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Citation Map Shows Top Science Cities
mikejuk writes "Which cities around the world produce not just the most but the best scientific papers? Using a database and Google Maps the answer is obvious. A paper at Physics arXiv describes how two researchers combined citation data with Google maps to create a plot showing how important cities around the world were in terms of their contribution to physics, chemistry or psychology."
This is a typical symptom of scientists/researchers having way too much free time on their hands. They need to find a way to spend it properly, or they will kill us all one day.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
"Number of links" has always struck me as an odd metric (see also PageRank). The greatest work from the PoV of scientific advancement isn't necessarily the most cited. The greatest determinant will be how fashionable a particular field is - a few leading researchers in a particular field are likely to have a huge number of cites, especially if they constitently reach the well-known publications, but it doesn't necessarily mean the field is very scientifically interesting.
Then, even if great progress has been made, you get the effect that people don't necessarily cite the seminal investigations so much as the pioneering refiners.
Another interesting effect, of course, is the difference between provenance of researcher and location of publication. The US and the UK are particularly good at draining other countries of already well-educated people, but this doesn't mean that the US or the UK have performed the academic preparation necessary to produce excellent researchers.
Since when is psychology a science?
Hmm, someone seems to have issues with psychology. Would you like to talk about it? ;-)
Physics: http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure1.htm Chemistry: http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure2.htm Psychology: http://www.leydesdorff.net/topcity/figure1.htm And for the record, the authors refer to these as "fields of study", not "fields of science."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since it used the scientific method? Don't take my word for it - try reading some papers on working memory, psychophysics or the statistics of psychometrics to realise that psychs have to have a stronger understanding of the scientific method than most other scientists. FYI, read the real papers not the type of nonsense that comes from critical analysis.
bang goes my karma... again...
Maybe you've never gotten request for TeX because it's free. I'm an academic (post-doc) and I use tech every day, but I've never ask computer support people for it.