Research front
The American information scientist Derek J. de Solla
Price has worked with the concept of research front,
among other connections within his description of scientific communication. Price (1969,
p. 167) writes:
"Working with from the population of papers, then, treating each as a sort of
atom to show how new papers are related to old ones. Since each paper carries an
average of about a dozen citations back to past literature, these citations may
be analyzed to find their pattern. Such analysis shows immediately that there
exist two separate modes of citation (Price 1965a). The first, accounting for
about the half of all references back, may be called archival. It represents a
raiding of the archive, almost completely independent of the age of the older
papers being cited, and without structure....
The second type of citation may be called research front. New papers use the
other half of their references to connect back to the relative small number of
highly interconnected recent papers. In a particular field each recent paper is
connected to all its neighbors by many lines of citation. A convenient image of
the pattern is to be found in knitting...."
to be edited:
Denne erkendelse anvendes indenfor informationsvidenskaben bl.a. af Science
Citation Index til at identificerer dokumenter i "forskningsfronten", d.v.s.
som et middel til at identificere dokumenter udfra en bestemt *emneopfattelse.
Forskningsfronte nummereres og kan indgå som søgeargument i søgestrategier.
Der fremstilles også "Atlas of Science" byggende på dette princip.
Begrænsningerne i denne emneopfattelse kan især påvises indenfor
samfundsvidenskaberne, men uanset disse begrænsninger som
emnesøgningsinstrument, er det naturligvis uhyre værdifuldt at kunne producere
en empirisk kortlægning af disse forskningsfronte som et videnskabssociologisk
fænomen.
Literature:
Hjortgaard Christensen, F. (1991). Konstruktion og brug af Research
Fronts hos ISI. Tidsskrift för Dokumentation. The Nordic Journal of
Documentation, 46(3), 92-98.
Hjortgaard Christensen, F. (1991). Research Fronts hos Scisearch. København:
Danmarks Biblioteksskole. (Mimeo. internt kompendium).
Price, D. J. de Solla (1969). Science and Technology: Distinctions and Interrelationships. IN: Factors in the Transfer of Technology. Ed. by W. Gruber & G. Marquis. MIT Press. Reprinted IN: Sociology of Science. Selected Readings. Ed. by Barry Barnes. Middlesex: Penguin; 166-180.
See also: Citation Indexing
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 29-03-2006