Developing and monitoring communities has become increasingly easy on the web as the number of interactive facilities and amount of data available about communities increases. It is possible to view connections and patterns on social and professional networks in the form of mathematical graphs. It is also possible to visualise connections between authors of academic papers. For example, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search, and Academia.edu, etc., now have large corpuses of freely available information on publications, together with author and citation details, that can be accessed and presented in a number of ways. In mathematical circles, the concept of the Erdős number has been introduced in honour of the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, measuring the "collaborative distance" of a person away from Erdős through links by co-author. Similar metrics have been proposed in other fields. The possibility of exploring and improving the presentation of such links online in computer science and other fields will be presented as a means of improving the outreach and impact of academic publications. Some practical guidance on what is worthwhile in presenting publication information online will be given.
Micro-Scholarship, What it is, How can it help me.pdf
Patterns in scholarly publications online: Erdős and beyond
1. Patterns in scholarly
publications online:
Erdős and beyond
Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen
Birmingham City University
Museophile Limited, UK
www.jpbowen.com
2. Introduction
• Prof. Jonathan Bowen
• Mathematics, art, engineering,
computer science, software
engineering, museum informatics
• Career: Oxford, Reading, LSBU (Emeritus)
• Visitor: King’s College London, Brunel,
Westminster, Waikato (New Zealand, 2011),
Pratt Institute (New York, USA, 2012)
• From September 2013: Professor of
Computer Science at Birmingham City Univ.
4. Patterns
“The way is long if one
follows precepts, but short ...
If one follows patterns.”
– Seneca (c.4 BC – AD 65)
5. Community of Practice
• CoP: collection of people
developing domain knowledge
• Elements:
–Domain, common interest
–Community, willing to engage together
–Practice, developing new knowledge
• A brief introduction by Etienne Wenger,
2006: www.ewenger.com/theory
6. Cultivating a CoP
Different levels of
participation:
• Coordinator(s)
• Active
members
• Peripheral
members
• Outsiders
14. Patterns of publications
• Humanities: books, some journals
• Established sciences: journals, short
papers, fast publication (months)
• Computer science: conferences, then
journals, long papers,
slow publication (years!)
15. Microsoft Academic Search
• http://academic.research.microsoft.com
• Publications, citations, h-index
• g-index (top g with a total of at least g2 citations)
16. g-index
Top g with a
total of at least
g2 citations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index
29. Alan Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954)
• Centenary year in 2012
– www.turingcentenary.eu
• Andrew Hodges (Turing biographer)
– Alan Turing: the Enigma (1983)
– www.turing.org.uk
• The Turing Digital Archive (3,000 images)
– King’s College Cambridge
– www.turingarchive.org
• Jack Copeland’s Turing Archive (facsimiles)
– www.alanturing.net
30. Turing’s Worlds (23–24 June 2012)
• Department of Continuing Education, University
of Oxford – http://conted.ox.ac.uk/turing
Ivor Grattan-
Guinness et al.
31. Happy Birthday Alan Turing!
• Also Ivor Grattan-Guinness, historian of mathematics
and logic (born 23 June 1941)
34. Alan Turing – 2014
• 60th anniversary of Turing’s death
– 7 June 2014.
• Talk at BCS, London on Thursday 5 June
2014. www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/52335
• See also Gresham College:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/alan-
turing-the-founder-of-computer-science
35. The Turing Guide
• Book due in 2015
• To be published by Oxford University Press
• Edited by Jonathan Bowen, Jack Copeland,
Mark Sprevak, and Robin Wilson
• c.40 chapters by contributors largely from
Oxford, Cambridge, Bletchley Park meetings
37. The Erdős number
• Paul Erdős (1913–1996)
– Hungarian mathematician
– en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erdős
– Erdős number 0
– Co-authored over 1,000 publications
• 511 co-authors
– Erdős number 1
– Co-authors of Erdős co-authors
• Erdős number 2
• Etc.
40. The Bacon number
• Kevin Bacon (born 1958),
film and theatre actor
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_number
• Cf. Erdős number, but for film credits
• “Erdős–Bacon number”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdős–Bacon_number
Sum of person’s Erdős/Bacon numbers
(as low as three!)
• Further numbers for other fields?
41. Academia.edu
• Academic networking website
• Cf. LinkedIn (professional networking)
• Includes affiliation to university and
department
• Allows easy addition of books, papers,
answers, talks, teaching documents,
research interests, CV, status updates,
websites, etc.
• Add keywords for publication searching
• Monitoring of access statistics
51. Non-free citations websites
• E.g., Web of Knowledge
• Thomson Reuters: http://wokinfo.com
• UK: http://wok.mimas.ac.uk
• OK if your university subscribes
• But not all do ...
52. Free publications websites
• ACM Digital Library – CS professional body
• BibSonomy – social bookmark and
publication sharing system
• CiteSeerX – publications database
• DBLP – CS bibliography, individual effort
• Issuu – personal documents (PDF, ...)
• Mendeley – reference manager,
academic social network
• ResearchGate – for scientists, make your
work visible, 1.7 million members
• Researchr – find, collect, share, review
scientific publications
53. ACM Digital Library
• Computer science professional body
• Editable personal publications page
• portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81407593776
61. Summary
“If we knew what it was we
were doing, it would not be
called research, would it?”
– Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
• Plethora of sites
• Check you profile on a selection
• Choose one or two effective ones
62. Patterns
“There are only patterns, patterns on top
of patterns, patterns that affect other
patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns.
Patterns within patterns. ... What we call
chaos is just patterns we haven't
recognized. What we call random is just
patterns we can't decipher.”
– Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962)