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Research on scientific communication has a long history, and scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds are involved. Different scholars have different views on the concept of "scientific communication", especially their understanding of the scope of research. There are two main schools of scientific communication research: sociology of science and citation analysis. This article sorts out their representative figures and academic contributions.
Scientific sociology research school
Scientific sociology is a branch of sociology. It was born in 1938 and was marked by Merton publishing his doctoral thesis "Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century Britain". The sociology of science has laid a solid theoretical and methodological foundation for the study of scientific communication. The authors of this genre were pioneering in the research on scientific communication and produced numerous results that have been passed down to this day and have far-reaching influence. Below is a brief review of typical authors and their academic contributions.
1. The founder of science - Bernard
As early as the 1930s, the "Scientific Social Relations Movement" (SRS) composed of scientists such as Bernard, Levi and Needham was formed in the UK. They tried to conduct a systematic analysis of the relationship between science and society along Marxist lines. They believe that science is a "planned science", that is, science and politics are closely related. These scholars have published many works to explain their views. Among them, Bernard's 1938 book "The Social Function of Science" is the crystallization and culmination of many years of achievements by SRS scientists. In this work, a chapter on "Scientific Communication" is dedicated to introduce in detail the scope and social influencing factors of scientific communication. In this chapter, he pointed out that scientific communication is not only the communication between scientists, but also includes the process of scientists disseminating their ideas to the public. He studied the pros and cons of different carriers of scientific communication, including journals, abstracts and reports, and proposed to improve the efficiency of scientific communication through "personal contact", "mutual communication" and "full use of radio and cinema", and to Strengthen scientific research management, which should pave the way and provide guidance for scientific development. It can be seen that Bernard's discussion of scientific communication has been relatively comprehensive, and many of his ideas have provided a valuable foundation for subsequent researchers.
Of course, Bernard's idea of "planned science" was later severely criticized by other scholars. These scholars established the "Scientific Free Association" to fight against the SRS, and the leaders of this association were the famous Polanyi and Beck. They advocated "scientific freedom and autonomy" and opposed "planned science". And Polanyi proposed the far-reaching concept of " scientific community ". He pointed out that scientific communities should be self-improvement, self-management and self-control. This idea has striking similarities with the "self-organization" of scientific communication.
Therefore, the Bernard school and its opponents have laid a good theoretical foundation for scientific communication research and are pioneers of scientific communication.
2. The founder of scientific sociology - Merton
Merton is an American. Many of his ideas come from the British Bernard, but he has his own unique ideas. Merton's classic works on scientific communication include "Priority of Scientific Discovery" and "The Matthew Effect in Science". In the first paper, he clearly answered the fundamental question of scientific communication, especially formal communication, "Why do scholars publish papers?" The answer is also very simple, that is, to win the priority of an idea or method and defend one's intellectual property rights. Priority is the product of scientific norms, that is, the scientific community defines originality as the highest value of science, and scientists are following such rules to fight for their due rights. Priority brings more spiritual joy to scientists, and of course a sense of accomplishment in being recognized by peers. Scholars continue to write papers just to publish more original works.In the second paper, he conducted a detailed analysis and explanation of the reasons for a phenomenon in scientific communication, the now well-known Matthew effect . In essence, he pointed out the inequality of academic status of authors in scientific communication, that is, the structure of the scientific communication system is a typical hierarchical structure. So starting from this point, we can also see that the titles of "important author" or "core author", or even " core journal " or "important journal" are unavoidable. To a certain extent, these titles reflect the inherent laws of the scientific communication system.
Merton’s influence was huge. Although the sociology of science had been dormant for about 20 years, it gradually prospered in the 1960s and produced a large number of scholars and works. They followed Merton's footsteps to make the research more detailed and in-depth. For example, Merton's students Cole brothers' "Social Stratification in Science" and Zuckerman's "The Elite in Science—American Nobel Prize Winners" and other works have made great contributions to the study of scientific communication. contribution and had a profound impact.
3. The great historian and philosopher of science in the 20th century - Kuhn
The Merton school's method explains the social structure of scientific communication, that is, they examine science as a social institution and do not involve scientific knowledge itself. content, production and growth issues. Kuhn studied this issue from the perspective of scientific knowledge itself. His handed down book " The Structure of Scientific Revolutions " provides a relatively comprehensive explanation of his views. He believes that scientific knowledge is growing through the scientific revolution that accompanies the paradigm shift . The development trajectory of science generally starts from normal science (i.e., a period of cumulative growth) and then to scientific revolution. It can be seen that Kuhn believed that scientific growth is not entirely continuous, but includes continuous growth and discontinuous periods interspersed with it. However, Kuhn's theory is relatively obscure, especially because it does not provide a clear definition of its core conceptual paradigm, so that different scholars have different understandings. However, Kuhn was the first person to study the "cognitive structure" of scientific communication, and his outstanding contributions and huge influence are indelible. Many scholars have conducted more detailed research along its research lines, and formed the famous "Edinburgh School".
