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

本研究探讨科学与法律的学术出版物之间的互动，以了解跨学科的沟通，并阐明科学如何通过法律的学术论文告知和影响政府政策。 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的学术文章如何融入出版企业。 法律的出版物存放在不同的学术数据库中，是主要由法律专业学生策划的不同出版结构的产物。 与科学文章不同，许多法律的文章专门针对法规、监管和司法政策。 这些条款能够而且确实影响政府政策。 此外，由于培训和学术文化的差异，在法律的与科学论文中，同一主题的文章可能会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”，这是目前在科学和学术出版物的趋势，作为一个案例研究。 它研究了科学和法律的文章如何在两个学术出版物数据库（SCOPUS和LIGHTNEXIS）中相互引用的网络模式。 除了查看引用模式外，这项研究还使用自然语言处理技术查看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性映射文章。 通过观察引文模式和文章文本内容相似性之间的差异，本研究可以识别跨越科学和法律边界的论文和作者。 然后，这些跨越边界的作者将接受采访，了解他们的研究过程。 这些引文和内容网络图，沿着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的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、法律的学者甚至决策者之间更好地交流，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.