The role of disciplinary analysis in web science education

This paper considers the ways in which Web Science educationcan benefit from an analysis method used to gauge disciplinary representation. Three key contributions are identified:1) driving development of the Web Science curriculum; 2) teaching WebScience, i.e. considering its evolution over time and using the method to foster comparisons of Web Science with other like fields; 3) teaching the analysis method itself as an example of amixed methods, Web Science method.This paper addresses topic #1 of the Web Science Educationactivities (Web Science education programmes design)

A manifesto for Web Science

A clarion call for a new research agenda has been sounded, notably by Berners-Lee et al (2006a 2006b) and Hendler et al (2008) for a ‘science of decentralised information systems’ to ‘discover’ generative mechanisms, and synthesise knowledge and technology to push both forwards. Computer Science alone - focussing as it does on the engineering/technology of the web - could not deliver the ambitions of this new agenda. Equally, other disciplines implicated in Web Science might use the web to support their research, or be interested in virtual life, but they lacked a coherent or unifying mandate for engaging with the web. By calling for Web Science these pioneers opened up a new space. But this is uncharted terrain. As a technology the web is still new. While it has grown rapidly and unexpectedly we are only just beginning to think about the web as a phenomena to be studied. The proponents of Web Science had the vision to see that this new approach had to include disciplines beyond their own; it had to be greater than the sum of the parts of individual disciplines. This is a radical call to leave disciplinary silos and work collaboratively to produce something bigger and better. Moreover, it takes in the founding principles of the web and a desire for a web that is pro-human: this is a call for a science that is capable of insight and intervention to create a better world. Our paper aims to take up this challenge and suggests how we might map the Web Science terrain. We come at this from a slightly different direction to the web science pioneers and want to demonstrate how social science can, and indeed must, contribute to developing Web Science. This paper will explore the contribution of social theory and sociological concepts that shape how we engage with the web. We focus on four key aspects which seem to be central to this understanding. Firstly co-constitution, the fact that the web both shapes and is shaped by humans/society. Secondly the importance of heterogeneous networks of multiple and diverse actors (including technologies themselves) that make the web as we know it. Thirdly the significance of performativity, that the web is an unfolding, enacted practice, as people interact with http to build ‘the web’ moment by moment. Finally, drawing these ideas together we see the web we have now as an immutable mobile or temporarily stabilised network. We use these ideas to map what web science could be and to suggest how we might use sociology to understand the web. Our aim is to provoke and stimulate debate and to move beyond superficial popular psychology and sociology (which envisages engineering human behaviour) and to challenge some of the ways in which social science has engaged with technology and technical actors. To facilitate this, and taking our lead from Donna Harroway, the paper sets out a radical manifesto for web science

Web Science: expanding the notion of Computer Science

Academic disciplines which practice in the context of rapid external change face particular problems when seeking to maintain timely, current and relevant teaching programs. In different institutions faculty will tune and update individual component courses while more radical revisions are typically departmental-wide strategic responses to perceived needs. Internationally, the ACM has sought to define curriculum recommendations since the 1960s and recognizes the diversity of the computing disciplines with its 2005 overview volume. The consequent rolling program of revisions is demanding in terms of time and effort, but an inevitable response to the change inherent is our family of specialisms. Preparation for the Computer Curricula 2013 is underway, so it seems appropriate to ask what place Web Science will have in the curriculum landscape. Web Science has been variously described; the most concise definition being the ‘science of decentralized information systems’. Web science is fundamentally interdisciplinary encompassing the study of the technologies and engineering which constitute the Web, alongside emerging associated human, social and organizational practices. Furthermore, to date little teaching of Web Science is at undergraduate level. Some questions emerge - is Web Science a transient artifact? Can Web Science claim a place in the ACM family, Is Web Science an exotic relative with a home elsewhere? This paper discusses the role and place of Web Science in the context of the computing disciplines. It provides an account of work which has been established towards defining an initial curriculum for Web Science with plans for future developments utilizing novel methods to support and elaborate curriculum definition and review. The findings of a desk survey of existing related curriculum recommendations are presented. The paper concludes with recommendations for future activities which may help us determine whether we should expand the notion of computer science

