Research

With dozens of papers published in high impact journals and several oral presentations in international high-caliber conferences, Dr. Santos has done substantial work in the fields of Higher Education and Science & Technology studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief for Higher Education Quarterly.

Due to his expertise in data analysis, Dr. Santos has an open-door policy regarding collaborations, and will tackle any topic where he can provide meaningful methodological and analytical assistance, even if outside his primary fields of study.

Get in touch now for academic collaboration opportunities.

Published works

  1. Barata, M., Santos, J. M., Sousa, D., Silva, C., Alface, C., & Coelho, P. (2025). We are on the road to somewhere: How deliberate practice can enhance the path of continuing education in mental health. Practice Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1037/pri0000273

  2. Santos, J. M. (2024). Who gets the grant? A persona-based investigation into research funding panelist preferences. Research Evaluation, 33, rvae030. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvae030

  3. Sequeira, A., Sousa, D., Afonseca, M., Vaz, A., Santos, J. M., & Silva, A. (2024). The psychotherapist’s persuasiveness: Relation to the working alliance and facilitative interpersonal skills. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000324

  4. Salminen, J., Santos, J. M., Jung, S., & Jansen, B. J. (2024). Picturing the fictitious person: An exploratory study on the effect of images on user perceptions of AI-generated personas. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 2(1), 100052. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2024.100052

  5. Santos, J. M., Horta, H. & Feng, S. (2024). Homophily and its effects on collaborations and repeated collaborations: a study across scientific fields. Scientometrics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04950-3

  6. Santos, J. M. (2023). Exploring the impact of organizational characteristics on research agendas across scientific fields. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01155-0

  7. Kaate, I., Salminen, J., Santos, J. M., Jung, S.-G., Almerekhi, H. A., & Jansen, B. (2023). “There Is something Rotten in Denmark”: Investigating the Deepfake persona perceptions and their Implications for human-centered AI. Computers in Human Behavior: Artificial Humans, 100031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbah.2023.100031

  8. Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2023). Determinants of peer review engagement and quality in scientific journals: Insights for academic research and the sustainability of the peer-review system. Studies in Higher Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2023.2270488

  9. Dias, M. J., Rathenau, S., Sousa, D., & Santos, J. M. (2023). Therapeutic presence, working alliance, and clients’ attitudes toward online therapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration. https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000314

  10. Şengün, S., Santos, J. M., Salminen, J., Milenkovic, M., & Jansen, B. J. (2023). Is Death Only the Beginning? How People Mourn Artificial Characters in Social Media. Games and Culture, 15554120231190196. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231190195

  11. Salminen, J., Santos, J. M., Jung, S., & Jansen, B. J. (2023). How does an imaginary persona’s attractiveness affect designers’ perceptions and IT solutions? An experimental study on users’ remote working needs. Information Technology & People, 36(8), 196–225. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-09-2022-0729

  12. Kaate, I., Salminen, J., Santos, J., Jung, S. G., Olkkonen, R., & Jansen, B. (2023). The Realness of Fakes: Primary Evidence of the Effect of Deepfake Personas on User Perceptions in a Design Task. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 103096.

  13. Santos, J. M., Barata, M., Rathenau, S., Amaro, I., Vaz, A., Sousa, D., Severino, M. & Taveira, M. (2023). Development and validation of the facilitative interpersonal skills scale for clients. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 79(4), 1166-1177.

  14. Salminen, J., Nielsen, L., Bahloul, M., Jørgensen, R. G., Santos, J. M., Jung, S. G., & Jansen, B. J. (2022). Persona preparedness: a survey instrument for measuring the organizational readiness for deploying personas. Information Technology and Management, 1-26.

  15. Horta, H., Panova, A., Santos, J., & Yudkevich, M. (2022). The adaptation of academics to the Covid-19 crisis in terms of work time allocation. Plos one, 17(8), e0273246.

  16. Horta, H., Santos, J. M., & Loureiro, P. M. (2022). The strategic research agenda of academics and the involvement of non-academic peers in research in regimes of academic nested hybridity. European Journal of Higher Education, 1-18.

