Research papers

A presentation on writing research papers for SOES 6018. This module aims to ensure that MSc Oceanography, MSc Marine Science, Policy & Law and MSc Marine Resource Management students are equipped with the skills they need to function as professional marine scientists, in addition to / in conjuction with the skills training in other MSc modules. The module covers training in fieldwork techniques, communication & research skills, IT & data analysis and professional development.

The distribution of discoursal salience in research papers: relational hypotaxis and parataxis

In this article I challenge the claim that nuclearity is a central principle in the organization of texts. I propose the Framework for the Relational Analysis of Texts (FARS) which accounts for the paratactic and hypotactic realization of coherence relations. Within this framework, the taxis of coherence relations is co-textually dictated. I consider the writer choices in the distribution of discoursal salience and the intertextual and intercultural variation of these choices. It is suggested that divergence between approaches that perceive text as exhibiting both hypotactic and paratactic organization and those that see nuclearity as a basic characteristic of text structure arises from differences in the linguistic corpora examined during the construction of respective theoretical frameworks.

Application of Swales' model in research papers by non-native authors

This paper reports the investigation of the organisational structure of introductory sections of research papers written by Polish authors in English and Polish. The aim of the study was to test whether in view of cultural differences, reflected in the Anglo-American and Polish intellectual styles, the rhetorical pattern of research papers would vary between the two cultures. The selected texts were analysed in terms of Swales' Creating a Research Space (CARS) model (Swales 1990). On application of the model in the analysis of articles from the English corpus, it was found that it could only be employed in very generic terms. The analysis of the Polish corpus revealed that the Variation between Anglo-American and Polish schematic patterns was too significant to justify the implementation of the same investigative tool.

Elaborativeness in academic writing. A study of three research papers

This paper investigates the employment of elaborative rhetorical strategies in threeresearch papers written in English and published in international sociologicaljournals: the first authored by native speakers of English, the second by a Polishwriter working in an Anglophone discourse community, and the third by a Polishwriter from the Polish discourse community. Elaboration relations are discussedwith respect to their textual function, frequency of employment, hierarchicallocation and recursiveness, and discoursal prominence. I explore how the authorselaborate their texts through amplification, extension, explanation, instantiation,reformulation and addition strategies. The analysis reveals that Elaboration is aprominent feature of the examined texts. It is proposed that the similarities inthe employment of Elaborations across the corpus result from the shared stylisticconventions and traditions of the disciplinary research community of sociologywhile variations in the mode of employment of elaborative structures may becaused by the writers’ differing linguistic backgrounds and discourse communitymemberships.

Combining collaborative and content-based filtering to recommend research papers

The number of research papers available today is growing at a staggering rate, generating a huge amount of information that people cannot keep up with. According to a tendency indicated by the United States’ National Science Foundation, more than 10 million new papers will be published in the next 20 years. Because most of these papers will be available on the Web, this research focus on exploring issues on recommending research papers to users, in order to directly lead users to papers of their interest. Recommender systems are used to recommend items to users among a huge stream of available items, according to users’ interests. This research focuses on the two most prevalent techniques to date, namely Content-Based Filtering and Collaborative Filtering. The first explores the text of the paper itself, recommending items similar in content to the ones the user has rated in the past. The second explores the citation web existing among papers. As these two techniques have complementary advantages, we explored hybrid approaches to recommending research papers. We created standalone and hybrid versions of algorithms and evaluated them through both offline experiments on a database of 102,295 papers, and an online experiment with 110 users. Our results show that the two techniques can be successfully combined to recommend papers. The coverage is also increased at the level of 100% in the hybrid algorithms. In addition, we found that different algorithms are more suitable for recommending different kinds of papers. Finally, we verified that users’ research experience influences the way users perceive recommendations. In parallel, we found that there are no significant differences in recommending papers for users from different countries. However, our results showed that users’ interacting with a research paper Recommender Systems are much happier when the interface is presented in the user’s native language, regardless the language that the papers are written. Therefore, an interface should be tailored to the user’s mother language.

