Lecture series: Science of Science in the Spotlight
The Science of Science in the Spotlight Lecture series provides a forum for multidisciplinary exchange and dialogue across the fields of higher education, bibliometrics, and science studies in Luxembourg. Through international visits and collaboration with leading experts in the relevant research fields and disciplines, the Lecture Series offers an ideal platform to bolster Luxembourg’s growing research expertise and current initiatives in the “science of science”, including diverse science and policy communities and the wider public. At the interface of different strands of research that have grown in Luxembourg over the past decade, the lecture series showcases emerging collaboration patterns within Luxembourg, across Europe, and globally. It provides opportunities to discuss cutting-edge research results in this highly innovative multidisciplinary field of research. The lectures stimulate debate on theoretical and methodological approaches and on data acquisition and analysis. Leading researchers visiting Luxembourg will share their knowledge at the intersection of higher education research and science studies, bibliometrics—embedded in social and computational sciences more generally. Discussions relate to such topics as international higher education developments, science capacity-building, scientific knowledge production, research evaluation, collaborative networks, and researcher mobility. A multidisciplinary series of events, these lectures provide diverse insights and solidify Luxembourg’s networks in this global field of research, to build new relationships, and to encourage a multidisciplinary, interfaculty, and interorganizational exchange with leading researchers from abroad.
For further information, please contact Dr Jennifer Dusdal.
Prof. Dr Christine Musselin
Directrice de recherche CNRS, Co-director of LIEPP “Higher Education and Research” Research Group, Sciences Po, Paris, France
10 March 2020 from 17.00 to 19.00
Luxembourg Learning Center Hub 2.02
Effects of competition on universities. Building on the case of French universities
In France as in many other countries, higher education public policies aimed at increasing the level of competition between academics, research teams, training programs but also among universities.
Building on the French case, Christine Musselin identifies how these policies impacts on the internal government and the power relationships within universities, how they modify the higher education landscape, how they redefine what “good science” is and who is engage in this normative work. And how they affect the academic profession. She will also show that competition leads to new forms of cooperation and that this formalizes the increasing stratification of higher education systems.
Prof. Dr Wolfgang Glänzel
Professor of Statistics at KU Leuven, Director of the Centre for R&D Monitoring, Belgium
28 April 2020 from 17.00 to 19.00
Remote session
Building reliable bibliometric indicators for measuring research performance
This talk deals with the challenge of building and using bibliometric indicators in an evaluative context. The aim is to show how valid metrics for scientific information and research assessment can be developed and applied and what the main possible pitfalls in this process are. The talk is organized in seven chapters proceeding from the ‘perspective change’ that scientometrics has undergone in the last decades of the 20th century and the strong interaction between metrics and information retrieval. The first two chapters deal with the use of suitable data sources and the quality and cleanness of data, including data retrieval and subject delineation. The following three chapters deal with methodological issues and are devoted to the explanation of important criteria of soundness of methodology, the discussion of the effect of subject granularity and aggregation level and finally to the extension of traditional indicators towards performance profiles. Special focus is laid on the use of composite indicators, notably in the context of ranking exercises (sixth chapter). The last chapter introduces the challenge of measuring impacts beyond scholarly communication including issues regarding the appropriate integration of data originated from heterogeneous sources.
Prof. Dr Ludo Waltman
Deputy Director, Professor of Quantitative Science Studies at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University, The Netherlands
12 May 2020 from 17.00 to 19.00
Remote session
Research on research: An overview of the landscape and its connections to research policy
Many scientific fields and communities contribute to research on research, ranging from scientometrics, science and technology studies, and higher education studies to science of science, metascience, and many others. Based on a large-scale scientometric analysis combined with expert input from the recently established Research on Research Institute, I will present a visual overview of the landscape of research on research, showing the different communities contributing to research on research and the various topics addressed by these communities. I will also discuss how research on research connects to research policy.
