Related papers: Do scientists trace hot topics?
We discuss the problems of consensus and unity in science. The natural sciences seem to contrast with many other areas of endeavor in that a high level of consensus seems to exist in them. However, a careful analysis of the structure of…
Most scientific data will never be directly examined by scientists; rather it will be put into online databases where it will be analyzed and summarized by computer programs. Scientists increasingly see their instruments through online…
This opening editorial aims to interest researchers and encourage novel research in the closely related fields of sociophysics and computational social science. We briefly discuss challenges and possible research directions in the study of…
This paper is based on the 100 most cited papers in astronomy for each year from 2000 to 2009 and from 1995 and 1990. The main findings are: The total number of authors of the top 100 articles per year has more than tripled. This is seen…
Following a recent idea, to measure fame by the number of \Google hits found in a search on the WWW, we study the relation between fame (\Google hits) and merit (number of papers posted on an electronic archive) for a random group of…
Using data from computer databases of scientific papers in physics, biomedical research, and computer science, we have constructed networks of collaboration between scientists in each of these disciplines. In these networks two scientists…
We present here evidence for the existence of a citation advantage within astrophysics for papers that link to data. Using simple measures based on publication data from NASA Astrophysics Data System we find a citation advantage for papers…
Statistical physics has proven to be a very fruitful framework to describe phenomena outside the realm of traditional physics. The last years have witnessed the attempt by physicists to study collective phenomena emerging from the…
Reproducibility is an important feature of science; experiments are retested, and analyses are repeated. Trust in the findings increases when consistent results are achieved. Despite the importance of reproducibility, significant work is…
Recently, much attention has been focused on the replicability of scientific results, causing scientists, statisticians, and journal editors to examine closely their methodologies and publishing criteria. Experimental particle physicists…
Academic publishing requires solving a collective coordination problem: among thousands of possible publication venues, which deserve a community's attention? A clear consensus helps scholars allocate attention, match submissions to…
In an article written five years ago [arXiv:0809.0522], we described a method for predicting which scientific papers will be highly cited in the future, even if they are currently not highly cited. Applying the method to real citation data…
Scientific literature has itself been the subject of much scientific study, for a variety of reasons: understanding how results are communicated, how ideas spread, and assessing the influence of areas or individuals. However, most prior…
Science is built on the scholarly consensus that shifts with time. This raises the question of how new and revolutionary ideas are evaluated and become accepted into the canon of science. Using two recently proposed metrics, we identify…
In this feasibility study, the impact of academic research from social sciences and humanities on technological innovation is explored through a study of citations patterns of journal articles in patents. Specifically we focus on citations…
Science, being a social enterprise, is subject to fragmentation into groups that focus on specialized areas or topics. Often new advances occur through cross-fertilization of ideas between sub-fields that otherwise have little overlap as…
Following my previous study of paper length vs. number of citations in astronomy (Stanek 2008), some colleagues expressed an interest in knowing if any correlation exists between citations and the number of authors on an astronomical paper.…
Scientific impact plays a central role in the evaluation of the output of scholars, departments, and institutions. A widely used measure of scientific impact is citations, with a growing body of literature focused on predicting the number…
Increasing numbers of physicists engage in research activities that address biological questions from physics perspectives or strive to develop physics insights from active biological processes. The on-going development and success of such…
For a variety of inter-related cultural, organizational, and political reasons, progress in climate science and the actual solution of scientific problems in this field have moved at a much slower rate than would normally be possible. Not…