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Ji Ma
Assistant Professor in Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies
Why do some academic articles receive more citations from policy communities?
We present the landscape of the citations of Public Administration and Policy (PAP) scholarly articles in policy documents and examine influencing factors along three dimensions: collaborative teams, cross-disciplinary interactions, and disruptive paradigms. Using data from the 30 most-cited PAP peer-reviewed journals and 38,062 documents from 1107 policy institutions, we find that 10.1% of all PAP scholarship receives high citations from both academics and policy communities. Collaborative teams, cross-disciplinary interactions, and disruptive paradigms can all increase the citations within policy communities, yet the relationships are not linear. Nonacademic authors can consistently attract more policy citations, whether publishing alone or collaborating with academics. An article should ideally cite no more than 13 disciplinary subjects. No significant trade-off between scholarly and policy impact as scholarly citations and the academic reputation of authors often translate into policy citations. These findings offer novel and concrete insights into optimizing academic research for policy impact.
Neutral, non-disruptive, and native: Why do Chinese nonprofit scholars cite English articles?
Language shapes diverse cultures and creates natural barriers between human societies. The landscape of nonprofit and philanthropic studies in non-English languages is barely charted, impeding the globalization of this research field. This project (1) describes the topics shared between English and Chinese scholarship on nonprofits and philanthropy and (2) explores why English scholarship is cited in Chinese journal articles from five aspects: rationale of scholarship, novelty, relevance, social network, and reputation. The English articles cited by Chinese scholars tend to: (1) focus on instrumentality but not expressive values, (2) develop rather than disrupt existing paradigms, and (3) be relevant to topics popular in the Chinese literature and have authors with Chinese scholarly connections. In general, Chinese scholars tend to cite English articles that are value-neutral, non-disruptive, and native. Theoretical and methodological implications for examining nonprofit studies in other languages are discussed.
How Does an Authoritarian State Co-Opt Its Social Scientists Studying Civil Society?
What channels can an authoritarian state employ to steer social science research towards topics preferred by the regime? I researched the Chinese coauthor network of civil society studies, examining 14,088 researchers and their peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1998 and 2018.
Automated coding using machine-learning and remapping the U.S. nonprofit sector: A guide and benchmark
This research developed a machine-learning classifier that reliably automates the coding process using the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities as a schema and remapped the U.S. nonprofit sector.
Computational Social Science for Nonprofit Studies: Developing a Toolbox and Knowledge Base for the Field
How can computational social science (CSS) methods be applied in nonprofit and philanthropic studies? This paper summarizes and explains a range of relevant CSS methods from a research design perspective, and highlights key applications in our field. We define CSS as a set of computationally intensive empirical methods for data management, concept representation, data analysis, and visualization.
Funding Nonprofits in a Networked Society: Toward a Network Framework of Government Support
This study considers the effects of government funding to nonprofits from a network perspective. By analyzing a novel, 12-year panel dataset from the People's Republic of China, I find no evidence that government funding to a nonprofit crowds out private donations to the same organization. However, I find a substantial crosswise crowding-in effect at the ego network level: an increase of one Chinese Yuan in government funding to a nonprofit's neighbor organizations in board interlocking network can increase the private giving to the nonprofit by 0.4 Chinese Yuan.
A Century of Nonprofit Studies: Scaling the Knowledge of the Field
What new knowledge has been generated through the academic study of nonprofit organizations? This study examines how research in the field of nonprofit studies has developed and what ideas have had significant resonance and cohesion, in particular, ideas related to theories of volunteering, as well as social capital and civic engagement.