Collaborative Research: Modeling the Invention, Dissemination, and Translation of Scientific Concepts

科学进步有赖于发现、传播和翻译。然而，大多数发现都没有引起人们的注意，也没有实际意义。几乎每一所大学、学科、基金会、政府和公司都不仅想知道如何促进新的科学思想的创造，而且想知道如何使这些思想传播并与世界上的实际问题相关。为了应对这些挑战，这项研究遵循了领先的科学哲学家的观点，他们认为科学概念是知识的基本单位，正是在那里人们观察到了科学革命和进步。这项研究使用自然语言处理技术来识别科学概念。有了概念，它打算将它们在文档中的相互关系建模为形成一个积累的知识网络，可以与每个新出版物的概念关系进行比较。通过比较，人们将概念发现识别为新概念和概念关系的到来。该项目的结果将为关注知识创新的各种利益相关者提供信息。这些发现将具有实际意义，通过确定学者在哪里以及何时做出创造性的智力贡献，这些贡献在远离学术界的领域和领域获得更广泛的关注和接受。它还将确定促进更快形式的发现、传播和翻译的杠杆。因此，这项研究的结果将与试图加快科学进步的学者、政府机构和非政府组织的决策直接相关。具体地说，本研究进行了三个相互关联的项目，以确定导致概念发现、传播和翻译的社会条件。第一项研究问的是，产生新概念和新概念关系等科学发现的条件是什么？在这里，该项目确定了生态条件、资源和人口构成，使各种形式的概念创造力成为可能。第二项研究随着时间的推移跟踪概念，并试图理解它们是如何获得关注的。值得注意的是，只有一些概念性的发现实际传播和重复使用。围绕着一个概念的创造预测其整个职业生涯的初始条件是什么？在这里，该项目打算研究新的概念和新的概念联系，并将研究它们的阶段(开始)和实施(先前时刻)做法，以确定是什么促使某些概念比其他概念得到更多的使用。第三项研究将跟踪概念，因为它们超越了自己的学科，扩展到学术界以外的领域。在那里，该项目分析了概念如何跨领域转换，或者它们如何从基础研究应用转移到应用领域，如专利中发现的应用。它还询问科学概念如何作为公认的知识在百科全书(如维基百科)中存档。是什么导致一个想法从理论到应用，再到公众接受？再说一次，有没有生态条件和社会文化资源使一个想法能够跨越社会领域？这项研究将产生和分享独特的关联数据，它将创建新的经验模型和理论扩展，将改变学者们对科学进步的设想。这一奖项反映了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。

Scientific advance rests on discovery, dissemination, and translation. And yet, most discoveries fail to get noticed and have practical relevance. Nearly every university, discipline, foundation, government and company would like to know not just how to facilitate the creation of new scientific ideas, but how to get those ideas to spread and relate to practical issues in the world. To address such challenges, this research follows leading philosophers of science who argue that scientific concepts are the basic unit of knowledge, and it is there people observe scientific revolutions and advance. This research identifies scientific concepts using natural language processing techniques. With concepts in hand, it intends to model their interrelation in documents as forming an accumulated knowledge network to which every new publication's conceptual relations can be compared. Through comparison one will identify conceptual discoveries as the arrival of new concepts and conceptual relations. Results from this project will inform a variety of stakeholders concerned with intellectual innovation. The findings will have practical relevance by identifying where and when scholars make creative intellectual contributions, contributions that garner wider attention and reception in fields and domains far afield from academe. It will also identify levers for facilitating more rapid forms of discovery, dissemination and translation. Findings from this research will thus have direct relevance to decisions by academics, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations trying to accelerate scientific advance. Specifically, this research conducts three interrelated projects that identify the social conditions giving rise to concept discovery, dissemination, and translation. The first study asks what are the conditions that give rise to scientific discoveries like new concepts and new conceptual relations? Here the project identifies ecological conditions, resources, and demographic compositions that enable forms of conceptual creativity. The second study follows concepts over time and seeks to understand how they garner attention. Notably, only some conceptual discoveries actually spread and get repeatedly used. What are the initial conditions surrounding a concept's creation that predicts its entire career? Here, the project intends to study new concepts and new concept linkages, and it will look at their staging (start) and implementation (preceding moment) practices so as to determine what drives the heightened usage of some concepts over others. The third study will follow concepts as they spread beyond their discipline and to domains outside of academia. There the project analyzes how concepts translate across fields, or how they move from basic research applications to applied ones such as those found in patents. It also asks how scientific concepts get archived as accepted knowledge in encyclopedia such as Wikipedia. What leads an idea to go from theory, to applied use, to public acceptance? Again, are there ecological conditions and socio-cultural resources that enable an idea to move across social domains? This research will generate and share unique linked data, and it will create new empirical models and extensions of theory that will shift the way scholars conceive of scientific advance.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.