Creativity and Conformity in Science: Titles, Keywords and Co-word Analysis

In: Social studies of science: an international review of research in the social dimensions of science and technology, Volume 19, Issue 3, p. 473-496

Abstract

In this paper the adequacy of the co-word method for mapping the structure of scientific inquiry is explored. Co-word analysis of both the keywords and the titles of a set of papers in `acidification research' is undertaken and the results are found to be comparable, though the keyword-derived results provide greater detail. This strongly suggests that keyword indexing doest not, as has sometimes been claimed, distort coword findings. It also points to differences between titles (which often emphasize the supposed originality of an article) and keywords (which tend to show the relationship between the paper and other publications). The paper also explores important differences between the methodological assumptions that underlie the Paris/Keele co-word clustering algorithms and the factor analysis method for creating clusters.