Related papers: Quantifying the Ease of Scientific Discovery
A simple, heuristic formula with parallels to the Drake Equation is introduced to help focus discussion on open questions for the origins of life in a planetary context. This approach indicates a number of areas where quantitative progress…
We introduce a new visual analytic approach to the study of scientific discoveries and knowledge diffusion. Our approach enhances contemporary co-citation network analysis by enabling analysts to identify co-citation clusters of cited…
The gradual crowding out of singleton and small team science by large team endeavors is challenging key features of research culture. It is therefore important for the future of scientific practice to reflect upon the individual scientist's…
Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…
Equation discovery methods hold promise for extracting knowledge from physics-related data. However, existing approaches often require substantial prior information that significantly reduces the amount of knowledge extracted. In this…
Established frameworks to understand problems with reproducibility in science begin with the relationship between our understanding of the prior probability of a claim and the statistical certainty that should be demanded of it, and explore…
People employ their knowledge to recognize things. This paper is concerned with how to measure people's knowledge for recognition and how it changes. The discussion is based on three assumptions. Firstly, we construct two evolution process…
Scientific fields differ in terms of their subject matter, research techniques, collaboration sizes, rates of growth, and so on. We investigate whether common dynamics might lurk beneath these differences, affecting how scientific fields…
Aging is a fundamental aspect of living systems that undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. Living systems, known as complex systems, require complexity…
The construction of an ontology of scientific knowledge objects, presented here, is part of the development of an approach oriented towards the visualization of scientific knowledge. It is motivated by the fact that the concepts that are…
The problem of identifying common concepts in the sciences and deciding when new ideas have emerged is an open one. Metascience researchers have sought to formalize principles underlying stages in the life-cycle of scientific research,…
Physics is a field of science that has traditionally used the scientific method to answer questions about why natural phenomena occur and to make testable models that explain the phenomena. Discovering equations, laws and principles that…
A key challenge when trying to understand innovation is that it is a dynamic, ongoing process, which can be highly contingent on ephemeral factors such as culture, economics, or luck. This means that any analysis of the real-world process…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…
Scientific research is a major driving force in a knowledge based economy. Income, health and wellbeing depend on scientific progress. The better we understand the inner workings of the scientific enterprise, the better we can prompt,…
Entropy always increases monotonically in a closed system but complexity increases at first and then decreases as equilibrium is approached. Commonsense information-related definitions for entropy and complexity demonstrate that complexity…
This research is concerned with evolution equations and their forward-backward discretizations. Our first contribution is an estimation for the distance between iterates of sequences generated by forward-backward schemes, useful in the…
As a simple means for comparing and - if possible - predicting scientific impacts of different researchers working in the same field, we suggest comparing their "sales curves". A sales curve is the number of citations of the researcher's…
Science is a cumulative activity, which can manifest itself through the act of citing. Citations are also central to research evaluation, thus creating incentives for researchers to cite their own work. Using a dataset containing more than…