REALM: um framework computacional para mapear os impactos da ciência através de análise de redes sociais, bibliometria e altmetria

Abstract

Nowadays, a lot of universities and research institutes are concerned with measuring the productivity and progress of their research in its current state of the art. Furthermore, there is growing concern about understanding public opinion regarding their scientific discoveries, that is, how citizens interpret the efficiency of scientists and their efforts to find solutions. This scenario demands mechanisms to identify the reputation of experts in specific fields of science or topics of interest, such as the Zika virus. To address this problem, in this work we have developed a computational framework based on alternative metrics. The framework allows the extraction of three groups of metrics, productivity (bibliometrics), academic impact (social network analysis - centrality metrics) and social impact (altmetrics), and correlates these metrics, enabling the identification of the main scientists or research groups in specific fields of science. We have also developed a web system, based on the framework, to automate the procedures of mining, processing, merging, visualizing and analyzing data from various sources. The system provides mechanisms to assist in management of researchers' reputations and to perform comparisons between different scenarios or fields of science. The framework was applied to the Zika scenario, where the most important names in studies related to the disease were identified and their reputation was evaluated by experts from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), Zika Social Sciences Network and the international consortium ZIKAlliance. The main goal was to confirm whether the names identified by the framework match, in fact, to scientists of high academic and social prestige, recognized by the Zika virus research community. The evaluations’ results clearly show that the analyses carried out by the system are consistent and successfully highlight the leading scientists in the field, their main contributions and their societal impacts.