Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
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 level of mathematics involved will be fairly elementary; an understanding of foundational concepts in statistics and probability will be helpful but not entirely necessary. More important, perhaps, is an interest in how scientific research takes place or in how math can be applied to seemingly unrelated fields.
Disciplines
Other Applied Mathematics | Scholarly Communication | Scholarly Publishing
Recommended Citation
Hayes, Clayton, "The Mathematics of Scientific Research: Scientometrics, Citation Metrics, and Impact Factors" (2016). Library Scholarly Publications. 109.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/libsp/109
TeX file for presentation; note that images have been removed
Included in
Other Applied Mathematics Commons, Scholarly Communication Commons, Scholarly Publishing Commons
Comments
This presentation was given in the WSU Math Department as part of its ongoing Undergraduate Seminar series.