The Dynamics of Scientific Knowledge - Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization - page 10

1.1.2 Invisible Colleges

How do scientific communities accept new scientific contributions as part of the
scientific knowledge? Diana Crane addresses this issue in her “ Invisible Colleges:
Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities ”(Crane 1972 ). She emphasizes
the role of an invisible college. An invisible college is a small network of highly
productive scientists. They share the same field of study, communicate with one
another and monitor the rapidly changing structure of knowledge in their field.
Crane suggests that such an invisible college is responsible for the growth of
scientific knowledge.
Crane demonstrates that research in basic science tends to have a similar growth
pattern, starting from a slow growth, followed by an exponential growth, then a
linear growth, and finally a gradual decline. These stages correspond to a series of
changes in the scientific community. The activities of invisible colleges produce a
period of exponential growth in publications and expand the scientific community
by attracting new members.
The way an invisible college functions is rather difficult to grasp. A member of
an invisible college could be connected with a large number of individuals. More
interestingly, it has been observed that members of an invisible college seem to
play a unifying role such that many researchers outside the invisible college become
connected because of such invisible colleges.
Several studies have demonstrated the presence of an invisible college, or a net-
work of core productive scientists linking otherwise isolated groups of researchers
in a research area. For a scientist, one way to maintain an outstanding productivity
is to apply “the same procedure, task, or pieces of equipment over and over,
introducing new variables or slight modifications of old variables” (McGrath and
Altman 1966 ).
The continuous expansion of the amount of data and information makes it more
and more challenging for a scientist to locate the right information for his research.
The scientist is unlikely to have access to all the potentially relevant information.
It is probably not necessary anyway. One problem, however, is concerned with
where he/she may devote his/her effort. Should we seek information within our
own research field or reach out to a different research field or even from a different
discipline? One the one hand, searching for information within an area that we are
familiar with would be much easier than searching outside the area. We would
already know where the major landmarks are and we would be good at picking
up various clues from the environment efficiently. On the other hand, we probably
won't be able to find much information that we do not know already with the same
area where we have spent most of our time. Searching outside our home area would
be more challenging and risky, but there is a better chance to find something that
we do not know. Conceptually, searching in our home area is seen as a local search,
whereas searching in a distant area can be seen as making a long jump. One may
also wonder how long we should stay within the same area of research and when
would be the best time to move on to a new area. One way to make a decision in