It is common today for scientists to conduct research in collaboration with their colleagues from different institutions and disciplines. This study collected a sample of 846 scientific research papers published in 1992 and tested three hypotheses on the relationship between research collaboration and interdisciplinarity. Collaboration was measured by the number of authors, number of institutional affiliations, number of affiliation disciplines, and type of collaboration. Interdisciplinarity was measured by the number of disciplines represented in the journals cited. The results showed significant differences in degrees of interdisciplinarity among different levels of collaboration and among different disciplines. Some disciplines were shown to be highly collaborative, while others were not. This analysis led to the conclusion that collaboration contributed significantly to the degree of interdisciplinarity in some disciplines and not in others. In addition to an analysis of publications, this investigation used a survey that asked authors about their forms of collaboration, channels of communication, and use of information. The survey provided some qualitative explanation for the bibliometric findings. Findings are discussed from the perspective of scientist‐scientist interaction, scientist‐information interaction, and information‐information interaction. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In this paper, we propose a capability maturity model (CMM) for scientific data management (SDM) practices, with the goal of supporting assessment and improvement of these practices. The model describes key process areas and practices necessary for effective SDM. Appropriate SDM practices were identified by content analysis of papers about SDM and include both those specific SDM practices and generic process management practices. The CMM further characterizes organizations by the level of maturity of these processes, meaning the organizational capability to reliably perform SDM processes. The model may be useful to organizations in evaluating and planning improvements to their SDM practices. KeywordsScientific data management, capability maturity model.

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The low aspect ratio of the mega amp spherical tokamak (MAST) allows differentiation between different forms of the H-mode threshold scaling. With optimized fuelling using inboard puffing, and a connected double null divertor (DND) magnetic configuration, the H-mode power threshold data lie about 1.7 times higher than recent scaling laws. Slight magnetic configuration changes, of the order of the ion Larmor radius, around a connected DND significantly influence H-mode access. H-mode confinement in discharges with low frequency edge localized modes (ELMs) is generally consistent with international scaling laws, e.g. IPB98(y,2). Strong indications of both particle and energy internal transport barriers have been seen. Normalized beta values β N > 5 have been obtained, approaching the ideal n = 1 no wall external kink stability limit. Sawtooth triggered neo-classical tearing modes have been observed; numerical modelling of the island evolution reproduces mode behaviour well and confirms the significance of stabilizing field curvature effects. Divertor power loading studies, including transient effects due to ELMs, show a strong bias of power efflux to the outboard targets, where it is more easily handled. ELM energy losses, W ELM , are less than 4% of the stored energy in all regimes explored so far, but ELM effluxes extending 30 cm outside the outboard separatrix have been measured. Toroidally asymmetric divertor biasing resulted in significant broadening of the D α profile on the biased components and a reduction in the total power to the unbiased components. Halo current magnitudes and asymmetries are generally small compared with conventional tokamaks;

The KeyWords Plus in the Science Citation Index database represents an approach to combining citation and semantic indexing in describing the document content. This paper explores the similarities or dissimilarities between citation‐semantic and analytic indexing. The dataset consisted of over 400 matching records in the SCI and MEDLINE databases on antibiotic resistance in pneumonia. The degree of similarity in indexing terms was found to vary on a scale from completely different to completely identical with various levels in between. The within‐document similarity in the two databases was measured by a variation on the Jaccard Coefficient—the Inclusion Index. The average inclusion coefficient was 0.4134 for SCI and 0.3371 for MEDLINE. The 20 terms occurring most frequently in each database were identified. The two groups of terms shared the same terms that consist of the “intellectual base” for the subject. Conceptual similarity was analyzed through scatterplots of matching and nonmatching terms vs. partially identical and broader/narrower terms. The study also found that both databases differed in assigning terms in various semantic categories. Implications of this research and further studies are suggested.

References from a single scientific journal were analyzed to show how the persuasive communities created by scientific references change over time. Articles that appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London were sampled over the journal's 325-year history of publication, to identify and characterize the references made in them. The data highlight changes in the practice of scholarly reference, and provide quantitative measures of the evolution of scientific publication. Types of publications, and the origin, language and age of the materials cited, were analyzed for the period studied. These measures show how persuasive communities have changed, and provide insights into the character of the scientific communities in question.

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