Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Map of Science

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this yet, but it seems interesting to me. It seems to be roughly showing how scientists working in one area move their investigations to other disciplines when researching a topic. It's interesting, but I'm not sure how useful it is. I don't detect any directionality from the graph or any sense of proportion.

http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/15960


Here's the actual map: http://www.lanl.gov/news/albums/science/PLOSMapOfScience.jpg

With this description:
"Colors represent the scientific discipline of each journal, based on disciplines classified by the Getty Research Institute's Art and Architecture Thesaurus, while lines reflect the navigation of users from one journal to another when interacting with scholarly web portals. "

Directionality is unlikely to exist in such a graph. The graph shows me how different disciplines are related or at least how current research in different fields is related. I saw many of the leads I had traced through the literature in the graph.

Lets suppose you've been trying to find a solution to a problem and no one in your field has done that. Maybe the solution or information leading to a solution can be found in a related area and the graph can be used to find that related area.

I suppose the map contributes to an understanding of the extent of interdependence between scientific disciplines.


An example being the K-T event. At least five distinct disciplines have contributed to the impact theory, i.e. paleontology, astrophysics, atmospheric science, geology and nuclear physics.