COMPENDIUM: A text summarization system for generating abstracts of research papers

This article analyzes the appropriateness of a text summarization system, COMPENDIUM, for generating abstracts of biomedical papers. Two approaches are suggested: an extractive (COMPENDIUM E), which only selects and extracts the most relevant sentences of the documents, and an abstractive-oriented one (COMPENDIUM E–A), thus facing also the challenge of abstractive summarization. This novel strategy combines extractive information, with some pieces of information of the article that have been previously compressed or fused. Specifically, in this article, we want to study: i) whether COMPENDIUM produces good summaries in the biomedical domain; ii) which summarization approach is more suitable; and iii) the opinion of real users towards automatic summaries. Therefore, two types of evaluation were performed: quantitative and qualitative, for evaluating both the information contained in the summaries, as well as the user satisfaction. Results show that extractive and abstractive-oriented summaries perform similarly as far as the information they contain, so both approaches are able to keep the relevant information of the source documents, but the latter is more appropriate from a human perspective, when a user satisfaction assessment is carried out. This also confirms the suitability of our suggested approach for generating summaries following an abstractive-oriented paradigm.

The autonomy of the EU legal order and the law-making activities of international organizations. Some examples regarding the Council most recent practice. Research Papers in Law 03/2012

[Introduction.] It is generally believed that while the principle of the autonomy of the EU legal order, in the sense of constitutional and institutional autonomy that is to say what concerns the autonomous decision-making of the EU, has been clearly strengthened by the most recent jurisprudence of the Court of Justice (eg. Moxplant3, Intertanko or the Kadi/Al Baraakat judgements or the Opinion 1/2009 of the CJEU etc.) as well as, in my opinion, in many aspects by the Treaty of Lisbon, it is still valid to add that the principle of a favourable approach, stemming from the Court jurisprudence, for the enhanced openness of the EU legal order to international law has remained equally important for the EU4. On the other hand, it should be also seen that in a globalized world, and following the increased role of the EU as an international actor, its indispensable and crucial role concerning the creation of world (legal) order in many policy fields ( for example let's think about the G20 issues, the global economic and financial crisis, the role of the EU in promoting and protecting human rights worldwide, the implementation of the multilateral or regional conventional law, developed in the framework the UN (e.g. in the field of agriculture or environment etc) or what concerns the Kyoto process on climate change or the conservation of marine biological resources at international level etc), it seems reasonable and justified to submit that the influence, for example, of the law-making activities of the main stakeholder international organizations in the mentioned policy-areas on the EU (especially on the development of its constantly evolving legal order) or vice-versa the influence of the EU law-making practice on these international organizations is significant, in many aspects mutually interdependent and more and more remarkable. This tendency of the 21st century doesn't mean, however, in my view, that the notion of the autonomy of the EU legal order would have been weakened by this increasing interaction between international law and EU law over the passed years. This contribution is going to demonstrate and prove these departuring points by giving some concrete examples from the most recent practice of the Council (all occuring either in the second half of 2009 or after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty), and which relate to two very important policy areas in the EU, namely the protection of human rights and the Common Fishery Policy.

Reflections on the institutional balance, the Community Method and the interplay between jurisdictions after Lisbon. Research Papers in Law, 04/2012

[Introduction.] Over the last two years, not only inside but also outside the framework of the EU treaties, far reaching measures have been taken at the highest political level in order to address the financial and economic crisis in Europe and in particular the sovereign debt crisis in the Euro area. This has triggered debates forecasting the “renationalisation of European politics.” Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, countered the prediction that Europe is doomed because of such a renationalisation: “If national politics have a prominent place in our Union, why would this not strengthen it?” He took the view that not a renationalisation of European politics was at stake, but an Europeanization of national politics emphasising that post war Europe was never developed in contradiction with nation states.1 Indeed, the European project is based on a mobilisation of bundled, national forces which are of vital importance to a democratically structured and robust Union that is capable of acting in a globalised world. To that end, the Treaty of Lisbon created a legal basis. The new legal framework redefines the balance between the Union institutions and confirms the central role of the Community method in the EU legislative and judiciary process. This contribution critically discusses the development of the EU's institutional balance after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, with a particular emphasis on the use of the Community Method and the current interplay between national constitutional courts and the Court of Justice. This interplay has to date been characterised by suspicion and mistrust, rather than by a genuine dialogue between the pertinent judicial actors.

