A talk given at the STS center at Drexel University.

1. Knowledge production between
laboratories and scientific texts:
a proposal of large-scale
quantitative analysis
Kai Li
2019/3/6

2. Topic outline
• Theoretical considerations:
• Two communities of science studies: quantitative and qualitative
• Scientific knowledge production as a site to bridge these communities
• The overall design of my dissertation research
• RQ: translating the concept of packaging into quantitative terms

3. The two communities of science studies
Quantitative
• Bibliometrics,
Scientometrics, Science of
science, Quantitative
science studies…
Qualitative
• STS, History of science,
Philosophy of science…

4. The two communities:
Mertonian vs. Latourian
• Quantitative science studies is still
largely based on a normative
assumption of scientific publication
and citation: to cite is to credit.
• Different citation theories have
been developed but are far from
fully accepted.
• Advanced data science methods
have made new research directions
possible that are less reliant upon
citation data.
• Qualitative science studies on
scientific knowledge production
has gone through a few theoretical
“turns” since the late 1970s.
• Material turn (Hicks, 2010)
• Rhetorical turn (Billig, 2015)
• How scientific knowledge is
produced through material and
language practice (“laboratory
studies”) became an important site
in the overall STS scholarship.

5. Design of my dissertation research
• Goal:
• Bridge the two science studies communities in the site of textual inscription
of laboratory practice
• Objective
• Identify two types of scientific objects related to scientific knowledge
production process, i.e. research methods and scientific software, from full-
text publications by using machine learning and natural language processing
methods on a large scientific corpus
• Evaluate quantitative relationship among representation and distribution of
objects and the conditions of knowledge production informed by qualitative
and quantitative conceptual frameworks
• Offer products to promote “literature as informant” research (Kelty, 2009)

6. Operationalization of research method and
scientific software entities
• All examined objects are named and functionally meaningful objects
that can be identified from scientific publications.
• Named: the object should be represented in the text as a name, rather than
just a description.
• Functionally meaningful: the object should have functions in the scientific
research, based on the descriptions in the research articles.
• No other rules will be used to select research objects.

7. Question: Is it possible to identify packages of
scientific works from research articles?
• Scientific works are packaged (blackboxed) into standardized research
objects in order to increase the do-ability of research problems
(Fujimura, 1987).
• Theory-method packages --> bandwagon effect (Fujimura, 1988)
• Software as package (Kling and Scacchi, 1979)
• RQ: how to translate the idea of package into quantitative
parameters?
• Is it possible to identify method-software packages within scientific texts?
• Can we connect such textual patterns to other conditions of science?

8. Reference
• Billig, M. (2015). Rhetoric of social psychology. In Deconstructing social
psychology (pp. 59–72). Psychology Press.
• Fujimura, J. H. (1987). Constructing Do-able Problems in Cancer Research:
Articulating Alignment. Social Studies of Science, 17(2), 257–293.
• Fujimura, J. H. (1988). The molecular biological bandwagon in cancer research:
{Where} social worlds meet. Social Problems, 35(3), 261–283. Retrieved from
http://socpro.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/3/261.abstract
• Hicks, D. (2010). The material-cultural turn. The Oxford Handbook of Material
Culture Studies, 25–98.
• Kelty, C. (2009). Ten thousand journal articles later: ethnography of" The
literature" in science. Empiria. Revista de Metodología de Ciencias Sociales, (18),
173–192.
• Kling, R., & Scacchi, W. (1979). Recurrent dilemmas of computer use in complex
organizations. In Proc. 1979 Nat’l Computer Conf (pp. 107–116).