Is The Science of Science As A Field of Study In Its Own Right Alive Or Dead?

[Clifford Miller]

Yves

Thank you.  That confirms in quantitative terms my qualitative 
impression [and is pretty interesting too!! Nice way to present it.].

Those are precisely the three areas I kept coming up against when doing 
online searches for the term "the science of science".  I got the 
science of science policy [ie value and economics directing R&D effort], 
sociology and scientometrics.  The science of science communication was 
quite common also however.

The philosophy of science tended not to come up much in that search 
[most likely because the term "the science of science" is unlikely to be 
used in that field].

Some of the time I obtained results for papers addressing in some manner 
the science of science or containing a reference to a citation 
containing the phrase. However, such papers were not really directed to 
a science which investigates science as such although some touched on 
the periphery.

And searches for papers on "metascience" [a term suggested as being 
about the science of science] were not helpful.