Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas
Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas
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DOI：
10.1140/epjds/s13688-018-0166-4
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发表时间：
2018-10-19
期刊：
影响因子：
3.6
通讯作者：
Clauset, Aaron
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Morgan, Allison C.;Economou, Dimitrios J.;Clauset, Aaron
在科学界，思想的传播通常被视为一种竞争，在这种竞争中，好的思想因为内在的适应性更强而传播得更远，而发表地点和引用数量与重要性和影响力相关。然而，对于结构因素如何影响思想的传播，特别是思想的起源如何影响思想的传播，人们所知相对较少。在这里，我们研究了教师招聘网络的作用，它体现了研究人员从博士到教师机构的转变，在塑造计算机科学思想传播方面的作用，以及网络中思想起源的重要性。我们考虑了美国和加拿大所有205个授予博士学位的计算机科学部门的5032名教师的招聘事件的综合数据，以及200,476份相关出版物的时间和标题。通过对五个热门研究课题的分析，我们从经验上表明，聘用教师能够而且确实促进了科学思想的传播。在建立了这样一个机制之后，我们然后使用流行病模型来分析其潜在后果，以模拟研究思想的一般传播，并量化思想起源对其在整个网络中的长期传播的影响。我们发现，来自知名机构的研究比来自非知名机构的同等质量的研究传播得更快、更全面。我们的分析建立了大学声望和有效流通所必需的思想质量之间的理论权衡。我们的研究结果表明，聘用教师是推动精英机构持续认知优势的潜在机制，并为结构不平等在塑造科学思想传播方面的影响提供了理论下限。
The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic fitness, and publication venue and citation counts correlate with importance and impact. However, relatively little is known about how structural factors influence the spread of ideas, and specifically how where an idea originates might influence how it spreads. Here, we investigate the role of faculty hiring networks, which embody the set of researcher transitions from doctoral to faculty institutions, in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates. We consider comprehensive data on the hiring events of 5032 faculty at all 205 Ph.D.-granting departments of computer science in the U.S. and Canada, and on the timing and titles of 200,476 associated publications. Analyzing five popular research topics, we show empirically that faculty hiring can and does facilitate the spread of ideas in science. Having established such a mechanism, we then analyze its potential consequences using epidemic models to simulate the generic spread of research ideas and quantify the impact of where an idea originates on its longterm diffusion across the network. We find that research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions. Our analyses establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the quality of ideas necessary for efficient circulation. Our results establish faculty hiring as an underlying mechanism that drives the persistent epistemic advantage observed for elite institutions, and provide a theoretical lower bound for the impact of structural inequality in shaping the spread of ideas in science.