  17.  Santos, J. M. (2022). Quis judicabit ipsos judices? A case study on the dynamics of competitive funding panel evaluations. Research Evaluation.

  18.  Santos, J. M., Horta, H., & Luna, H. (2022). The relationship between academics’ strategic research agendas and their preferences for basic research, applied research, or experimental development. Scientometrics, 1-35.

  19.  Santos, J. M., Liu, Y., & Tang, H. H. H. (2022). Research agendas and culture: a new approach to analysing the academic profession in Asia and Europe. European Journal of Higher Education, 1-22.

  20.  Afonseca, M., Sousa, D., Vaz, A., Santos, J. M., & Batista, A. (2022). Psychotherapist’s persuasiveness in anxiety: Scale development and relation to the working alliance. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration.

  21. Santos, J. M., Horta, H., & Li, H. (2022). Are the strategic research agendas of researchers in the social sciences determinants of research productivity?. Scientometrics, 1-29.

  22. Şengün, S., Santos, J. M., Salminen, J., Jung, S. G., & Jansen, B. J. (2022). Do players communicate differently depending on the champion played? Exploring the Proteus effect in League of Legends. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 177, 121556.

  23. Salminen, J., Şengün, S., Santos, J. M., Jung, S. G., & Jansen, B. (2022). Can Unhappy Pictures Enhance the Effect of Personas? A User Experiment. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 29(2), 1-59.

  24. Horta, H., Feng, S., Santos, J. M. (2022). Homophily in higher education research: A perspective based on co-authorships. Scientometrics.

  25. Salminen, J., Jung, S., Santos, J. M., Jansen, B. (2021). Toxic Text in Personas: An Experiment on User Perceptions. AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.17705/1thci.00101

  26. Entradas, M., & Santos, J. M. (2021). Returns of research funding are maximised in media visibility for excellent institutes. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(1), 1-8.

  27. Loureiro, P., Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2021). Mapping Case Studies of Public Engagement and Participation in Science and Technology. Science & Technology Studies, 34(2), 46–64. https://doi.org/10.23987/sts.88827

  28. Horta, H., Meoli, M., & Santos, J. M. (2021). Academic inbreeding and choice of strategic research approaches. Higher Education Quarterly, hequ.12328. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12328

  29. Santos, J. M., Horta, H., & Amâncio, L. (2021). Research agendas of female and male academics: a new perspective on gender disparities in academia. Gender and Education, 33(5), 625-643.

  30. Santos, J. M., & Horta, H. (2020). The association between researchers’ conceptions of research and their strategic research agendas. Journal of Data and Information Science, 5(4), 56-74.

  31. Salminen, J., Jung, S. G., Kamel, A. M. S., Santos, J. M., & Jansen, B. J. (2020). Using artificially generated pictures in customer-facing systems: an evaluation study with data-driven personas. Behaviour & Information Technology, 1-17.

  32. Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2020). The Multidimensional Research Agendas Inventory–Revised (MDRAI-R): Factors shaping researchers’ research agendas in all fields of knowledge. Quantitative Science Studies, 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00017

  33. Salminen, J., Santos, J. M., Kwak, H., An, J., Jung, S. G., & Jansen, B. J. (2020). Persona Perception Scale: Development and Exploratory Validation of an Instrument for Evaluating Individuals’ Perceptions of Personas. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 102437.

  34. Moleiro, C., Marto, L., Santos, J.M., Ratinho, I. (2019). Autonomy-connectedness, gender and culture: a comparative study on the interplay of personality functioning and social context. Portuguese Journal of Social Science.

  35. Santos, J. M., Horta, H., & Zhang, L. (2019). The association of thinking styles with research agendas among academics in the social sciences. Higher Education Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12240

  36. Salminen, J., Santos, J. M., Jung, S. G., Eslami, M., & Jansen, B. J. (2019). Persona Transparency: Analyzing the Impact of Explanations on Perceptions of Data-Driven Personas. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 1-13.

