Tudorel Andrei

The growth of international collaboration in East European scholarly communities: a bibliometric analysis of journal articles published between 1989 and 2009

In the last two decades international collaboration in the Eastern European academic communities has strongly intensified. Scientists from developed countries within the European Union play a key role in stimulating the international collaboration of academics in this region. In addition, many of the research projects that engage East-European scholars are only possible in the framework of the large European programmes. The present study focuses on the role of EU and other developed nations as a partner of these countries and the analysis of the performance of collaborative research as reflected by the citation impact of internationally co-authored publications.

An examination of “citation circles” for social sciences journals in Eastern European countries

This study aims to explore the effects of both journal self citations and mutual citations within a group of journals on the increase in the impact factors (IFs) for social sciences journals published in Eastern Europe. We found that the practice of mutual citations is prevalent among the new journals, a trend that raises questions about possible manipulation of the IF and potential isolation of the recent journals from the international network of scholarly communication.

Evaluating Java performance for linear algebra numerical computations

Abstract In this paper we evaluate the performance of a Java library in the context of designing numerical solutions for linear algebra problems. Nowadays there are a number of libraries like LAPACK or ATLAS available in C or FORTRAN for solving such problems. Java is a relatively new object-oriented language and is almost universally recognized as a very good programming language for writing portable programs. Despite these advantages, it is a common believe that Java still lags behind C/C++ or Fortran performance especially for computational intensive numerical applications. We developed a Java library for matrix computations and show that using a set of optimization techniques Java can achieve performance comparable with other libraries developed in C or Fortran.

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Editor Behavior through Potentially Coercive Citations

How much is the h-index of an editor of a well-ranked journal improved due to citations which occur after his/her appointment? Scientific recognition within academia is widely measured nowadays by the number of citations or h-index. Our dataset is based on a sample of four editors from a well-ranked journal (impact factor, IF, greater than 2). The target group consists of two editors who seem to benefit by their position through an increased citation number (and subsequently h-index) within the journal. The total amount of citations for the target group is greater than 600. The control group is formed by another set of two editors from the same journal whose relations between their positions and their citation records remain neutral. The total amount of citations for the control group is more than 1200. The timespan for which the citations’ pattern has been studied is 1975–2015. Previous coercive citations for a journal’s benefit (an increase of its IF) has been indicated. To the best of our knowledge, this is a pioneering work on coercive citations for personal (editors’) benefit. Editorial teams should be aware about this type of potentially unethical behavior and act accordingly.

Parallel algorithms for large scale econometric models

Abstract In this paper we have developed algorithms to solve macroeconometric models with forward-looking variables based on Newton method for nonlinear systems of equations. The most difficult step for Newton methods represents the resolution of a large linear system for each iteration. Thus, we compare the performances resulted by solving this linear system using two iterative methods and the direct method. We’ve also described an implementation of the parallel versions of such algorithms using a software package. Our experiments confirm that the iterative methods have a low computational complexity and storage requirements, but the parallel versions of direct methods show a superior speedup.

Regional specialisation and industrial concentration in Romania’s transition period from an election cycle perspective

In this paper we propose an inquiry into the patterns of regional specialisation and industrial concentration in Romania during its transition to a market economy (1990–2004). Following an econometric modelling-based approach we demonstrate that the changes in these patterns have been influenced to a large extent by election cycles, and more precisely by changes in the economic policy options determined by the ‘colour’ of each corresponding government. These findings have an important significance for the postaccession period, suggesting the need for decisions on economic structures to be carefully monitored when a new election cycle is approaching, in order to avoid possible negative consequences for efficiency and integration in EU structures.

Analysis of Mobility Related Aspects and Politicizing the Civil Service Within Romanian Public Administration

This paper presents a number of issues related to the mobility of civil servants and to the politicizing the civil service in Romania in the period 2000-2010. Analysis of the politicization phenomenon has allowed identification of three stages: 2000-2004, 2005-2008 and 2009-present. Application of legislation within the civil service has allowed a considerable increase of the stability level. Professionalization of the prefect function did not generate a considerable increase in its level of stability. Lately it is noted an increased dependency of the public function to the political system, through legislative changes initiated at the government level. In this paper, using qualitative and quantitative methods, a number of issues related to mobility of civil servants and to the politicization of civil service are highlighted. For this study, there were used data sets from a sample of civil servants form the public administration. Civil servants’ oppinion is totally unfavorable to the process of politicizing the public administration.

Decomposition of the Inequality of Income Distribution by Income Types—Application for Romania

This paper identifies the salient factors that characterize the inequality income distribution for Romania. Data analysis is rigorously carried out using sophisticated techniques borrowed from classical statistics (Theil). Decomposition of the inequalities measured by the Theil index is also performed. This study relies on an exhaustive (11.1 million records for 2014) data-set for total personal gross income of Romanian citizens.

The Ukrainian Community in Banat – Short Quantitative Analysis

Abstract More than over 100 years ago, hundreds of Ukrainian families decided to start a better life – hundreds of kilometers away from their native lands – in the south of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the historical region of Banat. Thus, a few villages were established with a population belonging to this ethic group. This article intends to detail the way in which these flows in population were reflected in the official statistics of the last century.