The Metadata is the Message

The question "What is Web Science" is still frequently asked - even by authors of papers about Web Science. In this position paper we consider what part of the Web Science cycle makes this cycle emblematically "Web Science" rather than another form of either Law and Technology or Sociology and Technology or Computer Science and HCI. Based on our research developing and evaluating Semantic Web / Web 2.0 applications, and observations of current practice, we suggest that the particularity of Web Science is strongly correlated to a focus on human repurposing of particular Web technologies to support ever more rapid types of increased social contact. Based on this analysis, we ask how Web Science may help understand and shape this phenomenon, and what the implications may be for embracing this focus as a necessary criteria for assessing Web Science relevance of research work

Web Science is Growing Up: interdisciplinary insights and a maturing community at WebSci ’11

ACM Web Science 2011, which ran from 14 – 17 June in Koblenz, Germany, is one of the more interdisciplinary ACM conferences: unlike ACM WWW, which focuses on infrastructure, standards and development, Web Science concerns the Web as an unfolding process. It examines the Web and our society, including politics, economics and law

Global Maps of Science based on the new Web-of-Science Categories

In August 2011, Thomson Reuters launched version 5 of the Science and Social Science Citation Index in the Web of Science (WoS). Among other things, the 222 ISI Subject Categories (SCs) for these two databases in version 4 of WoS were renamed and extended to 225 WoS Categories (WCs). A new set of 151 Subject Categories (SCs) was added, but at a higher level of aggregation. Since we previously used the ISI SCs as the baseline for a global map in Pajek (Rafols et al., 2010) and brought this facility online (at http://www.leydesdorff.net/overlaytoolkit), we recalibrated this map for the new WC categories using the Journal Citation Reports 2010. In the new installation, the base maps can also be made using VOSviewer (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010).Comment: Scientometrics, in pres

The Web as an Adaptive Network: Coevolution of Web Behavior and Web Structure

Much is known about the complex network structure of the Web, and about behavioral dynamics on the Web. A number of studies address how behaviors on the Web are affected by different network topologies, whilst others address how the behavior of users on the Web alters network topology. These represent complementary directions of influence, but they are generally not combined within any one study. In network science, the study of the coupled interaction between topology and behavior, or state-topology coevolution, is known as 'adaptive networks', and is a rapidly developing area of research. In this paper, we review the case for considering the Web as an adaptive network and several examples of state-topology coevolution on the Web. We also review some abstract results from recent literature in adaptive networks and discuss their implications for Web Science. We conclude that adaptive networks provide a formal framework for characterizing processes acting 'on' and 'of' the Web, and offers potential for identifying general organizing principles that seem otherwise illusive in Web Scienc

Trust on the Web: Some Web Science Research Challenges

Web Science is the interdisciplinary study of the World Wide Web as a first-order object in order to understand its relationship with the wider societies in which it is embedded, and in order to facilitate its future engineering as a beneficial object. In this paper, research issues and challenges relating to the vital topic of trust are reviewed, showing how the Web Science agenda requires trust to be addressed, and how addressing the challenges requires a range of disciplinary skills applied in an integrated manner

Does it Matter Which Citation Tool is Used to Compare the h-index of a Group of Highly Cited Researchers?

h-index retrieved by citation indexes (Scopus, Google scholar, and Web of Science) is used to measure the scientific performance and the research impact studies based on the number of publications and citations of a scientist. It also is easily available and may be used for performance measures of scientists, and for recruitment decisions. The aim of this study is to investigate the difference between the outputs and results from these three citation databases namely Scopus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science based upon the h-index of a group of highly cited researchers (Nobel Prize winner scientist). The purposive sampling method was adopted to collect the required data. The results showed that there is a significant difference in the h-index between three citation indexes of Scopus, Google scholar, and Web of Science; the Google scholar h-index was more than the h-index in two other databases. It was also concluded that there is a significant positive relationship between h-indices based on Google scholar and Scopus. The citation indexes of Scopus, Google scholar, and Web of Science may be useful for evaluating h-index of scientists but they have some limitations as well