  37. Salminen, J., Jung, S.-G., Santos, J. M., & Jansen, B. J. (2019). Does a Smile Matter if the Person Is Not Real?: The Effect of a Smile and Stock Photos on Persona Perceptions. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2019.1664068

  38. Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2019). Organisational factors and academic research agendas: an analysis of academics in the social sciences. Studies in Higher Education, 1-16.

  39. Horta, H., Jung, J., & Santos, J. M. (2019). Mobility and Research Performance of Academics in City-Based Higher Education Systems. Higher Education Policy, 1-22.

  40. Horta, H., Jung, J., & Santos, J. M. (2018). Effects of mobilities on the research output and its multidisciplinarity of academics in Hong Kong and Macau: An exploratory study. Higher Education Quarterly, 72(3), 250-265. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12161

  41. Santos, J. M., & Horta, H. (2018). The research agenda setting of higher education researchers. Higher Education, 76(4), 649-668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0230-9

  42. Santos, J. M. (2018). Development and Validation of the Multi-dimensional University Research Workplace Inventory (MDURWI). Higher Education Policy, 31(3), 381-404. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-017-0064-6

  43. Pádua, M., Santos, J. M., & Horta, H. (2016). Exploring Knowledge Types as Determinants of Preventive Behaviour and Diabetes Risk among Older People. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 7(5), 249. http://10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n5p249

  44. Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2016). An instrument to measure individuals' research agenda setting: the multi-dimensional research agendas inventory. Scientometrics, 1–23. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2012-4

  45. Santos, J. M., Horta, H., & Heitor, M. (2016). Too many PhDs? An invalid argument for countries developing their scientific and academic systems: The case of Portugal. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Available online 12 January 2016, ISSN 0040-1625. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2015.12.013

  46. Horta, H., & Santos, J. M. (2015). The Impact of Publishing During PhD Studies on Career Research Publication, Visibility, and Collaborations. Research in Higher Education, 1–23. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-015-9380-0

  47. Santos, J. M., & Horta, H. (2015). The generational gap of science: a dynamic cluster analysis of doctorates in an evolving scientific system. Scientometrics, 104(1), 381–406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1558-x

Conference papers

  1. Kaate, I., Salminen, J., Jung, S. G., Santos, J. M., Häyhänen, E., Xuan, T., ... & Jansen, B. J. (2024, June). Modeling the New Modalities of Personas: How Do Users' Attributes Influence Their Perceptions and Use of Interactive Personas?. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (pp. 164-169).

  2. Salminen, J., Jung, S.-G., Santos, J. M., Mohamed Sayed Kamel, A., & J. Jansen, B. (2021). Picturing It!: The Effect of Image Styles on User Perceptions of Personas. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445360

  3. Salminen, J., Jung, S. G., Santos, J. M., Chowdhury, S., & Jansen, B. J. (2020). The Effect of Experience on Persona Perceptions. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-9).

  4. Salminen, J., Liu, Y. H., Şengün, S., Santos, J.M., Jung, S., Jansen, B.J. (2020). The effect of numerical and textual information on visual engagement and perceptions of AI-driven persona interfaces. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces.

  5. Salminen, J., Jung, S., Santos, J.M., Jansen, B.J. (2019). The Effect of Smiling Pictures on Perceptions of Personas. In Adjunct Publication of the 27th Conference on the User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization.

  6. Salminen, J., Kwak, H., Santos, J.M., Jung, S. G., An, J., & Jansen, B. J. (2018, April). Persona perception scale: developing and validating an instrument for human-like representations of data. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (p. LBW075). ACM.

  7. Jung, J., Alves Horta, H. D., & Santos, J.M. (2017). What Mobilities affect Research Productivity of Academics in Hong Kong and Macau? An Exploratory Research. In International Symposium on Transnationalization of Higher Education in East Asia: student/Faculty Mobility, Talent Competition and University Governance.

  8. Pádua, M., Santos, J.M., & Horta, H. (2013). Is there a link between education, risk perception, and health outcomes in diabetes in the context of primary intervention among the elderly population? In ALTEC 2013 (pp. 27-31).