Prof. Dr Chaomei Chen
Professor of Information Science at Drexel University, USA
9 June 2020 from 17.00 to 19.00
Remote session
The Role of Uncertainties in the Science of Scientific Knowledge
Tracking the growth of scientific knowledge is a challenging but integral part of scientific inquiries, scholarly communication, and science of science. Facts, consensus, confidence, and objectivity are among the most desirable elements and instruments in representing and communicating scientific knowledge. In this talk, I will present a promising analytic framework for the science of science research by focusing on the role of uncertainties at various stages of scientific inquiries. I will demonstrate how contradictions, controversies, inconsistencies, and a variety of other forms of uncertainties play fundamental roles in the growth and update of scientific knowledge. I will also illustrate how researchers may benefit from the uncertainty-centric perspective by revisiting key research questions that have been studied from conventional perspectives, especially with references to the interpretation and re-interpretation of emerging fields, intellectual landmarks, critical paths, turning points, and boundary-spanning bridges.
Prof. Dr Cassidy R. Sugimoto
President International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Associate Professor of Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington, USA
29 September 2020 from 17.00 to 19.00
Remote session
A science of science approach to examining gender disparities in science
Despite progress, gender disparities in science persist. Women remain underrepresented in the scientific workforce and under rewarded for their contributions. This talk will examine multiple layers of gender disparities in science, triangulating data from bibliometric data and social surveys to provide a broader perspective on the gendered nature of scientific communication. Science of science provides a novel lens to evaluate these issues, drawing upon theories from sociology of science and utilizing new developments in scientometrics. The work will examine the contributions to scientific articles, disparities in productivity, and the impact of scientific work. Factors from grant funding to parenting will be examined. The talk will close on a discussion of the science policy implications of this evidence as well as charting a trajectory for science of science that includes issues of justice and equity.
Prof. Dr Vincent Larivière
Professor of Information Science at Université de Montréal, Canada
27 October 2020 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session
Are self-citations a normal feature of knowledge accumulation or a perversion of research evaluation?
Science is a cumulative activity, in which past knowledge serves as a foundation for new knowledge. One of the mechanisms through which the cumulative nature of science manifests itself is the act of citing. However, citations are also central to research evaluation, thus creating incentive for researchers to cite their own work. Therefore, such self-citations have been one of the most constant criticism against the use of citation indicators for the measurement of research impact. Using a dataset containing millions of papers and disambiguated authors, this talk will examine the relative importance of self-citations and self-references in the scholarly communication landscape, their relationship with age and gender of authors, as well as their effects on various research evaluation indicators. It will also present the results of a comparison of the content of cited and citing papers, thus making it possible to test whether researchers cite their own work in order to inflate their impact indicators. The talk with conclude with a discussion of the role of self-citations in the research ecosystem.
Prof. Dr Marek Kwiek
Full Professor and Director of the Center for Public Policy Studies, UNESCO Chair in Institutional Research and Higher Education Policy, University of Poznan, Poland
24 February 2021 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session
Inequalities in Science: A Study of Major Research Collaboration Types and Their Implications for Academic Careers
In the highly competitive global science, publications are a major determinant of successful academic careers. Academic reputation comes almost exclusively from publications, just as social stratification in science is largely publication based. Individual scientists make collaboration decisions: choosing team or solo publications? Choosing same-sex or mixed-sex collaborations? Choosing local, national or international collaborations? Past authorship decisions bear on the availability of future external research grants, getting hired or tenured. Research funding agencies and hiring committees may favor publications in top journals, publications written in international collaboration, or single-authored publications. Publishing with scientists of the same gender is easier but does it lead to academic success? Collaboration supports promotion – but is it national or international collaboration? Finally, in solo research there is no ambiguity in credit allocation, no errors in signals about scientists’ research abilities. All in all, inequalities in science result also from the various collaboration types. We examined (1) local-national-international collaboration, (2) solo-team collaboration, and (3) male-female collaboration of all internationally visible (25,000) Polish university professors based on their 160,000 Scopus-indexed articles. We merged a national registry of 100,000 scientists (with full administrative and biographical data) with the Scopus publication database of 400,000 publications. We examined the propensity to conduct national/international collaboration, team/solo research, and same-sex/mixed sex collaboration across male-dominated, female-dominated, and gender-balanced disciplines. Having an integrated biographical, administrative, publication, and citation database at our disposal (“The Polish Science Observatory”), we examined the propensity to engage in the various collaboration types and we used several new variables. We draw conclusions from a single-nation context to academic science in general – and discuss practical implications of our research for academic careers.
