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The Uncertainty of Science: Navigating Through the Unknown

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Representing Scientific Knowledge

Abstract

Accessing the state of the art of scientific knowledge timely and precisely remains a profound challenge. The vast majority of scientific articles are transient in nature. They may never receive attention from the scientific community or other relevant stakeholders. Advances of science must deal with controversial, conflicting, incomplete, and discrepant information. Uncertainties are an integral part of scientific inquiry and scholarly communication, but their essential role in understanding scientific knowledge as a whole has been considerably underestimated. We introduce a conceptual framework for the study of uncertainties associated with the creation, validation, and communication of scientific knowledge. We utilize science mapping techniques and approaches to illustrate the evolution of a particular body of scientific literature in terms of intellectual landmarks, critical paths, turning points, and boundary spanning bridges.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(79)90011-1.

  2. 2.

    Illinois Institute of Technology (1969). TRACES.

  3. 3.

    Astronomical Unit: one AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers (93,000 million miles).

  4. 4.

    https://www.fda.gov/forindustry/userfees/prescriptiondruguserfee/ucm378861.htm.

  5. 5.

    http://journal.frontiersin.org/journal/research-metrics-and-analytics.

  6. 6.

    https://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763.

  7. 7.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Chaomei Chen

  2. Department of Library and Information Science, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

    Min Song

Authors
  1. Chaomei Chen
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  2. Min Song
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Chen, C., Song, M. (2017). The Uncertainty of Science: Navigating Through the Unknown. In: Representing Scientific Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62543-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62543-0_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62541-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62543-0

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