Workshop: Identifying Transformative Research in the Geographical Sciences

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This project focuses on the conduct of a public workshop as a primary source of information in order to examine transformative research that has influenced the evolution of the geographical sciences and provide insights regarding how transformative research evolved in the past so that it can be encouraged in the future. Transformative scientific concepts have resulted in significant advances by reorienting existing fields, creating new fields, and providing new theoretical or technical frameworks. In the geographical sciences, the so-called "quantitative revolution" in the 1960s adopted a statistical approach to transform the discipline from its descriptive origins into the explanatory science it is today. Other transformative developments in the geographical sciences have resulted from development of new computational and telecommunications advances, such as global positioning systems and geographic information systems, or through the emergence of new approaches like political ecology that draw on insights and approaches from other fields to create new ways for approaching topics. The workshop will focus on exploring answers to three sets of focal questions: (1) How has transformative research emerged in the past, and how did it become transformative? (2) What might be the early markers of transformative research and how does it become possible to identify their transformative character? (3) What has helped nurture and bring transformative research to fruition, and how can it be fostered in the geographical sciences? A final report of the workshop conclusions will be published by the National Academies Press.This workshop will contribute to development of an intellectual framework designed to recognize and foster transformative research by examining the mechanism for significant scientific advances in the geographic sciences, with new insights likely to have value for other fields as well. It will generate new insights that could yield potential advances in the discovery, evaluation, and promotion of transformative research that could provide a valuable guide for researchers, reviewers, and funding agencies.