534 research outputs found
AUGUR: Forecasting the Emergence of New Research Topics
Being able to rapidly recognise new research trends is strategic for many stakeholders, including universities, institutional funding bodies, academic publishers and companies. The literature presents several approaches to identifying the emergence of new research topics, which rely on the assumption that the topic is already exhibiting a certain degree of popularity and consistently referred to by a community of researchers. However, detecting the emergence of a new research area at an embryonic stage, i.e., before the topic has been consistently labelled by a community of researchers and associated with a number of publications, is still an open challenge. We address this issue by introducing Augur, a novel approach to the early detection of research topics. Augur analyses the diachronic relationships between research areas and is able to detect clusters of topics that exhibit dynamics correlated with the emergence of new research topics. Here we also present the Advanced Clique Percolation Method (ACPM), a new community detection algorithm developed specifically for supporting this task. Augur was evaluated on a gold standard of 1,408 debutant topics in the 2000-2011 interval and outperformed four alternative approaches in terms of both precision and recall
"Meaning" as a sociological concept: A review of the modeling, mapping, and simulation of the communication of knowledge and meaning
The development of discursive knowledge presumes the communication of meaning
as analytically different from the communication of information. Knowledge can
then be considered as a meaning which makes a difference. Whereas the
communication of information is studied in the information sciences and
scientometrics, the communication of meaning has been central to Luhmann's
attempts to make the theory of autopoiesis relevant for sociology. Analytical
techniques such as semantic maps and the simulation of anticipatory systems
enable us to operationalize the distinctions which Luhmann proposed as relevant
to the elaboration of Husserl's "horizons of meaning" in empirical research:
interactions among communications, the organization of meaning in
instantiations, and the self-organization of interhuman communication in terms
of symbolically generalized media such as truth, love, and power. Horizons of
meaning, however, remain uncertain orders of expectations, and one should
caution against reification from the meta-biological perspective of systems
theory
Mapping Patent Classifications: Portfolio and Statistical Analysis, and the Comparison of Strengths and Weaknesses
The Cooperative Patent Classifications (CPC) jointly developed by the
European and US Patent Offices provide a new basis for mapping and portfolio
analysis. This update provides an occasion for rethinking the parameter
choices. The new maps are significantly different from previous ones, although
this may not always be obvious on visual inspection. Since these maps are
statistical constructs based on index terms, their quality--as different from
utility--can only be controlled discursively. We provide nested maps online and
a routine for portfolio overlays and further statistical analysis. We add a new
tool for "difference maps" which is illustrated by comparing the portfolios of
patents granted to Novartis and MSD in 2016.Comment: Scientometrics 112(3) (2017) 1573-1591;
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-017-2449-
Sociological and Communication-Theoretical Perspectives on the Commercialization of the Sciences
Both self-organization and organization are important for the further
development of the sciences: the two dynamics condition and enable each other.
