'Web of Science': USU Ecologist Gauges Impact of Research Networks

Using an emerging statistical tool known as bibliometrics, Utah State University ecologist Todd Crowl and colleagues report a National Science Foundation funding initiative to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists and engineers is working.

With Alan Porter and Jon Garner of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Search Technology, Inc., Crowl published findings from a recent evaluation of the NSF’s Research Coordination Network or “RCN” program in the March 7, 2012 issue of BioScience.

“Interdisciplinary research is one of the NSF’s top priorities,” says Crowl, professor in the USU Ecology Center and Department of Watershed Sciences. “Since the inception of the foundation’s RCN program in 2000, the NSF has invested significant funding in bringing researchers from disparate disciplines and parts of the globe together to study a broad range of topics. But the question has been: how do you measure the success of these efforts?”

In 2008, Crowl headed to Washington, D.C., to serve a three-year appointment as program director of ecosystems for the National Science Foundation’s Biology Directorate. His duties included evaluating proposals and awarding funding to RCN program applicants.

“Large scale drivers such as population growth, human impacts and climate change overlay everything we do as scientists,” he says. “That requires us to look at the ‘big picture.’ Scientists, traditionally, haven’t been trained to do that. Instead, we’ve been encouraged to become experts in our own, very specialized, areas.”

While in Washington, Crowl heard Porter speak and became intrigued with the engineer’s use of bibliometics (statistical analysis of publications and information) to measure research ‘interdisciplinarity.’ Porter employs science overlay maps to track research knowledge transfer and emerging technologies.

Crowl approached the engineer about evaluating the RCN program.

“We focused on identifying changes in the behavior of groups of NSF-funded researchers before and after their RCN awards,” Crowl says. “Using Thomson Reuters’ ‘Web of Science’ academic citation index, we combed through citations of hundreds of the researchers’ published papers to determine the number of authors, institutions and countries cited per article.”

Using 221 Web of Science subject categories, the team constructed visual representations displaying cross-citation relationships within the RCN researchers’ papers. The results, which resemble spider webs, are striking.

“For the scientists and engineers involved in RCNs, the webs are huge and complex,” Crowl says. “Webs of researchers not involved in RCNs or webs constructed from researchers’ cross-citation relationships before they joined RCNs, are much smaller and simpler.”

Interdisciplinary research is vital, he says, in an increasingly interdependent world.

“Think about it: you can step on a plane and be across the globe in a matter of hours,” Crowl says. “The growing connectivity of the world’s human population has amplified the frequency and effects of biological invasions and disease outbreaks. It takes many kinds of expertise, in a coordinated effort, to deal with these challenges.”

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Contact: Todd Crowl, 435-797-2498, facrowl@gmail.com

Writer: Mary-Ann Muffoletto, 435-797-3517, maryann.muffoletto@usu.edu