Presentations & panels

  1. Santos, J M.; Horta, H.; Shihui, F. (2023). The determinants of homophily across fields of science. In CHER 2023, WU Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

  2. Santos, J.M., Horta, H. (2022). The effect of Strategic Research Agendas on scientific productivity across Fields of Science. In STI 2022, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.

  3. Liu, M., Santos, J. M., Hayes, H. (2021). Academic life and the restructuring of research agendas in the face of uncertainty – predicament, opportunities, or business as usual? In CHER 2021 Conference. Online event.

  4. Santos, J.M., Horta, H., Amâncio, L. (2021). The impact of the gender gap in academia on research agenda setting. In XI European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education. Online event.

  5. Horta, H., Santos, J.M. (2019). The development of a new instrument to measure research agendas. In ISSI 2019, Sapienza – University of Rome, Rome, Italy.

  6. Horta, H., Santos, J.M. (2019). The Development of a New Instrument To Evaluate Research Agendas in STEM Fields. In Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States of America.

  7. Horta, H., Santos, J.M. (2019). Development of an instrument to evaluate research agendas across all fields of science. In CHER 2019 Conference. University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany,

  8. Santos, J.M. Horta, H., Amâncio, L. (2019). The differing research agendas of men and women: a new perspective on the gender gap in academia. In CIEG Congress 2019. Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, Lisbon, Portugal.

  9. Santos, J.M., Horta H. (2018). What organizational factors influence the choice for potentially disruptive research agendas? An exploratory analysis focusing on the social sciences. In CHER 2018 Conference. National Research University Higher School of Economic, Moscow, Russia.

  10. Santos, J.M., Horta, H. (2017). Characterizing the research agenda setting of higher education researchers: an exploratory study. In CHER 2017 Conference. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.

  11. Santos, J.M. (2016). The science of scientific agendas – insights into the agenda setting process of researchers. In XII PhD Meeting in Social and Organizational Psychology. Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal.

  12. Pádua, M., Santos, J.M., Horta, H. (2013). Is there a link between education, risk perception, and health outcomes in diabetes in the context of primary intervention among the elderly population? In ALTEC 2013. IN+, Lisbon, Portugal.

Prizes & awards

2021 – Scientific Award of ISCTE-IUL for the articles “Persona perception scale: Development and exploratory validation of an instrument for evaluating individuals’ perceptions of personas”, “Organisational factors and academic research agendas: an analysis of academics in the social sciences”, “The association of thinking styles with research agendas among academics in the social sciences”, Mobility and research performance of academics in city-based higher education systems”, “Persona transparency: analyzing the impact of explanations on perceptions of data-driven personas”

2019 – Scientific Award of ISCTE-IUL for the articles “Effects of mobilities on the research output and its multidisciplinarity of academics in Hong Kong and Macau: an exploratory study” and “The research agenda setting of higher education researchers”.

2018 – Scientific Award of ISCTE-IUL for the article “Development and validation of the Multi-dimensional University Research Workplace Inventory (MDURWI)”.

2017 – CIS Student Publication Prize for the article “Exploring Knowledge Types as Determinants of Preventive Behaviour and Diabetes Risk among Older People”.

Projects & grants

2022 – Ongoing - 2020.03729.CEECIND – 3rd edition Scientific Employment Stimulus. FCT call, first ranked in the Sociology panel. Contract holder.

2020 – 2022 - PPTDC/COM-OUT/30022/2017 – OPEN - Organisational Public Engagement with Science and Technology. Member.

2015 – Ongoing - Research Grants Council (Hong Kong) project number: 27608516 - ‘Characterising researchers’ research agenda-setting: an international perspective across fields of knowledge’. Member.

2015- 2020 - PD/BD/113999/2015 – FCT PhD Fellowship

2014 – 2015 -  RD0278 - PTDC\IVC\ESCT\3788\2012 - "Trajectórias Profissionais de Doutorados". Fellowship.

2013 – 2014 - 4010 Ref. 11/7/1412 - IRGC-Portugal. Fellowship.