Open AccessAn indicator of research front activity: Measuring intellectual organization as uncertainty reduction in document sets
Author(s) -
LucioArias Diana,
Leydesdorff Loet
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1532-2890
pISSN - 1532-2882
DOI - 10.1002/asi.21199
Subject(s) - operationalization , computer science , scientometrics , context (archaeology) , bibliographic coupling , field (mathematics) , data science , sample (material) , citation , citation analysis , bibliometrics , information retrieval , data mining , library science , epistemology , mathematics , history , philosophy , chemistry , archaeology , chromatography , pure mathematics
When using scientific literature to model scholarly discourse, a research specialty can be operationalized as an evolving set of related documents. Each publication can be expected to contribute to the further development of the specialty at the research front. The specific combinations of title words and cited references in a paper can then be considered as a signature of the knowledge claim in the paper: New words and combinations of words can be expected to represent variation, while each paper is at the same time selectively positioned into the intellectual organization of a field using context‐relevant references. Can the mutual information among these three dimensions—title words, cited references, and sequence numbers—be used as an indicator of the extent to which intellectual organization structures the uncertainty prevailing at a research front? The effect of the discovery of nanotubes (1991) on the previously existing field of fullerenes is used as a test case. Thereafter, this method is applied to science studies with a focus on scientometrics using various sample delineations. An emerging research front about citation analysis can be indicated.