Short Abstract

This panel is about new approaches to mapping and metascience as tools for opening up science and innovation

Description

Research in Science and Technology Studies have historically been entangled with ideas of the ‘Science of Science’, dating back at least to Eugene Garfield (1955) and Derek De Solla Price (1963). The renewed interest in ‘metascience’ (see, for example, the recent Metascience 2025 conference in London) offers opportunities and challenges for those in STS interested in constructivist, interpretive and critical approaches. The policy salience of new science and technology, and AI in particular, is growing, and with it comes a demand for new tools of justification. Many current users of metascience approaches are more interested in questions of speed, with innovation seen as an end in itself, than in questions of direction (see Fortunato et al (2018) for example. We think new approaches to, for example, scientometrics and topic modelling can be used to open up emerging science and innovation to scrutiny.

This panel will be run by members of the project team for the UKRI Metascience project on Public Values in AI Research (PAIR). The PAIR team are developing new approaches to understanding emerging AI research, its embedded values and its potential to address public value questions, building on approaches from Sarewitz and Bozeman, Yegros and others.

We invite papers using, developing or analysing metascientific approaches to open up new possibilities for innovation and innovation policy, particularly in the area of AI research.

Fortunato, S., Bergstrom, C. T., Börner, K., Evans, J. A., Helbing, D., Milojević, S., ... & Barabási, A. L. (2018). Science of science. Science, 359(6379).

Garfield, E. (1955) Citation indexes for science; a new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science 122, 108–111

Price, D. J. D. S. (1963). Little science, big science. Columbia university press.

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