1,127 research outputs found

    Citations: Indicators of Quality? The Impact Fallacy

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    We argue that citation is a composed indicator: short-term citations can be considered as currency at the research front, whereas long-term citations can contribute to the codification of knowledge claims into concept symbols. Knowledge claims at the research front are more likely to be transitory and are therefore problematic as indicators of quality. Citation impact studies focus on short-term citation, and therefore tend to measure not epistemic quality, but involvement in current discourses in which contributions are positioned by referencing. We explore this argument using three case studies: (1) citations of the journal Soziale Welt as an example of a venue that tends not to publish papers at a research front, unlike, for example, JACS; (2) Robert Merton as a concept symbol across theories of citation; and (3) the Multi-RPYS ("Multi-Referenced Publication Year Spectroscopy") of the journals Scientometrics, Gene, and Soziale Welt. We show empirically that the measurement of "quality" in terms of citations can further be qualified: short-term citation currency at the research front can be distinguished from longer-term processes of incorporation and codification of knowledge claims into bodies of knowledge. The recently introduced Multi-RPYS can be used to distinguish between short-term and long-term impacts.Comment: accepted for publication in Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analysis; doi: 10.3389/frma.2016.0000

    Science and Technology Studies: Exploring the Knowledge Base

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    Science and Technology Studies (STS) is one of a number of new research fields to emerge over the last four or five decades. This paper attempts to identify its core academic contributions using the references that are most cited by the authors of chapters in a number of authoritative ‘handbooks’. The study then analyses the impact of these contributions by exploring the research fields, journals, and geographical location of the researchers that have cited these core contributions in their own work. Together, these two analyses reveal the various phases in the development of STS and the various aspects of convergence and divergence of the field as the quantitative studies of science and technology gradually separated from the main body of STS. The paper ends with some conclusions about the evolution of STS such as the role of ‘institution builders’ in developing new research fields and the structures required to hold them together.science studies, STS, knowledge base, handbooks, core contributions

    Distributed Cognition and the Task of Science

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    This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton\u27s sociology of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher\u27s 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher\u27s 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that arise for them arise just because of the way that they attribute a function to science. The paper concludes by considering local d-cog accounts. Here, too, the task is the crux of the matter

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    \u27iDentity\u27 and governance in synthetic biology: norms and counter norms in the \u27international genetically engineered machine\u27 (iGEM) competition

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    A number of commentaries preoccupied with the legal, social and ethical implications of synthetic biology have emphasised that an important element shaping options for its future governance will be the normative ethos that is adopted by the emerging field. One venue that has regularly been identified as central to the development of this normative ethos is the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition, an annual synthetic biology competition, which attracts thousands of students from across the world. The ideal values promoted by iGEM of collaboration, interdisciplinarity, sharing of results, and overt commitment to the consideration of social and ethical implications of scientific work, are frequently interpreted as offering a model for the future development of the field. In the discussion that follows it will be noted that many of iGEM’s normative aspirations appear to be difficult to convert into practice and that many of the paths which various forms of synthetic biology appear to be following deviate from the types of values iGEM publicly promotes. Policy makers are invited to make a more realistic assessment of iGEM’s capacity to contribute (via generating a distinct synthetic biology normative ethos) to the future governance of the emerging field

    Open Science and Open Innovation in Socio-Political Context: Knowledge Production and Societal Impact in an Age of Populism

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    This conceptual paper traces the origins and progress of Open Science and proposes its generative coupling to Open Innovation in the contemporary socio-political context; where universities are re-imaging their civic missions in the face of anti-establishment populist politics. This setting is one of changing knowledge production regimes and institutional pressures that create contradictions identifiable through the prism of the series of scientific norms conceptualised by Robert K. Merton. This paper privileges a sociological perspective to proffer scientific knowledge production as a societally embedded process, which is well illustrated by scholarship in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Science in Society fields. In doing so, it identifies the co-evolution, co-existence and co-production of Open Science with Open Innovation; and notes how it shares the attributes of other recent diagnoses of changing knowledge production regimes; in particular Mode 2, post-normal science and the Quadruple Helix. It also argues that Open Science can be coupled with Open Innovation to catalyse positive societal change, but that the rise of a populist post-truth era opposed to objectivity, expertise and technocratic political solutions gives the demand for openness and participation a different complexion. Merton’s norms provide a useful lens to observe recent shifts in the delivery of science, knowledge and innovation in society towards more inclusive, ethical and sustainable outcomes; and expose the limited reflection on how the appropriation and exploitation of open scientific knowledge encounters industrial R&D and Open Innovation

    The Role of Metadiscourse in Negotiating Trust in the Communication of Science by Blog

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    Advocates for open systems in science make claims for their efficient collaboration and transparent communication. Although these characteristics are consistent with the traditional norms of science, the implementation of open systems has had mixed effects, particularly on the role of trust. This case study of the published correspondence in research journals suggests that when communication moves from traditional print systems to open on-line systems, two levels of trust arise, one at the discourse level and another at the metadiscourse level. The coincidence and conflation of discourse in these two registers both ameliorate and trouble trust in the communication of science

    The Role of Metadiscourse in Negotiating Trust in the Communication of Science by Blog

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    119-142Advocates for open systems in science make claims for their efficient collaboration and transparent communication. Although these characteristics are consistent with the traditional norms of science, the implementation of open systems has had mixed effects, particularly on the role of trust. This case study of the published correspondence in research journals suggests that when communication moves from traditional print systems to open on-line systems, two levels of trust arise, one at the discourse level and another at the metadiscourse level. The coincidence and conflation of discourse in these two registers both ameliorate and trouble trust in the communication of science. Taken together, these methodological issues raise doubts about the validity of Wolfe-Simon et al.’s assertion 
 (Redfield, 2011). I don’t know whether the authors are just bad scientists or whether they’re unscrupulously pushing NASA’s ‘There’s life in outer space!’ agenda (Redfield, 2010)
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