Detection and characterization of translational research in cancer and cardiovascular medicine

Background Scientists and experts in science policy have become increasingly interested in strengthening translational research. Efforts to understand the nature of translational research and monitor policy interventions face an obstacle: how can translational research be defined in order to facilitate analysis of it? We describe methods of scientometric analysis that can do this. Methods We downloaded bibliographic and citation data from all articles published in 2009 in the 75 leading journals in cancer and in cardiovascular medicine (roughly 15,000 articles for each field). We calculated citation relationships between journals and between articles and we extracted the most prevalent natural language concepts. Results Network analysis and mapping revealed polarization between basic and clinical research, but with translational links between these poles. The structure of the translational research in cancer and cardiac medicine is, however, quite different. In the cancer literature the translational interface is composed of different techniques (e.g., gene expression analysis) that are used across the various subspecialties (e.g., specific tumor types) within cancer research and medicine. In the cardiac literature, the clinical problems are more disparate (i.e., from congenital anomalies to coronary artery disease); although no distinctive translational interface links these fields, translational research does occur in certain subdomains, especially in research on atherosclerosis and hypertension. Conclusions These techniques can be used to monitor the continuing evolution of translational research in medicine and the impact of interventions designed to enhance it.Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF Investigator Award in Health Policy Research)Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC SE-124896)Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-93553)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (SBE-0965259

Argumentation, représentation, intervention : les rôles de l'imagerie dans les discours scientifiques

L’article présente un certain nombre de thèmes développés dans le cadre de recherches sociologiques récentes sur la visualisation dans le domaine scientifique. L’imagerie, loin de remplir de simples fonctions didactiques ou pédagogiques, contribue de façon décisive à structurer la recherche. On constate notamment l’existence de mécanismes particuliers d’argumentation visuelle, le recours à l’imagerie intervenant également dans la constitution des objets scientifiques ainsi que du domaine invisible qui sert de cadre aux interventions sur ces objets et à leurs actions. L’article examine quelques-uns des nouveaux défis posés par l’imagerie de synthèse, notamment le télescopage entre représentation et intervention.The article presents a selective survey of several themes discussed by recent sociological work on visualization in scientific practice. Scientific imagery is not a mere pedagogical tool. Rather, it contributes decisively to the structuring of research. Visual arguments take on specific forms and they play an important role in the constitution of scientific objects and of the invisible domain in which these objects perform and are acted upon. The concluding section examines the new challenges created by computerized imagery, including the conflation of representing and intervening

Intertextualité et archi-iconicité : le cas des représentations scientifiques de la réaction antigène-anticorps.

Cet article propose d’appliquer à l’imagerie scientifique une approche communicationnelle et sémiotique (inspirée de la théorie du texte de Genette). Une représentation iconique de la réaction antigène anticorps très connue (celle d’Ehrlich proposée en 1900) est étudiée du point de vue de son archi-iconicité. Nous analysons comment tour à tour la référence au monde sous-marin, l’analogie clef-serrure et la représentation conventionnelle du temps contribuent à faire de cette image scientifique un modèle qui aujourd’hui encore inspire les représentations iconiques de cette réaction immunologique essentielle.The article investigates scientific imagery by resorting to a semiotic and communication studies approach inspired by Genette’s theory of texts. In particular, it examines the archi-iconic components of the iconic representation of antigen-antibody reactions first introduced by the German immunologist Paul Ehrlich in 1900. It does so, by showing how the visual reference to the submarine world and organisms, the lock-and-key analogy and graphical conventions for representing time, have made this scientific image into a model that continues to inspire iconic representations of this quintessential immunological reaction

The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication

The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS

Research in User-Centered Design 2009 to 2018: A Systematic Keyword Network Analysis

User-centered design (UCD) has become an important concept in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and other disciplines. While there is abundant UCD research, keyword analysis research has been less studied even though keywords are important for achieving better understanding of UCD. Therefore, this study provides keywords network a visual analysis of UCD articles published between 2009 and 2018 to answer the following questions: (1) What UCD-related keywords have been studied and in which disciplines? and (2) How have keywords been connected to on another? The study analyzed 304 keywords articles from IEEE, ACM, and ScienceDirect that included “UCD” in their titles. It utilized Gephi 0.9.2 to visualize keyword frequencies, relationships, and authors’ disciplines. The findings presented that the five most frequently mentioned keywords regarding UCD were “usability,” “HCI,” “User Experiences,” “User-Centered,” and “User Interfaces”. The top five most identified disciplines in the UCD articles were Computer Science, Design, Engineering, Education, and Psychology. In visualizing this data, we created a keyword hierarchy with various sizes of texts and circles, and we denoted various relationship levels between keywords by different weights of edges. This visualization of the selected 43 keywords shows a clear relationship between keywords in which UCD is strongly related to usability, UX, user-centered, HCI, Persona, prototype, interaction design, interface design, assistive technology, design thinking. The findings can be valuable in understanding the current UCD research mainstream for researchers and designers pursuing interdisciplinary approaches