Prof. Dr Dashun Wang
Associate Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, and the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, USA
31 March 2021 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session
Initial Progress on the Science of Science
The increasing availability of large-scale datasets that trace the entirety of the scientific enterprise, have created an unprecedented opportunity to explore scientific production and reward. Parallel developments in data science, network science, and artificial intelligence offer us powerful tools and techniques to make sense of these millions of data points. Together, they tell a complex yet insightful story about how scientific careers unfold, how collaborations contribute to discovery, and how scientific progress emerges through a combination of multiple interconnected factors. These opportunities—and challenges that come with them—have fueled the emergence of a multidisciplinary community of scientists that are united by their goals of understanding science. These practitioners of the science of science use the scientific methods to study themselves, examine projects that work as well as those that fail, quantify the patterns that characterize discovery and invention, and offer lessons to improve science as a whole. In this talk, I’ll highlight some examples of research in this area, hoping to illustrate the promise of science of science as well as its limitations.
Prof. Dr Dominique Foray
Professor of Economics and Management of Innovations, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
28 April 2021 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session
The phenomenal speed of innovation during the COVID pandemic – lessons learned from the crisis
One year ago, innovation economists predicted that the prospect for inventing or discovering COVID vaccines within a year was totally irrealistic. This prediction was based on two range of arguments: the classical argument about vaccine research market failures and the somewhat newer argument on the inelasticity of science. One year after, it looks like the prediction was wrong! In this talk we will discuss various reasons for the phenomenal speed of innovation during the COVID pandemic and some lessons learned from the crisis in the area of science and innovation policy.
Prof. Dr Gili S. Drori
Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
19 May 2021 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session
Paradoxes of the globally embedded university: Lessons from the identity practices of Israeli higher education organizations
Embedded in global culture that prizes “world class university”, Israeli higher education organizations are caught in web of institutionalized – and loosely coupled, if not conflicting – expectations. They are under pressure to achieve global excellence, satisfy Israeli economic and security needs, and serve Israel’s diverse social groups; they are also required to meet standards of proper governance, while maintaining academic collegial traditions; and they wrestle with Israeli, Jewish, Zionist and Palestinian legacies. This contextual complexity is expressed in the identity practices of Israeli HEOs, namely in the iconographic (logos, campus architecture) and textual (mission statements, website information) expressions of who they are, who they are not, and what they aspire to be. In these ways, Israeli HEOs reflect the challenges and paradoxes of glocal organization, organizations and organizing that are shared by HEOs worldwide, especially by those outside the global core.
Prof. Dr Eva Barlösius
Professor for Macrosociology, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany
30 June 2021 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session
Data Sharing – variously shaped research practices
Data sharing has become a flourishing topic within the last years. One of the main drivers of this trend are the science-policy programs for enforcing open data. Many of the studies on data sharing are shaped by these programs as they contrast existing practices of using data in research with infrastructural-driven concepts of data sharing. My talk will focus on data sharing practices during the research process, in order to understand their social logic. Therefore, I will analyze these data sharing practices with Max Weber’ terms of “social action” and “social relationship”. The empirical basis of my analysis are qualitative interviews with researchers on their handling of self-produced research data. I identified three different social forms of data sharing: (1) communal sharing, grounded on a feeling of belonging together, (2) cooperative sharing, based on trusted and controlled social relationships, (3) and making data public, which corresponds with open social relationships.
