Collaborative Research: Revisiting the Dynamics of Scientific Influence: Measures and Applications

大学、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有兴趣解释一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发展。实现这些目标需要详细而可扩展的科学影响力衡量标准。基于网络科学的最新发展，该项目将开发和评估一种新的科学影响力衡量标准——CD指数。CD索引描述了科学作品（例如，发表的期刊文章）如何改变其所建立的知识的使用。一些文章建立在先前发表的研究的基础上，因此巩固了(C)，而另一些文章偏离了(D)现有的知识，因此破坏了(D)。这一措施提供了一种新的、系统的方式来识别突破性的科学发现，这些发现开辟了新的领域，并将它们与发展既定领域的更渐进、但也更重要的贡献区分开来。这个项目的结果应该对参与研究政策制定和实施的个人有用。例如，大学管理人员正在从关注科学产出的绝对数量转向更重视质量和影响。这个项目的结果将使管理人员不仅能够确定以不同方式（巩固或破坏）有影响力的研究，而且能够促进促进这种产出的条件（例如，最佳团队组成，或跨学科的学术方法）。经济学、哲学和科学社会学的著名理论认为，科学影响是一种复杂和多维的现象，不同类型的作品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的可用性越来越高，但将这些重要的理论见解纳入实证工作的努力却很少。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用计数来代表给定论文或专利所产生的科学影响力。但这种代理方法很粗糙，无法区分不同性质的影响类型。在方法上，本项目开发和评估的测量方法将更紧密地结合科学影响的经验和理论工作。从本质上讲，该项目认为，更好、更细致的科学影响力衡量方法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。迄今为止，很多关于科学影响的学术研究都是相互矛盾的。女性或女性主导的团队更有可能产生有影响力的科学吗？跨学科的努力能促进变革性的、有影响力的研究吗？对于这些重要问题，文献中充斥着相互矛盾的答案。将新的CD索引应用于两个完整的语料库（JSTOR和Web of Science）——正如这个项目将要做的那样——应该有助于解决这些问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.