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a long way to go. The role of visual thinking and reasoning in science is clear. We
draw inspirations from what we see. The advances of our ability to obtain a wide
variety of visual images make us reach what was impossible before. We are able to
see much farther away with modern telescopes. Our mind does a large part of the
work in terms of scientific reasoning. One day, our mind will be augmented further
by information and computational tools that can enhance our vision to our own.
9.7
The Future
We started our journey in mapping scientific frontiers from cartography on the
land, in the sky, and in the mind in attempts to clarify the essentials in visual
communication, especially the metaphors that can make a big picture simple and
useful. We then moved on to explore ways that might enable us to catch a glimpse
of scientific frontiers. Guided by philosophical theories of science, we focused on
the trajectory or trails of competing paradigms through scientific literatures. We
emphasized the historical role of quantitative studies of science and methods such
as co-word analysis, co-citation analysis, and the potential that might be realized by
the use of a variety of information visualization techniques. Finally, we examined a
series of case studies in which scientific debates were a common feature.
Mapping scientific frontiers needs a combined effort from a diverse range
of underlying disciplines, such as philosophy of science, sociology of science,
scientometrics, domain analysis, information visualization, knowledge discovery,
and data mining. By taking our readers through such a wide-ranging journey we
envisage that the topic can stimulate and forge some joint lines of research and
a coordinated research agenda so that researchers in different disciplines can work
better together. In addition, the topic intends to raise the awareness of available tools
and promising technologies for scientists to adapt and use in their daily scientific
activities.
Throughout this topic, we have emphasized on the need for comprehensive
support for knowledge management at a strategic and thematic level as opposed
to that for information seeking at lexical level. We have distinguished relevance
judgments made by lexical match from those made by explicit references to the
existing body of knowledge. Citation analysis is a quantitative approach that can
bring us qualitative insights into scientific frontiers. In this sense, every scientist is
taking part in a social construction of knowledge. And we need to account for how
intellectual contributions have been assessed and perceived by others. Examples in
this topic are not given as the best answer to each question; instead, they are meant
to provide some concrete and tangible exemplars just to inspire better ones.
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