Thesis Topic

“Emergence and Diffusion of Knowledge in the Sciences”

Thesis project

The processes involved in the creation and dissemination of knowledge in the sciences are not yet fully understood. So far, the literature has concentrated on variables such as citation count and journal rankings in order to quantify the influence of scientific ideas and their authors. However, there is still a lack of evidence on what fosters the creation of innovative ideas, their trajectory of diffusion within their fields of origin and their further adoption by other disciplines. Ivan aims to address this research gap by applying computational linguistics methods on scientific documentation such as working papers, research articles and book chapters, all of which offer the advantage of having a time stamp attached to them. This will facilitate the study of evolution of thematic trends and the adoption of methodologies within and across scientific disciplines.