Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Macro-Level Diffusion Of A Methodological Knowledge Innovation: Research Synthesis Methods, 1972-2011, Laura Sheble

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

Use of research synthesis methods has contributed to changes in research practices. In disciplinary literatures, authors indicate motivations to use the methods include needs to (a) translate research-based knowledge to inform practice and policy decisions, and (b) integrate relatively large and diverse knowledge bases to increase the generality of results and yield novel insights or explanations. This review presents two histories of the diffusion of research synthesis methods: a narrative history based primarily in the health and social sciences; and a bibliometric overview across science broadly. Engagement with research synthesis was strongly correlated with evidence-based practice (EBP), and moderately with …

The Mathematics Of Scientific Research: Scientometrics, Citation Metrics, And Impact Factors, Clayton Hayes

Library Scholarly Publications

This talk will consist of an introduction to the rationale behind the establishment of the field of Scientometrics, which attempts to measure and analyze the body of research done in the sciences. This is primarily through analyzing the connections between scientific journals, articles, and authors. I will cover the foundational works of Price and Garfield in the fields of citation networks and impact factor, respectively, and will give some historical context for these developments. I will also speak briefly on more recent developments in these areas, such as the Eigenfactor, author citation metrics, and (time permitting) alternative metrics.

Audience: …

The Structure And Evolution Of The Academic Discipline Of Law In The United States: Generation And Validation Of Course-Subject Co-Occurrence (Csco) Maps, Peter A. Hook

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

This dissertation proposes, exemplifies, and validates the usage of course-subject co-occurrence (CSCO) data to generate topic maps of an academic discipline. CSCO is defined as course-subjects taught in the same academic year by the same teacher. This work is premised on the assumption that in the aggregate and for reasons of efficiency, faculty members teach course-subjects that are topically similar to one another. To exemplify and validate CSCO, more than 112,000 CSCO events were extracted from the annual directories of the American Association of Law Schools covering nearly eighty years of law school teaching in the United States. The CSCO …