Title:

Revealing the Fine-Grained Structure of Science

Speaker:

Ludo Waltman - Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University in the Netherlands

Talk Abstract:

In this talk, I provide an overview of my research on studying the fine-grained structure of science. I discuss the clustering techniques that I have developed for identifying research topics at a highly detailed level of granularity. These techniques clusters scientific publications based on data from large-scale bibliometric databases. Recent algorithmic advances make it possible to identify many thousands of research topics throughout all fields of science in computing times of less than one hour. I also discuss a new methodology for determining the relative accuracy of different approaches for identifying research topics. Finally, I show practical examples illustrating how a fine-grained analysis of the structure of science allows us to address many types of policy relevant questions, for instance related to the identification of emerging research topics and the detection of interdisciplinary connections between research fields.

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