Do synthesis centers synthesize? A semantic analysis of topical diversity in research

Abstract

Highlights A novel semantic analysis offers insight into the diversity of scientific publications. Synthesis center publications are more topically diverse than others. Article diversity is strongly and negatively related to a paper's visibility (measured using citations).

Three families of automated text analysis

“…Such an abductive approach is the overwhelmingly common way to use topic models in the social sciences. Hackett et al (2021), as an example of using topic modeling for deductive analysis, use LDA to reduce the dimensionality of the language space in the service of testing hypotheses related to the origins of scientific synthesis. For a particular scientific article, they quantify its "topical diversity" by examining the share of different topics estimated to be in its title and abstract.…”

Interdisciplinary collaboration from diverse science teams can produce significant outcomes

“…We test these hypotheses through studies of a selection of research working groups designed to have some degree of diversity, with members with a variety of disciplines, skillsets and origins. The research working groups we are focussing on are a facilitated version of the ‘self-assembly’ to which Twyman and Contractor [ 56 ] refer and which are well-discussed in the synthesis center literature [ 15 , 30 , 49 , 57 ]. These groups gather, with logistic support, to analyse a specific complex problem, drawing on members from many institutions and countries for intermittent but concentrated periods of time apart from their normal workplace commitments.…”

“…Synthesis centers are purpose-built organisations designed to enable diverse groups of people (working groups) to synthesise disparate data and information on a particular topic to produce new understanding [ 17 , 49 , 59 , 60 ]. They have been likened to the business ‘incubator’ [ 61 , 62 ].…”

“…Synthesis centers support the use of existing information and apply, to greater or lesser extent, many of the elements of team science, open science and data-intensive science [ 5 , 15 , 30 , 62 ]. They have been highly successful in facilitating collaborations and are highly productive [ 15 , 17 , 49 , 60 , 63 ].…”

“…We selected this measure based on the premise that groups working in an interdisciplinary way bring together diverse knowledge [ 2 , 74 , 75 ], which will be reflected in the diversity of the literature cited. To consider the inter-or trans-disciplinary nature of the outputs from a group rather than just their productivity, we also examined the degree to which the outputs appear in journals in a diversity of disciplines [ 49 , 76 ].…”