Paper of potential relevance on "science of science"

[Fil Menczer]

This paper may be of interest to the SIGMETRICS community (apologies for
cross-posting):

Social Dynamics of Science

Xiaoling Sun, Jasleen Kaur, Staša Milojević, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo
Menczer
http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.4950

The birth and decline of disciplines are critical to science and society.
However, no quantitative model to date allows us to validate competing
theories of whether the emergence of scientific disciplines drives or
follows the formation of social communities of scholars. Here we propose an
agent-based model based on a \emph{social dynamics of science,} in which
the evolution of disciplines is guided mainly by the social interactions
among scientists. We find that such a social theory can account for a
number of stylized facts about the relationships between disciplines,
authors, and publications. These results provide strong quantitative
support for the key role of social interactions in shaping the dynamics of
science. A "science of science" must gauge the role of exogenous events,
such as scientific discoveries and technological advances, against this
purely social baseline.

Filippo Menczer
Professor of Informatics and Computer Science
Director, Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research
Indiana University, Bloomington
http://cnets.indiana.edu/people/filippo-menczer
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