Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Academic Cartography of Sugar Sweetened Beverages: Scientific and Technical Interdisciplinarity

本研究探讨科学和法律学术出版物之间的互动，以了解跨学科的交流，并阐明科学如何通过法律学术论文为政府政策提供信息和影响。虽然许多研究人员研究了科学文章的模式，但很少有研究考虑法律学术文章如何适应出版企业。法律出版物存放在不同的学术数据库中，是主要由法律学生策划的不同出版结构的产物。与科学文章不同，许多法律文章专门针对法定、监管和司法政策。这些文章能够而且确实影响了政府的政策。此外，由于培训和学术文化的差异，同一主题的文章在法律论文和科学论文中可能以截然不同的方式讨论该主题。这项研究着眼于一个特定的主题“含糖饮料”，目前在科学和学术出版物中都很流行，可以作为一个案例研究。它检查了科学和法律文章如何在两个学术出版数据库（SCOPUS和LexisNexis）中相互引用的网络模式。除了查看引用模式，本研究还使用自然语言处理技术查看了这些文章的文本内容，并创建了第二个网络，该网络根据内容相似度对文章进行映射。通过观察引文模式的差异和文章的文本内容相似性，本研究可以识别跨越科学与法律界限的论文和作者。然后，这些跨界作者将接受采访，了解他们的研究过程。这些引文和内容网络地图，以及关于关键跨学科作者的定性数据，将探索科学研究人员和法律研究人员之间互动的关键领域。更好地理解这些关系可以使科学家、法律学者甚至政策制定者之间更好地交流，从而改善对科学研究的影响。

This research investigates the interaction between scientific and legal academic publications to understand interdisciplinary communication and illuminate how science can inform and influence government policy through legal academic papers. While many researchers have studied patterns in scientific articles, little research contemplates how legal academic articles fit into the publication enterprise. Legal publications are housed in different academic databases, and are the product of a different publication structure primarily curated by law students. Unlike scientific articles, many legal articles specifically target statutory, regulatory, and judicial policy. These articles can and do influence government policy. Additionally, articles on the same topic may discuss that topic in vastly different ways in legal versus scientific papers due to a difference in training and academic culture. This research looks at one specific topic 'sugar sweetened beverages' that is currently trending in both scientific and academic publications to serve as a case study. It examines the network patterns of how scientific and legal articles cite one another across two academic publication databases (SCOPUS and LexisNexis). In addition to looking at the citation patterns, this research also looks at the textual content of these articles using a natural language processing technique and creates a second network that maps the articles based on their content similarity. By looking at the differences between the citation patterns and the textual content similarity of the articles, this research can identify papers and authors that straddle the boundaries between science and the law. These boundary-spanning authors will then be interviewed about their research process. These citation and content network maps, along with qualitative data about key interdisciplinary authors will explore a key area of interaction between scientific researchers and legal researchers. A better understanding of these relationships can lead to better communication between scientists, legal scholars, and even policy makers with improved impacts for scientific research.