Meeting link
Meeting number: 175 505 1243
Password: SciSci
Prof. Dr Lin Zhang
Professor at the School of Information management, Wuhan University, China
27 July 2021 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST)
Remote session or on-site
Understanding Chinese science: new perspectives from scientometrics and research policy
China’s emergence in science and technology has a far reaching impact on global science. With its tremendous rise in research investment, fast growing S&T workforce, and rapid increase in international collaboration, China has become one of the most important contributors to global scientific knowledge. This talk aims to provide audience with a deeper understanding of the Chinese science system, the new developments of Chinese research policy, and its implication for the global science.
| Lecture 7: Prof. Dr Staša Milojević | 15 May 2022 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST) MSA, 17th floor, Salle Germain Dondelinger & & Remote session |
| Professor of Informatics, Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, USA | |
| Science as an engine of progress and progress of science | |
| In order to help solve increasingly complex problems and questions, contemporary science has adopted new approaches to knowledge production that are predominantly team based and are less confined by disciplinary boundaries. The study of the character of and the interplay between the social, institutional and intellectual aspects of science has recently received a major boost. In this talk I will showcase some of the studies that use the data from scientific publications to shed light on contemporary research practices, research teams, research workforce, interdisciplinarity, and citation dynamics. | |
| Lecture 1: Prof. Dr Jana Diesner | 12 October 2022 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST) MSH, Black Box & Remote session |
| Professor of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, School of Information Sciences, USA | |
| Computational Social Science: bias detection and theory validation | |
| Using computational methods to study social structure and behavior at scale requires researchers to make a plethora of decisions, including how to sample and preprocess data, implement algorithms, and validate results. I present findings and lessons learned from my group’s work on assessing the impact of some of these choices, especially related to data provenance and selecting variables and metrics, on understanding social systems and validating social science theories in contemporary settings. I highlight sources of biases and strategies for mitigating biased insights. Bringing this work into application contexts, I discuss how we leveraged computational social science approaches to study the impact of information, science, and funding on society, and highlight some of our research in crisis informatics. | |
| Lecture 3: Prof. Dr Peter Weingart | 14 December 2022 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST) MSH, Black Box & Remote session |
| Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Science Policy, University of Bielefeld, former director of the Institute for Science and Technology Studies & of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Germany | |
| Trust in science – Probing the concept | |
| Trust in science has become a concern among academic organizations and science policymakers alike. It is the subject of surveys – which often diagnose a decline of trust – as well as of policies to engage and communicate to the public. But the concept of trust is rarely probed as to what it actually entails in terms of the place of science in society, functional differentiation of society, reasons for bestowing trust, objects of trust on different levels (micro, meso, macro) of analysis, and venues of perception of science (direct vs. mediated experience, i.e. by journalistic media or digital platforms). By ignoring these analytical aspects the use of the concept of trust in science in surveys and communication strategies remains meaningless. | |
| Lecture 5: Prof. Dr Miguel Urquiola | 17 January 2023 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST) MSH, Black Box & Remote session |
| Professor of Economics and International Affairs, Chair of the Department of Economics, Columbia University in the City of New York, USA | |
| Why does the U.S. have the leading research universities? Incentives, resources, and virtuous circles | |
| Around 1875, the US had none of the world’s leading research universities; today, it accounts for the majority of the top-ranked. Many observers cite events surrounding World War II as the source of this reversal. We present evidence that US research universities had surpassed most countries’ decades before World War II. An explanation of their dominance must therefore begin earlier. The one we offer highlights reforms that began after the Civil War and enhanced the incentives and resources the system directs at research. Our story is not one of success by design, but rather of competition leading American colleges to begin to care about research. We draw on agency theory to argue that this led to increasing academic specialization, and in turn, to more precise measures of professors’ research output. Combined with sorting dynamics that concentrated talent and resources at some schools—and the emergence of tenure—this enhanced research performance. | |
| Lecture 6: Prof. Dr Sean Takats | 8 March 2023 from 17.00 to 18.30 (CEST) MSH, Black Box & Remote session |
| Professor in Digital History, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), Luxembourg | |
| Encoding Enlightenment | |
| How do researchers take ownership and responsibility for the work that we increasingly do with digital data, digital tools and digital methodologies? How do we peer inside technological and intellectual black boxes, and expose those inner workings to the outside world? This talk will examine the development and activities of diverse and collaborative research teams which have tried to address these problems through the creation of software tools for research. While today’s technological opportunities and challenges might appear new, we can trace such concerns back to the Enlightenment, when knowledge production and dissemination first began to operate on a similarly confounding scale. This historical perspective will inform our exploration of current research innovation. | |