Synopsis
In this research area we address questions around scientific publication, self-presentation, and the relationship between science and society. Part of our research is PHOENIX, a research project between the Webis group at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), and the Text Mining and Retrieval Group (TEMIR) at Leipzig University, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Aim of the project is to reflect on the practice of scientific authorship and scientific writing in the context of the changing function of authorship, diverging disciplinary writing practices as well as the changed cooperation and production conditions resulting from digitalisation. We will examine how scientific texts are produced today and what the changed processes of producing scientific texts mean for quality assurance mechanisms in universities and non-university R&D institutions.
Studying the reuse of text is of central importance for this task. Citing, paraphrasing, summarizing, and copying are fundamental techniques in the creation of knowledge. However, it is still unknown how widespread the reuse of text is in current scientific writing. To close this gap we compile a corpus of millions of scientific articles and apply state-of-the-art analysis algorithms to develop a discipline-specific, time-dependent typology of actual text reuse occurring in science. Further information can be found on the project page at the DZHW and the project page at the BMBF.