25,829 research outputs found
How citation boosts promote scientific paradigm shifts and Nobel Prizes
Nobel Prizes are commonly seen to be among the most prestigious achievements
of our times. Based on mining several million citations, we quantitatively
analyze the processes driving paradigm shifts in science. We find that
groundbreaking discoveries of Nobel Prize Laureates and other famous scientists
are not only acknowledged by many citations of their landmark papers.
Surprisingly, they also boost the citation rates of their previous
publications. Given that innovations must outcompete the rich-gets-richer
effect for scientific citations, it turns out that they can make their way only
through citation cascades. A quantitative analysis reveals how and why they
happen. Science appears to behave like a self-organized critical system, in
which citation cascades of all sizes occur, from continuous scientific progress
all the way up to scientific revolutions, which change the way we see our
world. Measuring the "boosting effect" of landmark papers, our analysis reveals
how new ideas and new players can make their way and finally triumph in a world
dominated by established paradigms. The underlying "boost factor" is also
useful to discover scientific breakthroughs and talents much earlier than
through classical citation analysis, which by now has become a widespread
method to measure scientific excellence, influencing scientific careers and the
distribution of research funds. Our findings reveal patterns of collective
social behavior, which are also interesting from an attention economics
perspective. Understanding the origin of scientific authority may therefore
ultimately help to explain, how social influence comes about and why the value
of goods depends so strongly on the attention they attract.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
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Visualizing latent domain knowledge
Knowledge discovery and data mining commonly rely on finding salient patterns of association from a vast amount of data. Traditional citation analysis of scientific literature draws insights from strong citation patterns. Latent domain knowledge, in contrast to the mainstream domain knowledge, often consists of highly relevant but relatively infrequently cited scientific works. Visualizing latent domain knowledge presents a significant challenge to knowledge discovery and quantitative studies of science. We build upon a citation-based knowledge visualization procedure and develop an approach that not only captures knowledge structures from prominent and highly cited works, but also traces latent domain knowledge through low-frequency citation chains. We apply this approach to two cases: (1) identifying cross-domain applications of Pathfinder networks (PFNETs) and (2) clarifying the current status of scientific inquiry of a possible link between Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, and a new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a type of brain disease in human
Theoretical studies of the historical development of the accounting discipline: a review and evidence
Many existing studies of the development of accounting thought have either been atheoretical or have adopted Kuhn's model of scientific growth. The limitations of this 35-year-old model are discussed. Four different general neo-Kuhnian models of scholarly knowledge development are reviewed and compared with reference to an analytical matrix. The models are found to be mutually consistent, with each focusing on a different aspect of development. A composite model is proposed. Based on a hand-crafted database, author co-citation analysis is used to map empirically the entire literature structure of the accounting discipline during two consecutive time periods, 1972â81 and 1982â90. The changing structure of the accounting literature is interpreted using the proposed composite model of scholarly knowledge development
The geography of references in elite articles: What countries contribute to the archives of knowledge
This study is intended to find an answer for the question on which national
"shoulders" the worldwide top-level research stands. Traditionally, national
scientific standings are evaluated in terms of the number of citations to their
papers. We raise a different question: instead of analyzing the citations to
the countries' articles (the forward view), we examine referenced publications
from specific countries cited in the most elite publications (the
backward-citing-view). "Elite publications" are operationalized as the top-1%
most-highly cited articles. Using the articles published during the years 2004
to 2013, we examine the research referenced in these works. Our results confirm
the well-known fact that China has emerged to become a major player in science.
However, China still belongs to the low contributors when countries are ranked
as contributors to the cited references in top-1% articles. Using this
perspective, the results do not point to a decreasing trend for the USA; in
fact, the USA exceeds expectations (compared to its publication share) in terms
of contributions to cited references in the top-1% articles. Switzerland,
Sweden, and the Netherlands also are shown at the top of the list. However, the
results for Germany are lower than statistically expected
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