The future of the Eurozone and the role of the German Constitutional Court. Research Papers in Law, 05/2012

[Introduction.] Necessary reforms towards a deepened and increased European shaped economic, financial and budgetary policy, paraphrased with the term “fiscal union”, could possibly reach constitutional limits. In its EFSF judgment1, the German Constitutional Court, following the Lisbon judgment in which certain government tasks were determined as being part of the “constitutional identity”2, connected the budget right of the parliament via the principle of democracy to the eternity clause of Art. 79 para 3 Basic Law. A transfer of essential parts of the budget right of the German Bundestag, which would be in conflict with the German constitution, is said to exist when the determination of the nature and amount of the tax affecting the citizens is largely regulated on the supranational level and thereby deprived of the Bundestag’s right to disposition. A reform of the Economic and Monetary Union that touches the core of the budget right can, according to the German Federal Court, with regard to Art. 79 (3) of the Basic Law only be realized by way of Art. 146 of the Basic Law, thus with a new constitution given by the people that replaces the Basic Law.3

The significance of EU topics in national media. Has there been an Europeanization of reporting in the national media? Bruges Political Research Papers No. 27/November 2012

Criticisms are often voiced at the fact that there is no well-informed European public. However, as the process of European integration has advanced, the media have been devoting more resources and space to the coverage of European affairs. At the same time, the national media have gone from being mere transmitters of information to having their own voice on European issues. In this respect, the media have emerged as actors capable of influencing the opinions of citizens, thereby contributing to the emergence of a European public sphere. The present study analyzes whether a Europeanization of the national media has taken place by studying how national newspapers provide information in Europe and whether a European public sphere is emerging. The results reveal that some European topics have experienced a certain Europeanization, but there is still an absence of European debate in the respective national public spheres.

Der Prozess der europäischen Integration in Belgien Voraussetzung und Rahmen der Föderalisiserung eines ehemaligen = Process of European integration in Belgium; Condition and framework of a former [Föderalisiserung]. Research Papers in Law, 2/2003

No abstract.

Accords d’association = Association Agreements [to develop relations with a third state]. Research Papers in Law, 1/2004

No abstract.

Meeting Competition: Why it is not an Abuse under Article 82. Research Papers in Law, 3/2004.

Introduction. Meeting competition occurs when an undertaking lowers its prices in response to the entry of a competitor. Despite accepting that meeting competition can be compatible with Article 82, the Commission2 and the Court of justice3 have repeatedly condemned the practice due to the modalities of implementation or “particular circumstances”.4 However, existing precedent on the subject remains obscurely reasoned and contradictory, such that it is at the present time impossible to give clear advice to undertakings on the circumstances in which meeting competition is compatible with Article 82. Not only is such legal uncertainty in itself damaging but, in so far as it discourages meeting competition, it appears to us to be harmful to competition. As concerns the latter point, it will be seen that some of the most powerful arguments against prohibiting meeting competition are based on the counterproductive nature of the remedies. The present article does not, however, aim to propose a simple solution to distinguish abusive and non-abusive meeting competition.5 Nor does the article aim to give a comprehensive overview of the existing case law in this area.6 Instead, it takes a more economic approach and aims to lay out in a (brief but) systematic fashion the competitive concerns that might potentially be raised by the practice of meeting competition and in doing so to try to identify the main flaws in the Court and Commission’s approach.