Collaborative Research: REVISITING THE DYNAMICS OF SCIENTIFIC INFLUENCE: MEASURES AND APPLICATIONS

大学、各州和联邦政府在科学研究上投入了数百万美元，并渴望评估其影响。研究科学的研究人员也对解释某些研究如何以及为什么特别有影响力，以及科学研究如何随着时间的推移而演变感兴趣。要实现这些目标，需要详细但可扩展的科学影响力措施。在网络科学最新发展的基础上，该项目将开发和评估一种衡量科学影响力的新指标--CD指数。CD索引描述了科学工作(如发表的期刊论文)如何改变其所依据的知识的使用。有些文章建立在先前发表的研究的基础上，因此巩固了(C)先前发表的研究，而其他文章则背离了现有的知识，因此破坏了(D)现有知识的稳定性。这一措施提供了一种新的、系统的方法来确定开拓新领域的突破性科学发现，并将它们与更多但也是重要的、发展现有领域的贡献区分开来。这个项目的结果应该对参与研究、政策制定和执行的个人有用。例如，大学管理者正在从单纯关注科学产出的数量转向对质量和影响的更大欣赏。这个项目的结果将使管理者不仅可以确定在不同方式(巩固或破坏稳定)方面有影响力的研究，而且还可以促进促进这种成果的条件(例如，最佳的团队组成，或跨学科的学术方法)。经济学、哲学和科学社会学的迫在眉睫的理论表明，科学影响是一个复杂和多维的现象，不同类型的工作可能对科学进程产生不同类型的影响。然而，尽管数据和计算能力日益增长，将这些重要的理论见解纳入实证工作的努力一直很少。大多数大规模研究依赖于定量文献计量学，使用期刊影响因子和引文计数来替代给定论文或专利施加的科学影响力。但这样的代理人很粗鲁，无法区分不同类型的影响。在方法论上，本项目开发和评估的衡量方法将更紧密地结合科学影响的实证工作和理论工作。实质上，该项目认为，更好、更细微的科学影响衡量标准将有助于为紧迫的科学政策问题提供更清晰、更有力的答案。到目前为止，关于科学影响的许多学术研究是相当相互矛盾的。是女性团队还是女性主导团队更有可能产生有影响力的科学成果？跨学科的努力是否促进了变革性的、有影响力的研究？对于这些重要问题，文献中充斥着相互矛盾的答案。将新颖的CD索引应用于两个完整的语料库(JSTOR和科学网)--就像这个项目将做的那样--应该有助于解决这些问题。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Universities, states, and the federal government invest millions of dollars in scientific research, and are eager to assess its impact. Researchers who study science are also interested in explaining how and why some research is particularly influential, and how scientific research evolves over time. Meeting these goals requires detailed yet scalable measures of scientific influence. Building on recent developments in network science, this project will develop and evaluate a novel measure of scientific influence -- the CD index. The CD index characterizes how scientific works (e.g., published journal articles) alter the use of the knowledge upon which they build. Some articles build on and therefore consolidate (C) previously published research, whereas other articles depart from and therefore destabilize (D) existing knowledge. This measure offers a new, systematic way of identifying breakthrough scientific discoveries that open up novel fields, and differentiating them from more incremental, but also important, contributions that develop established areas. Results from this project should be useful to individuals involved in research policy development and implementation. For example, university administrators are moving away from a focus on sheer quantity of scientific output toward a greater appreciation for quality and impact. Results from this project will allow administrators to not only identify research that is influential in different (consolidating or destabilizing) ways, but to foster the conditions (e.g., an optimal team composition, or interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship) that promote such output.Prominent theories in the economics, philosophy, and sociology of science suggest that scientific influence is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, with different types of works potentially having different types of effects on the course of science. However, despite growing availability of data and computing power, efforts to incorporate these important theoretical insights into empirical work have been scarce. Most large-scale studies rely on quantitative bibliometrics, using journal impact factors and citation counts to proxy the amount of scientific influence exerted by a given paper or patent. But such proxies are crude and are unable to distinguish between qualitatively different types of influence. Methodologically, the measurement approach developed and evaluated in this project will more closely align empirical and theoretical work on scientific influence. Substantively, the project argues that better, more nuanced measures of scientific influence will help provide clearer and more robust answers to pressing science policy questions. To date, much of the scholarship on scientific influence is quite conflicted. Are women or women dominant teams more likely to produce influential science? Do interdisciplinary efforts facilitate transformative, influential research? The literature is rife with contradictory answers to these important questions. Applying the novel CD index to two entire corpora (JSTOR and the Web of Science)-- as this project will do -- should help resolve them.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.