Scientific communication

Scientific communication may be seen as a part of information science (and the sociology of science) which study researchers use of formal and informal information channels, their communicative roles (e.g., "gatekeepers"), the utilization of the formal publication system and similar issues.
 

Wojick et al. (2006) surveyed research on how improvements in scientific communication may help advance science. They identified some related research areas and wrote:
 

  1. Diffusion of scientific knowledge is not a major research area. There appears to be a lot of scientific work on diffusion of knowledge as it relates to innovation and technology, but very little on diffusion of scientific knowledge within science and for the advancement of science, per se. Regarding the basic corollary, we found almost nothing on how – or if – speeding up the diffusion of scientific knowledge affects scientific progress. Although this may be taken as a given, finding empirical evidence is another matter. Based on our literature search, it appears that little or no scientific research has been done specifically on the basic corollary hypothesis that speeding up diffusion will accelerate scientific progress. The principal reason for this seems to be the lack of acceptable ways to measure the quantities in question, that is, the speed of diffusion and the acceleration of scientific progress. In the popular literature it is commonly said that the Internet will revolutionize science by increasing communication, but this assumption has not been translated into a scientific research program.
  2. A number of communities are actively engaged in scientific research on topics that are closely related to the diffusion of scientific knowledge. These topics include the diffusion of innovation and research program evaluation. Likewise, there is ongoing research into the diffusion of knowledge in general, including digital information via the Internet. All of this research contributes to efforts to evaluate new technologies and diffusion strategies. However, the primary focus of most research is the diffusion of technology, or of knowledge in general, not science knowledge specifically. There appears to be no corresponding effort when it comes to speeding up diffusion of scientific knowledge and accelerating scientific progress. This lack of research may be a significant gap in our national research agenda. Particular emphasis should be given to the potential impact of new digital resources on the progress of science, including federation of collections to facilitate global discovery. These communities are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1. Related Research Communities on Knowledge Diffusion

Diffusion of innovation. A lot of work has been done on the diffusion of innovation, principally by economists, market researchers, and historians. However, innovation has been defined in most cases as technology in use, not scientific knowledge. Some quantitative work has been done, using measurable features of technology, especially statistics for manufacturing, sales, and usage. There is a heavy focus on new product development and marketing, as well as economic impact.

Knowledge management (KM) and diffusion. There seems to be very little scientific research in the area of knowledge management, perhaps because it is technology driven. Also KM is more about organizing knowledge than about diffusion.

Network theory. There is a large body of knowledge diffusion work based on information network theory, much of it focused on human interaction and communication. Internet communication is a major area of this network research. But this work is not directly related to scientific knowledge or scientific progress.

Semantic web. Semantic web research is focused on using semantic structures to integrate diverse databases. While this work may well be relevant to the development of tools to speed up the diffusion of scientific knowledge, it is not about such diffusion per se.

Science R&D program evaluation. The impact of specific science programs is an active area of research. Quantitative methods tend to focus on bibliometrics, especially citation analysis, including patent citations. However, most of the research is focused on the relation between funding and performance, measured by citation. While this does address the issue of diffusion of scientific knowledge, the concepts of speeding up diffusion and scientific progress are not well developed.

Industrial research policy. This is an active area of micro-economic research that tends to regard diffusion as a so-called "spillover" or free rider problem, where one firm benefits from another's expenditures. There is some interesting work on whether firms should be more open with their research results so that more diffusion occurs, along the lines of federal and university research. This might be considered as a special case of the hypothesis that speeding up diffusion accelerates progress.

Patent analysis. The number of patents has in some cases been used as a surrogate for knowledge. In this case there is an active debate about whether the increase in annual U.S. patenting rates in recent decades is in fact an acceleration in progress. But again, a focus on patents is basically a focus on technology, not scientific knowledge or progress.

Philosophy of science and science studies. There is some work on the influence of social factors on the progress of science, including the role of scientific communities. There is also work on the application of mathematical logic to the structure of scientific revolutions.

  1. Conceptual complexity is an obstacle to broad scientific search. Regarding our search itself, we found that the conceptual complexity of knowledge diffusion makes this kind of broad search difficult. Important aspects of diffusion are the subject of research by a number of distinct communities, using a variety of different concepts and vocabularies. Moreover, many key concepts, including "diffusion" and "knowledge," are not well defined.
  • It is likely that this sort of conceptual complexity occurs frequently when one looks across many diverse research communities for a common underlying subject. This result has implications for the issue of diffusion of scientific knowledge in general and global discovery in particular. Given that semantic tools and semantic web research are looking at the issue of multiple technical languages, it seems likely that they will eventually have something to offer in overcoming this obstacle to coherent search. But one recognizes that semantics research is in the early stages of development and to date does not appear to have been applied to the specific problem discussed in this article.
  1. A coherent program of research into the diffusion of scientific knowledge and its relation to scientific progress does not seem to exist at this time. Research is needed on how to speed up diffusion of scientific knowledge and looking at specific approaches, such as simultaneous, ranked search, federated digital means, and digital libraries to do so, as well as what impact this speeding up might have on scientific progress.
  2. Semantic tools are needed to facilitate full text search of scientific information, as a means for speeding up diffusion. Research communities are also language communities, each with its own technical vocabulary. Very different languages may be used to talk about what are in fact closely related concepts. This is a significant obstacle to global search and discovery, one that semantic tools may help resolve.

 

 

 

Literature:

 

Hurd, J. M. (2000). The transformation of scientific communication: A model for 2020. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51(14), 1279-1283.

 

Nelson, C. E. & Pollock, D. K. (Eds.). (1970). Communication Among Scientists and Engineers. Lexington, Massachusetts: Health Lexington Books.


Meadows, A. J. (1974). Communication in Science. London: Butterworths.

 

Meadows, A. J. (1998). Communicating Research. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Vickery, B. (2000). Scientific Communication in History. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

 

Wojick, D. E.; Warnick, W. L.; Carroll, B. C. & Crowe, J. (2006). The Digital Road to Scientific Knowledge Diffusion. A Faster, Better Way to Scientific Progress? Commentary. D-Lib Magazine, 12(6). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june06/wojick/06wojick.html

 

 

 

See also: APA Studies; Communication;  User studies;  Knowledge & Technology Utilization; Scientific and scholarly communication (Epistemological Lifeboat); UNISIST model of information dissemination

 

 

 

 

 

Birger Hjørland

Last edited: 24-02-2007

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