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 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, 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 the sciences and other fields will be presented as a means of improving the outreach and impact of publications by academics across different disciplines. Some practical guidance on what is worthwhile in presenting publication information online are given.
Text of Making scholarly publications accessible online
Making scholarly publications accessible online: Erds and beyond Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen London South Bank University Museophile Limited, UK www.jpbowen.com
Introduction Prof. Jonathan Bowen Mathematics, art, engineering, computer science, software engineering, museum informatics Career: Oxford, Reading, LSBU (Emeritus) Visitor: Kings College London, Brunel, Westminster, Waikato (New Zealand, 2011), Pratt Institute (New York, USA, 2012) Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA London conference, 1012 July 2012)
Overview Communities Publications Co-authorship Citations Databases Google Scholar Microsoft Academic Search Academia.edu Visualization
Communities Community of Practice (CoP) collection of people developing domain knowledge Academic communities researchers, professors, science, arts, ... Body of Knowledge (BoK) ontology for a particular domain Interdisciplinarity vs. Multidisciplinarity
Community of Practice (CoP)Social sciences concept Wenger, E.: Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998) Wenger, E., McDermott, R.A., Snyder, W.: Cultivating Communities of Practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press, Boston (2002) A brief introduction by Etienne Wenger, 2006: www.ewenger.com/theory
Fundamental elements of a CoP1. Domain: Common interest to be effective. E.g., software engineering.2. Community: Group of people willing to engage with others. E.g., researchers.3. Practice: Explore existing and develop new knowledge. Industrial liaison vs. basic research.
Cultivating a CoP1. Design the CoP to evolve naturally.2. Create opportunities for open discussion.3. Welcome and allow different levels of participation.
Example two communities (arts and science)FacebookTouchGraphconnections
Technology GoogleFirst webserver, 1999 already in a museum!
Google Museum label
Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com publications & citations h-index (top h publications with h or more citations) i10-index (at least 10 citations)
h-indexhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index Top h publications with h or more citations
Microsoft Academic Search http://academic.research.microsoft.com Publications, citations, h-index g-index (top g with a total of at least g2 citations)
g-index Top g with a total of at least g2 citationshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index
Academic Searchco-author graphTop 30 co-authors asmeasured bythe number ofpublications
Academic Search citation graph Top 34 authors by number of citations
See alsoAcademic Mathematics Genealogy Search websitegenealogy graphSupervisors andstudentsAlonzo Churchand Alan Turing
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) Kings College Cambridge www.turingarchive.org Jack Copelands Turing Archive (facsimiles) www.alanturing.net
Turings Worlds (2324 June 2012) Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford http://conted.ox.ac.uk/turing Ivor Grattan- Guinness et al.
Happy Birthday Alan Turing! Also Ivor Grattan-Guinness, historian of mathematics and logic (born 23 June 1941)
The Erds number Paul Erds (19131996) Hungarian mathematician en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erds Erds number 0 Co-authored over 1,000 publications 511 co-authors Erds number 1 Co-authors of Erds co-authors Erds number 2 Etc.
The Bacon number Kevin Bacon (born 1958), film and theatre actor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_number Cf. Erds number, but for film credits ErdsBacon number en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ErdsBacon_number Sum of persons Erds/Bacon nos (as low as three!) Further numbers for other fields?
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
Academia.edu home page E.g., lsbu.academia.edu/JonathanBowen
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 ...
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
ACM Digital Library Computer science professional body Editable personal publications page portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81407593776
ACM Digital LibraryPersonal page features
DBLP Computer Science Bibliography University project personal publications page Major computer science journals and conferences dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/b/Bowen:Jonathan_P=.html
DBLP Computer Science Bibliography University project personal publications page Major computer science journals and conferences dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/b/Bowen:Jonathan_P=.html
Summary Plethora of sites Check you profile on a selection Choose one or two effective onesIf we knew what it was wewere doing, it would not becalled research, would it? Albert Einstein (18791955)
Conclusion Academia.edu virtual community Academic Search visualisation Google Scholar visibility Prof. Jonathan Bowen (FBCS, FRSA) [email protected] www.jpbowen.com
Paper:Visualising Virtual Communities: From Erds to the Arts EVA London 2012 conference proceedings
