Abstract
The advent of large-scale datasets that trace the workings of science has encouraged researchers from many different disciplinary backgrounds to turn scientific methods into science itself, cultivating a rapidly expanding ‘science of science’. This Review considers this growing, multidisciplinary literature through the lens of data, measurement and empirical methods. We discuss the purposes, strengths and limitations of major empirical approaches, seeking to increase understanding of the field’s diverse methodologies and expand researchers’ toolkits. Overall, new empirical developments provide enormous capacity to test traditional beliefs and conceptual frameworks about science, discover factors associated with scientific productivity, predict scientific outcomes and design policies that facilitate scientific progress.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1046-1058 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Nature human behaviour |
Volume | 7 |
Issue number | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 2023 |
Funding
The authors thank all members of the Center for Science of Science and Innovation (CSSI) for invaluable comments. This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-19-1-0354, National Science Foundation grant SBE 1829344, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation G-2019-12485.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Behavioral Neuroscience