4. The advocate of the invisible academy - Price
The invisible academy was first formally proposed by Price in 1963 and was recognized by the academic community. He gave a relatively broad definition of the Intangible Academy: "A group of elites (no more than 100 people) from different regional institutions exchange information with each other in order to control the research progress in a certain field." The Intangible Academy was proposed mainly to highlight the importance of informal communication sex. Garvey and Griffith's research shows that the number of informal channels is much greater than that of formal channels. The main purpose of the Intangible Academy is to solve the critical problem of lagging information published in journals. Price advocated the Invisible Academy throughout his life and published many books on the Invisible Academy. It was precisely because of his advocacy that subsequent research on the invisible academy became increasingly vigorous, producing many works. For example, Price's "Little Science, Big Science", Crane's "The Diffusion of Invisible Academy Knowledge in the Scientific Community", etc.
Citation analysis research school
Citation analysis research school is a school rich in information science characteristics, and it is also a school that we are relatively familiar with. In the field of citation analysis, it can be said that there are many stars shining brightly, who have made unique and outstanding contributions to the quantitative study of scientific communication.
When talking about citation analysis, we must mention Eugene Garfield . It is precisely because of his pioneering invention of the world-famous SCI that citation analysis is known to the world as a unique analysis method. Of course, citation analysis has also become an important method for studying scientific communication. "Scientific Communication and Bibliometrics" clearly points out: "Bibliometric methods, especially citation analysis, play a unique role in scientific communication research", and the entire book explains and applies citation analysis to research from both theory and practice. Science communication.Therefore, Garfield's contribution is huge, and he is an important founder of the citation analysis research school. At the same time, we must also remember the outstanding academic contributions of Price, the father of scientometrics. Price is not only an advocate of the invisible academy, but also published many original works in the field of scientometrics, such as literature growth model, Price index and citation network research. Price's results are also very forward-looking. For example, his research on cumulative advantage and citation network degree distribution have laid a good foundation for current research on complex networks. Based on the scientific citation index ,
has derived some important methods, the representative ones are coupling analysis, co-citation analysis and research trajectory tracking analysis. Both coupling analysis and co-citation analysis can be used to study the scientific communication knowledge structure of a discipline (mainly the frontier structure). Research on these two methods is very popular now. The tracking of research trajectories originated from Garfield’s research on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and now that this method has been fully software-based and automated by Garfield and his collaborators, it is believed that its application will be even more widespread.
In short, the biggest feature of the citation analysis school is the quantitative research on scientific communication. It has obvious characteristics of quantitative research, and its research influence is very wide. Many studies including the sociology of science are applying citation analysis. As more and more attention is paid to scientific communication research, this method will inevitably attract the attention of more scholars.
This article is excerpted from "Research on Scientific Communication Based on the Author's Academic Relationship" (authored by Ma Ruimin). The title and content have been adjusted. The voice broadcast is intelligently generated. If you have any questions, please refer to the text. Science creates the future, and humanity warms the world. In an era where science and technology leads development, we will work with you to pay attention to the history of science and technology, philosophy of science and technology, science and technology frontiers and scientific communication, and to the sustainable development of human society. Science and humanities online, create valuable reading! Welcome to follow, like, leave a message, forward, and participate in book donation activities. Contact email: [email protected].
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Content Introduction
This book closely combines theoretical research and applied research. The theoretical part includes the basic theories of scientific communication, the author’s academic relationship and the basic relationship between scientific communication, etc. The empirical and applied parts include models and laws of scientific communication. Exploration, research on the knowledge structure of scientific communication, etc. In addition to the introduction and summary outlook, the content framework is mainly divided into the following parts. The first part is mainly theoretical research, including the basic theory of scientific communication and the research on the author’s academic relationship and scientific communication (composed of Chapters 1 and 2); the second part is the study of scientific communication models and laws (composed of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 consists of); the third part is the study of the knowledge structure of scientific communication (composed of Chapters 5 and 6).
This book can be used by teachers and students of colleges and universities majoring or researching in management (such as information management and information systems, information science, science and technology policy, management science and engineering, etc.), computer (such as information visualization, complex networks), and It is a reading reference for management and decision-makers at all levels and scientific and technological workers.
