科学前沿发展演化图谱 / Mapping Scientific Frontiers

This is an invited online presentation in Chinese to Heilongjiang University’s School of Information Management on January 18, 2025.

Here are the key takeaways of the presentation:

The body of scientific knowledge is a complex adaptive system. This view accommodates a diverse range of theories and conceptualizations of how scientific frontiers advance. The value of information, in terms of perturbations to the complex adaptive system, is its potential to induce significant structural variations at the system level. The role of attention in the process is essential.

The meta-knowledge of scientific frontiers and their development is the collective wisdom and insights of how scientific knowledge is conceived, communicated, adapted, transformed and transcending boundaries of attention. The meta-knowledge is essential for effectively assessing the state of the art of a research field and optimizing our own research strategies and trajectories.

Visual analytics provides an intuitive, constructive, and practical analytic and synthesizing framework for identifying emerging trends and critical patterns from scholarly publications. The framework enables us draw strengths from a wide variety of contributing fields of research, especially from information science, scientometrics, and artificial intelligence. 

“The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing” It is fundamental and beneficial to develop a vision in our mind so that it will guide our search and exploration of the unknown.