Workshop: Identifying Transformative Research in the Geographical Sciences

这个项目的重点是举办一个公共讲习班，作为主要的信息来源，以审查影响地理科学演变的变革性研究，并就过去的变革性研究如何演变提供见解，以便将来鼓励这种研究。变革性的科学概念通过重新定位现有领域、创造新领域和提供新的理论或技术框架，导致了重大的进步。在地理科学中，20世纪60年代所谓的“定量革命”采用了统计方法，将这门学科从描述性起源转变为今天的解释性科学。地理科学的其他变革性发展源于新的计算和电信技术的发展，如全球定位系统和地理信息系统，或者通过政治生态学等新方法的出现，这些新方法借鉴了其他领域的见解和方法，为研究主题创造了新的途径。研讨会将重点探讨三组焦点问题的答案：(1)过去的变革性研究是如何出现的，它是如何成为变革性的？(2)变革性研究的早期标志可能是什么？如何识别它们的变革性特征？(3)是什么帮助培育和带来了变革性的研究成果？如何在地理科学中培育这种成果？研讨会结论的最终报告将由美国国家科学院出版社出版。本次研讨会将有助于建立一个智力框架，旨在通过考察地理科学重大科学进步的机制来认识和促进变革性研究，并提供可能对其他领域也有价值的新见解。它将产生新的见解，可能在发现、评估和促进变革性研究方面产生潜在的进步，从而为研究人员、审稿人和资助机构提供有价值的指导。

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.