This article takes on the task of exploring gig economy in its various forms and definitions, starting from its economic origins as a way to reduce transaction costs and overheads in firms making use of modern technology, and working up to some of its social consequences, such as the transforming of employees in just-in-time resources, fragmenting their labour and eroding their ability to organize and unionize in order to better defend their rights. Focussing on the influence platforms have on their users, be it in the role of workers or customers, it questions their far-reaching impacts on society and economy in terms of their positive, neutral or negative consequences for workers, as most of the literature agrees on the heavily skewed positive consequences for businesses. In order to make sense of existing research made on "giggers" this article tries to provide a scope of the gig economy using, which has been difficult to achieve as numerous researchers, institutions, and even states, define gig economy in different ways, with their data varying depending on definitions, dates, and methodological approaches. Finally, the article explores three distinct "selling points" of gig economy, namely: the possibility to generate (not always) steady income, the flexibility it offers to its users, and its consequences on workers' social and emotional state, putting into question their benefits for workers, for the profit of platforms and businesses.
Collaboration between researchers is seen as paramount in advancing science, be it because of its potential to offer novel ideas crossing scientific fields, because of its ability to boost productivity by having researchers who work well together, or by introducing and retaining new scientists to a wider network of peers, allowing them to access knowledge and information otherwise unavailable. This article sets to explore a specific part of scientific collaboration: mentor-protégés collaboration, especially during the formative years of a protégé's scientific career, during the writing of their dissertation and five years after. Gathering data on scientific productivity from the publication repository aggregator Croatian Scientific Bibliography, mentor-protégé collaboration was explored in order to test whether mentor's productivity could affect his or her protégé's productivity. Analysis of variance and linear regression analysis confirm that mentor productivity is positively correlated with protégé productivity, especially in the case where mentors are highly productive (stars) scientists. Additionally, network values such as betweenness and weighted degree centralities are explored in order to test whether mentors' values will affect protégé's position in the network. While mentor-protégé betweenness centrality values are found not to be correlated, weighted degree measures do seem to play an important role in introducing protégés to their mentor's network of peers and co-authors.
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