Title Words and Cognitive/
Epistemic Structure of
Science
Staša Milojević
Indiana University
School of Library and Information Science
[email protected]
Science as
heterogeneous
sociotechnical
network
Adapted from: Akera, A. (2007) Constructing a
representation for an ecology of knowledge:
Methodological advances in the integration of
knowledge and its various contexts. Social Studies of
Science, 37(3), 413-441
Scientific documents
 Key element in practice of science
(Callon, Courtial, Turner & Banin 1983;
Latour & Woolgar 1986)
 Shared conceptual system of scientific
communities expressed through the
terminology used in documents.
 Disciplines/fields exist through a
medium of ordered language.
Document titles
 Function as “attention
triggers” (Bazerman 1985,1989)
 Have undergone a change during the 20th
century, becoming
 More informative
 More specific
 Containing a larger number of words that
indicate article content
Leydesdorff (1989) : “title words seem to
offer a means of making visible the
internal cognitive structure” (p. 217)
of a discipline.
Selecting terms for analysis
 Identification of stop words and
nonspecific words
 Identification of unique words
 Identification of phrases and
construction of joint word/phrase list
Data analysis approaches
 Relative word frequency analysis
 Co-word analysis and hierarchical
clustering
 Multidimensional scaling analysis
Milojević, S., Sugimoto, C. R., Yan, E. and Ding, Y. (2011), The cognitive structure of
Library and Information Science: Analysis of article title words. Journal of the American
Heatmap of 100 most frequent terms against LIS journals. Society for Information Science and Technology. doi: 10.1002/asi.21602
Spatial correlation of Library and Information Science journals based on the 100 most frequent article title terms.
Milojević, S., Sugimoto, C. R., Yan, E. and Ding, Y. (2011), The cognitive structure of Library and Information Science: Analysis of article
title words. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. doi: 10.1002/asi.21602
Multidimensional scaling diagram between the terms and publication time periods.
Milojević, S., Sugimoto, C. R., Yan, E. and Ding, Y. (2011), The cognitive structure of Library and Information Science: Analysis of article title
words. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. doi: 10.1002/asi.21602
Spatial correlation of time periods (individual years) based on the multidimensional scaling of 100 most frequently occurring
article title terms in nanotechnology articles
Milojević, S..(in preparation), The formation and development of nanoscience/nanotechnology: Analysis of article title words
Heatmap of the term “scanning tunneling microscopy”. Diffusion of the term through nanotechnology subfields. PC3 =
Physics and chemistry other (e.g. geochemistry & geophysics) => M5 = Materials science => MD2 = Medicine => B2 =
Biophysics.
Milojević, S. (in preparation), The formation and development of nanoscience/nanotechnology: What can we learn from article title words?
Thank you!
Staša Milojević
Indiana University, Bloomington
SLIS
1320 E. 10th Street, LI Room 019
Bloomington, IN 47405-3907, USA
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/
smilojev/
[email protected]
Acknowledgement:
Certain data included herein are derived from Nanobank (Lynne G. Zucker and Michael R. Darby,
Nanobank Data Description, release 1.0 (beta-test), Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Center for International
Science, Technology, and Cultural Policy and Nanobank, Jan 17, 2007.) and from the Science Citation
Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index of the Institute
for Scientific Information®, Inc. (ISI®), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: © Copyright Institute for
Scientific Information®, Inc. 2006. All rights reserved.