. 
  • 1.3K
  • 28 Sep 2021
Topic Review
Psychology of Social Class
The psychology of social class is a branch of social psychology dedicated to understanding how social class affects individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. While social class has long been a subject of analysis in fields such as sociology, political science, anthropology, medicine and epidemiology, its emergence within the field of psychology is much more recent.
  • 1.3K
  • 01 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Information Technology Specialist (Military)
Information Technology Specialist or Information Systems Operator-Analyst is a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) in the United States Army. Information Technology Specialists have the responsibility of maintaining, processing and troubleshooting military computer systems and operations.
  • 1.3K
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Social Acceptance of Renewable Energy
Social acceptance of renewable energy is the attitude of the local population of a given territory to accept the presence, installation or expansion of plants, projects and processes for the production of energy from renewable sources (RES) such as geothermal, sun, wind and biomass. It differs from the generally favorable predisposition of a population towards RES in places far from their homes: indeed, social acceptance of local RES can hinder the development of renewable energy projects, even for a population whose general acceptance of RES is relatively high. 
  • 1.3K
  • 08 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Amazonian Kichwa People
Indigenous peoples are the holders of a great diversity of tangible and intangible cultural heritage (uses, representations, expressions, knowledge and techniques), also known as living heritage. 
  • 1.3K
  • 11 Jan 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Secondary Education and COVID-19
Secondary education is the second stage of formal education and traditionally begins after primary school, usually about age 11 to 13. The COVID-19 pandemic caused immeasurable changes to the educational system which inevitably greatly impacted secondary education. The current entry describes the changes in secondary education imposed by the pandemic and explores the accompanying challenges.
  • 1.3K
  • 14 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Informal Learning
Informal learning is characterized “by a low degree of planning and organizing in terms of the learning context, learning support, learning time, and learning objectives”. It differs from formal learning, non-formal learning, and self-regulated learning, because it has no set objective in terms of learning outcomes, but an intent to act from the learner’s standpoint (e.g., to solve a problem). Typical mechanisms of informal learning include trial and error or learning-by-doing, modeling, feedback, and reflection. For learners this includes heuristic language building, socialization, enculturation, and play. Informal learning is a pervasive ongoing phenomenon of learning via participation or learning via knowledge creation, in contrast with the traditional view of teacher-centered learning via knowledge acquisition. Estimates suggest that about 70-90 percent of adult learning takes place informally and outside educational institutions. The term is often conflated, however, with non-formal learning, and self-directed learning. It is widely used in the context of corporate training and education in relation to return on investment (ROI), or return on learning (ROL). It is also widely used when referring to science education, in relation to citizen science, or informal science education. The conflated meaning of informal and non-formal learning explicates mechanisms of learning that organically occur outside the realm of traditional instructor-led programs, e.g., reading self-selected books, participating in self-study programs, navigating performance support materials and systems, incidental skills practice, receptivity of coaching or mentoring, seeking advice from peers, or participation in communities of practice, to name a few. Informal learning is common in communities where individuals have opportunities to observe and participate in social activities. Advantages of informal learning cited include flexibility and adaptation to learning needs, direct transfer of learning into practice, and rapid resolution of (work-related) problems. For improving employees' performance, task execution is considered the most important source of learning.
  • 1.3K
  • 12 Dec 2022
Topic Review
Sense of Belonging
A sense of belonging is a conjunctive interchange between the interests and the influences that guide our relationship to place. A sense of belonging is also its result: it is the formation of identity and of personhood, through participating in the production of place. To belong is a need of those experiencing place, but we can understand a sense of belonging as developed through the need to become part of the place through associative elements of kinship: responsibility to care for and strengthen place and the ability to subsist through place.
  • 1.3K
  • 20 Jan 2021
Topic Review
The Sub-Saharan African Food Security Situation
All around the world, inequalities persist in the complex web of social, economic, and ecological factors that mediate food security outcomes at different human and institutional scales. There have been rapid and continuous improvements in agricultural productivity and better food security in many regions of the world due to an expansion in crop area, irrigation, and supportive policy and institutional initiatives. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the situation is inverted. Statistics show that food insecurity has risen since 2015 in Sub-Saharan African countries, and the situation has worsened owing to the Ukraine conflict and the ongoing implications of the COVID-19 threat.
  • 1.3K
  • 30 Nov 2022
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