3 ms·

Ranking and Mapping scientific Knowledge

22 points by prabodh 17y ago

profquail 17y ago
That's a nice little app to see the relationships between journals, but I was expecting to see a Google-maps mashup where they ripped out the locations from published papers then plotted areas of high intellectual concentration (pardon the pun), to show which areas of the world are focusing on certain topics. Also, for the rankings, they could rank fields based on how often papers are cited by other fields. For example, if a certain Mathematics paper is frequently quoted by physicists, it would contribute to Mathematics having a higher rating than Physics (over a large number of papers, a better average rating would emerge).
kurtosis 17y ago
The journal rankings for physics appear to be bogus. 1. Rev Mod Phys 2. Mat Sci Eng R 3. Annu Rev Phys Chem 4. Phys Rep 5. Rep Prog Phys 6. Nano Lett 7. Prog Polym Sci 8. Adv Mater 9. Phys Rev Lett 10. Adv Polym Sci Most agree that the top journals are: 1. Nature 2. Science 3. Nature Physics 4. Phys. Rev. Lett. 5. ... rev. mod. phys is a journal of review articles
- michael_nielsen 17y ago
  "Most agree": my experience is that many physicists have different rankings than you suggest.
  - kurtosis 17y ago
    please share your experience! I don't take this ranking wankery too seriously. There are some papers that I really love that were published is lesser known journals. I guess I was talking about AMO and cond.mat. which are the majority of physicists. These lists are obviously biased towards experimentalists, although theory occasionally makes it into science / nature.
zeynel1 17y ago
This is interesting but it is not ranking or mapping scientific knowledge. What is mapped is academic fields. The scientific content is not mapped or ranked.
Dilpil 17y ago
There could be more subfields in here. I mean, one bubble for all of Mathematics?
RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
Compare and contast: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396550 These are different, but clearly it's the same sort of idea with different presentations or representations.

22 points by prabodh 17y ago

That's a nice little app to see the relationships between journals, but I was expecting to see a Google-maps mashup where they ripped out the locations from published papers then plotted areas of high intellectual concentration (pardon the pun), to show which areas of the world are focusing on certain topics. Also, for the rankings, they could rank fields based on how often papers are cited by other fields. For example, if a certain Mathematics paper is frequently quoted by physicists, it would contribute to Mathematics having a higher rating than Physics (over a large number of papers, a better average rating would emerge).

kurtosis 17y ago

The journal rankings for physics appear to be bogus. 1. Rev Mod Phys 2. Mat Sci Eng R 3. Annu Rev Phys Chem 4. Phys Rep 5. Rep Prog Phys 6. Nano Lett 7. Prog Polym Sci 8. Adv Mater 9. Phys Rev Lett 10. Adv Polym Sci Most agree that the top journals are: 1. Nature 2. Science 3. Nature Physics 4. Phys. Rev. Lett. 5. ... rev. mod. phys is a journal of review articles

michael_nielsen 17y ago
"Most agree": my experience is that many physicists have different rankings than you suggest.
- kurtosis 17y ago
  please share your experience! I don't take this ranking wankery too seriously. There are some papers that I really love that were published is lesser known journals. I guess I was talking about AMO and cond.mat. which are the majority of physicists. These lists are obviously biased towards experimentalists, although theory occasionally makes it into science / nature.

zeynel1 17y ago

This is interesting but it is not ranking or mapping scientific knowledge. What is mapped is academic fields. The scientific content is not mapped or ranked.

Dilpil 17y ago

There could be more subfields in here. I mean, one bubble for all of Mathematics?

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

Compare and contast: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=843709 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396550 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396550 These are different, but clearly it's the same sort of idea with different presentations or representations.