889 research outputs found
Characterizing Interdisciplinarity of Researchers and Research Topics Using Web Search Engines
Researchers' networks have been subject to active modeling and analysis.
Earlier literature mostly focused on citation or co-authorship networks
reconstructed from annotated scientific publication databases, which have
several limitations. Recently, general-purpose web search engines have also
been utilized to collect information about social networks. Here we
reconstructed, using web search engines, a network representing the relatedness
of researchers to their peers as well as to various research topics.
Relatedness between researchers and research topics was characterized by
visibility boost-increase of a researcher's visibility by focusing on a
particular topic. It was observed that researchers who had high visibility
boosts by the same research topic tended to be close to each other in their
network. We calculated correlations between visibility boosts by research
topics and researchers' interdisciplinarity at individual level (diversity of
topics related to the researcher) and at social level (his/her centrality in
the researchers' network). We found that visibility boosts by certain research
topics were positively correlated with researchers' individual-level
interdisciplinarity despite their negative correlations with the general
popularity of researchers. It was also found that visibility boosts by
network-related topics had positive correlations with researchers' social-level
interdisciplinarity. Research topics' correlations with researchers'
individual- and social-level interdisciplinarities were found to be nearly
independent from each other. These findings suggest that the notion of
"interdisciplinarity" of a researcher should be understood as a
multi-dimensional concept that should be evaluated using multiple assessment
means.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in PLoS On
Modeling interdisciplinary interactions among Physics, Mathematics & Computer Science
Interdisciplinarity has over the recent years have gained tremendous
importance and has become one of the key ways of doing cutting edge research.
In this paper we attempt to model the citation flow across three different
fields -- Physics (PHY), Mathematics (MA) and Computer Science (CS). For
instance, is there a specific pattern in which these fields cite one another?
We carry out experiments on a dataset comprising more than 1.2 million articles
taken from these three fields. We quantify the citation interactions among
these three fields through temporal bucket signatures. We present numerical
models based on variants of the recently proposed relay-linking framework to
explain the citation dynamics across the three disciplines. These models make a
modest attempt to unfold the underlying principles of how citation links could
have been formed across the three fields over time.Comment: Accepted at Journal of Physics: Complexit
Quantifying the consistency of scientific databases
Science is a social process with far-reaching impact on our modern society.
In the recent years, for the first time we are able to scientifically study the
science itself. This is enabled by massive amounts of data on scientific
publications that is increasingly becoming available. The data is contained in
several databases such as Web of Science or PubMed, maintained by various
public and private entities. Unfortunately, these databases are not always
consistent, which considerably hinders this study. Relying on the powerful
framework of complex networks, we conduct a systematic analysis of the
consistency among six major scientific databases. We found that identifying a
single "best" database is far from easy. Nevertheless, our results indicate
appreciable differences in mutual consistency of different databases, which we
interpret as recipes for future bibliometric studies.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 4 table
Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: An ontological approach
This is the post-print version of the Paper. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerSupporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.This work is funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 eParticipation call
Analyse des évolutions et des interactions entre domaines scientifiques : GRAFSEL, association de la sélection de variables et de la représentation graphique
International audienceCet article présente l'application d'une nouvelle méthode de sélection de variables pour l'analyse de l'évolution et des interactions entre domaines scientifiques. L'interrogation de bases de données bibliographiques fournit un corpus de publications scientifiques dans différents domaines. Chaque domaine scientifique est considéré comme une classe obtenue à partir d'un processus d'apprentissage automatique, qu'il soit supervisé ou non, et chaque document est représenté par un sac de mots. Il est alors possible de sélectionner les mots les plus significatifs de chaque classe (domaine). Nous représentons ensuite les relations mots-classes par un graphe dont les arêtes sont pondérées par une fonction de contraste. Cette méthode nous permet de discriminer entre les mots spécifiques à chaque domaine et ceux qui sont pluridisciplinaires. En outre, l'analyse conjointe de plusieurs périodes de temps nous permet également d'apprécier parallèlement l'évolution des domaines scientifiques
The metric tide: report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management
This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration.
This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture.
The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises
Theoretical and technological building blocks for an innovation accelerator
The scientific system that we use today was devised centuries ago and is
inadequate for our current ICT-based society: the peer review system encourages
conservatism, journal publications are monolithic and slow, data is often not
available to other scientists, and the independent validation of results is
limited. Building on the Innovation Accelerator paper by Helbing and Balietti
(2011) this paper takes the initial global vision and reviews the theoretical
and technological building blocks that can be used for implementing an
innovation (in first place: science) accelerator platform driven by
re-imagining the science system. The envisioned platform would rest on four
pillars: (i) Redesign the incentive scheme to reduce behavior such as
conservatism, herding and hyping; (ii) Advance scientific publications by
breaking up the monolithic paper unit and introducing other building blocks
such as data, tools, experiment workflows, resources; (iii) Use machine
readable semantics for publications, debate structures, provenance etc. in
order to include the computer as a partner in the scientific process, and (iv)
Build an online platform for collaboration, including a network of trust and
reputation among the different types of stakeholders in the scientific system:
scientists, educators, funding agencies, policy makers, students and industrial
innovators among others. Any such improvements to the scientific system must
support the entire scientific process (unlike current tools that chop up the
scientific process into disconnected pieces), must facilitate and encourage
collaboration and interdisciplinarity (again unlike current tools), must
facilitate the inclusion of intelligent computing in the scientific process,
must facilitate not only the core scientific process, but also accommodate
other stakeholders such science policy makers, industrial innovators, and the
general public
Trading Zones of Digital History
Will historians become programmers? How do historians collaborate with experts from computational domains? At the centre of the book is the question how historians are affected by such ongoing interactions. By following historians and studying digital history collaborations, Kemman critically discusses how digital history will impact historical scholarship
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