Knowledge Production and Development Discourse in Third millennium: an Investigation of Urban Geography Journals in Iran

IntroductionHistorically, the knowledge and its production, as the key driver of civilization and economic prosperity, have been crucial to the development and competiveness of any city and region. However, over the past several decades, the importance of scientific development in new theory of development discourse has been raised and global village goes into the global information order. The cities that have been always home to civilization gained unprecedented importance and placed in the core of production, exchange, and knowledge. Nowadays, many of cities around the world have been faced with massive transformations of urban areas due to dynamic processes of spatial and economic restructure where physical commodity replaces by very delicate forms of production (knowledge). Accordingly, this paper aimed to scrupulously describe these transformations and identify the role of knowledge in the development as well as the interaction of knowledge and city development. In addition, this paper sought to examine the most important characteristics of scientific papers in the knowledge production. Finally, according to these characteristics and criteria, we review and analyze scientific papers of urban geography.
MethodologyThis paper is based on combined method. Delphi technique and content analysis were used as a qualitative method. Additionally, quantitative method and analysis including spectral questionnaires and one sample T-test and Friedman test were used. AHP method was employed to calculate the weight of each factor and indicator according to the expert's opinions. Qualitative data was collected by the snowball sampling method and quantitative data was acquired through questionnaires that examined 50 scientific articles in urban geography journals from expert perspectives. In this step, we used the random sampling method to determine the sample size.
Results and discussionBased on literature review and expert’s consensus 7 criteria and 21 sub-criteria was selected. Criteria ranking via AHP showed that meaningful and creativity criteria gained highest ranking and lowest ranking was for adequately present and language. Investigation of 50 scientific research of urban geography indicates that those Criteria’s that have more important role in the production of knowledge from expert perspectives have had low ranking at scientific articles in the field of urban geography. Accordingly, it can be said that despite the importance of " Novelty, Creativity and Meaningfulness ", " Sound methodological basis” and ” following appropriate ethical guidelines " criteria in the production and development of science, unfortunately, scholars has been little attention in the field of urban geography.
Table 1: Comparing the ranking of criteria from experts’ perspectives and the results of the articles investigation
Expert’s ranking Results from papers investigation
1 Novelty, Creativity and Meaningfulness Meaningful Relevance
2 Sound methodological basis Adequate presentation, style, and language
3 following appropriate ethical guidelines
Transparency and clarity
4 Meaningful Relevance High standards of scholarship in argument and interpretation
5 High standards of scholarship in argument and interpretation Sound methodological basis
6 Transparency and clarity following appropriate ethical guidelines
7 Adequate presentation, style, and language Novelty, Creativity and Meaningfulness
ConclusionFindings revealed that knowledge capitalism has emerged in the post-industrial world, and advanced communities struggle to achieve a knowledge-based economy. In this context, cities plays a central role in this process and in order to create a sustainable competitive advantage trying to adapt with it. These trends and Transformations alerts us to the great mission of researchers and scientists in the field of urban studies in order to produce and exchange of basic knowledge in the field of urban issues. Moreover, they must create an urban environment in which development of science and technology motivated. The twenty-first century is millennium in which inattention and negligence to knowledge lead to negative consequences and will bring very unpleasant problems. In other words, South global become home to a variety of issues and challenges, and citizens will be ' remote control workers via low wages”. Investigation of criteria and papers also indicate that in the expert's view, ‘Novelty, Creativity, and Meaningfulness’, ‘ Sound methodological basis ’ and ‘following appropriate ethical guidelines’ criteria obtain higher rankings than other criteria in the production of knowledge while the scientific research articles in urban geography have been little attention to them.