Digital Libraries Colloquium Series
Sponsored by the School of Computer Science-Carnegie Mellon University, the School of Information Sciences-University of Pittsburgh, the University Library System-University of Pittsburgh, the University Libraries-Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Johan Bollen
Associate Professor, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University
Friday, December 11, 2009
1:00 pm, Room 501, School of Information Sciences, 135 North Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh
Studying science from large-scale usage data: an overview of the MESUR project
Abstract: Science is of significant importance to our society, but we understand very little of the processes that lead to scientific innovation. In this presentation I will provide an overview of our work on large-scale usage data as an early indicator of scientific activity. The MESUR project has in the past 2 years collected a large-scale collection of the usage data recorded by some of the world's most significant publishers, aggregators and institutional consortia. The resulting data set has been analyzed to reveal the structural properties of scientific activity in real-time. I will highlight some of our recent work on producing detailed maps of science that reveal how scientists navigate between online scholarly resources. The results indicate that it may be possible to detect or predict the emergence of innovation from temporal changes in the structure of scientific activity. This work underpins efforts to arrive at a more accurate, pro-active evaluation of scientific impact.
Bio: Johan Bollen is associate professor at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing. He was formerly a staff scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2005-2009, and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Old Dominion University from 2002 to 2005. He obtained his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Brussels in 2001 on the subject of cognitive models of human hypertext navigation. He has taught courses on Data Mining, Information Retrieval and Digital Libraries. His research has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Science Foundation, Library of Congress, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His present research interests are usage data mining, computational sociometrics, informetrics, and digital libraries. He has extensively published on these subjects as well as matters relating to adaptive information systems architecture. He is presently the Principal Investigator of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and NSF funded MESUR project which aims to expand the quantitative tools available for the assessment of scholarly impact.
More about the Digital Libraries Colloquium series:
http://www.ischool.pitt.edu/colloquia/digital-libraries-series.php
