Do Synthesis Centers Synthesize? A Semantic Analysis of Topical Diversity in Research

Synthesis centers are a form of scientific organization that catalyzes and supports research that integrates diverse theories, methods and data across spatial or temporal scales to increase the generality, parsimony, applicability, or empirical soundness of scientific explanations. Synthesis working groups are a distinctive form of scientific collaboration that produce consequential, high-impact publications. But no one has asked if synthesis working groups synthesize: are their publications substantially more diverse than others, and if so, in what ways and with what effect? We investigate these questions by using Latent Dirichlet Analysis to compare the topical diversity of papers published by synthesis center collaborations with that of papers in a reference corpus. Topical diversity was operationalized and measured in several ways, both to reflect aggregate diversity and to emphasize particular aspects of diversity (such as variety, evenness, and balance). Synthesis center publicati...

综合研究中心是一种科学组织形式，它催化并支持整合跨空间或时间尺度的多种理论、方法和数据的研究，以提升科学解释的普遍性、简洁性、适用性或经验可靠性。综合工作组是一种独特的科学合作形式，能够产出具有重要意义、高影响力的出版物。但尚未有人探讨综合工作组是否真正实现了“综合”：其出版物的多样性是否显著高于其他出版物？若然，具体体现在哪些方面，又产生了何种影响？我们通过潜在狄利克雷分布分析（Latent Dirichlet Analysis）比较综合研究中心合作发表论文与参考语料库中论文的主题多样性，以探究这些问题。主题多样性通过多种方式进行操作化和测量，既反映整体多样性，也强调多样性的特定方面（如多样性、均匀性和平衡性）。综合研究中心的出版...