Commercial and public considerations can interact and "interpenetrate" in
historical organization; different codes of communication are then
"recombined." However, self-organization in the symbolically generalized codes
of communication can be expected to operate at the global level. The Triple
Helix model allows for both a neo-institutional appreciation in terms of
historical networks of university-industry-government relations and a
neo-evolutionary interpretation in terms of three functions: (i) novelty
production, (i) wealth generation, and (iii) political control. Using this
model, one can appreciate both subdynamics. The mutual information in three
dimensions enables us to measure the trade-off between organization and
self-organization as a possible synergy. The question of optimization between
commercial and public interests in the different sciences can thus be made
empirical.Comment: Science & Education (forthcoming
Knowledge Integration and Diffusion: Measures and Mapping of Diversity and Coherence
I present a framework based on the concepts of diversity and coherence for
the analysis of knowledge integration and diffusion. Visualisations that help
understand insights gained are also introduced. The key novelty offered by this
framework compared to previous approaches is the inclusion of cognitive
distance (or proximity) between the categories that characterise the body of
knowledge under study. I briefly discuss the different methods to map the
cognitive dimension
The Citation Field of Evolutionary Economics
Evolutionary economics has developed into an academic field of its own,
institutionalized around, amongst others, the Journal of Evolutionary Economics
(JEE). This paper analyzes the way and extent to which evolutionary economics
has become an interdisciplinary journal, as its aim was: a journal that is
indispensable in the exchange of expert knowledge on topics and using
approaches that relate naturally with it. Analyzing citation data for the
relevant academic field for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, we use
insights from scientometrics and social network analysis to find that, indeed,
the JEE is a central player in this interdisciplinary field aiming mostly at
understanding technological and regional dynamics. It does not, however, link
firmly with the natural sciences (including biology) nor to management
sciences, entrepreneurship, and organization studies. Another journal that
could be perceived to have evolutionary acumen, the Journal of Economic Issues,
does relate to heterodox economics journals and is relatively more involved in
discussing issues of firm and industry organization. The JEE seems most keen to
develop theoretical insights
Probing Multivariate Indicators for Academic Evaluation
We combine the Integrated Impact Indicator (I3) and the h-index into the
I3-type framework and introduce the publication vector X = (X1, X2, X3) and the
citation vector Y = (Y1, Y2, Y3) , the publication score I3X=X1+X2+X3 and the
citation score I3Y=Y1+Y2+Y3, and alternative indicators based on percentile
classes generated by the h-index. These multivariate indicators can be used for
academic evaluation. The empirical studies show that the h-core distribution is
suitable to evaluate scholars, the X1 and Y1 are applied to measure core impact
power of universities, and I3X and I3Y are alternatives of journal impact
factor (JIF). The multivariate indicators provide a multidimensional view of
academic evaluation with using the advantages of both the h-index and I3.Comment: Journal of Library Science in China (in press). This is the English
version of a Chinese article. DOI:10.13530/j.cnki.jlis.17001
Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields
There is an overall perception of increased interdisciplinarity in science,
but this is difficult to confirm quantitatively owing to the lack of adequate
methods to evaluate subjective phenomena. This is no different from the
difficulties in establishing quantitative relationships in human and social
sciences. In this paper we quantified the interdisciplinarity of scientific
journals and science fields by using an entropy measurement based on the
diversity of the subject categories of journals citing a specific journal. The
methodology consisted in building citation networks using the Journal Citation
Reports database, in which the nodes were journals and edges were established
based on citations among journals. The overall network for the 11-year period
(1999-2009) studied was small-world and scale free with regard to the
in-strength. Upon visualizing the network topology an overall structure of the
various science fields could be inferred, especially their interconnections. We
confirmed quantitatively that science fields are becoming increasingly
interdisciplinary, with the degree of interdisplinarity (i.e. entropy)
correlating strongly with the in-strength of journals and with the impact
factor.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure
The success-index: an alternative approach to the h-index for evaluating an individual's research output
Among the most recent bibliometric indicators for normalizing the differences among fields of science in terms of citation behaviour, Kosmulski (J Informetr 5(3):481-485, 2011) proposed the NSP (number of successful paper) index. According to the authors, NSP deserves much attention for its great simplicity and immediate meaning— equivalent to those of the h-index—while it has the disadvantage of being prone to manipulation and not very efficient in terms of statistical significance. In the first part of the paper, we introduce the success-index, aimed at reducing the NSP-index's limitations, although requiring more computing effort. Next, we present a detailed analysis of the success-index from the point of view of its operational properties and a comparison with the h-index's ones. Particularly interesting is the examination of the success-index scale of measurement, which is much richer than the h-index's. This makes success-index much more versatile for different types of analysis—e.g., (cross-field) comparisons of the scientific output of (1) individual researchers, (2) researchers with different seniority, (3) research institutions of different size, (4) scientific journals, etc
- …