Science 2.0 Conference 2014: Talk Professor Ralph Schröder
Channel: ZBW - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft
Date: 16/04/2014

Science 2.0 Conference 2014, 26 to 27 March, Hamburg, Germany
http://www.science20-conference.de

Talk by Professor Ralph Schröder, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Title: Big Data, Big Science and Beyond
Abstract: The measurement of science communication and advance has begun to use the tools of big data. A number of studies have analysed the contours of science by, for example, examining research findings and how they are disseminated. What is more, the amount of data about knowledge flows and other aspects of science, including in social media, is growing rapidly. This includes sources of data about what data are being produced when and where, which are becoming available for digital analysis on an unprecedented scale. One question that has moved into foreground in discussions of big data, however, is: what are data? Data are the fundamental building blocks of science. Yet in the field of the communication of science, it has also been argued that the most elementary unit are individual data (as when it is argued that a journal publication could provide to a link to one piece of data). This raises an intriguing question: if we have (big) data about the movements of data on a large scale, does this allow for more steering of science? In fact, this kind of reflexivity about scientific advance also allows us to consider more closely the limits of using data in understanding scientific communication, and in understanding knowledge advance more generally.