Scientific Research and Communication

This chapter starts by introducing the different types of scientific research, including the distinction between fundamental and applied research, Stokes’ classification, the ideas of Popper and Kuhn, and newer developments like citizen science and open science. Scientific discoveries are characterized by Koshland’s cha-cha-cha theory and Shneider’s four stages of scientific research, the last of which is the communication of knowledge. Scientific communication is part of a complex social system. Formal scientific communication mainly happens through scientific publications, which typically go through several steps before final publication. This is characterized as a two-tier communication system, with communication through publicly available repositories and formal publications as the two tiers. Since most research nowadays happens in collaboration, the question of who qualifies for authorship has become more significant. Finally, we introduce the idea of a three-tier evaluation system, which consists of counting publications, counting usage and counting citations, respectively.