Recent ILS graduate, Dr. Erjia Yan (Ph.D. ’13) was selected as one of the recipients of the 2013 Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship by the Beta Phi Mu International Honor Society. This fall, he began a new position as an Assistant Professor at Drexel University.
Dr. Yan’s dissertation is titled:
• Towards a Systematic Approach for Studying Scholarly Communication through Scholarly Networks
The dissertation abstract (available through ProQuest) reads:
This dissertation proposes a framework capable of capturing the dynamic and interactive nature of scholarly communication. This framework is applied to a scholarly data set of library and information science literature with the goal of addressing four essential topics in scholarly communication, regarding the conduct of scientific impact evaluation, the exploration of scientific collaboration, the identification of research specialties and topics, and the study of scientific knowledge flow patterns. Several types of scholarly networks are employed as the research instrument to address these four areas, including coauthorship networks, citation networks, co-citation networks, bibliographic coupling networks, topic modeling/networks, and heterogeneous networks. Conceptually, a well-defined framework for quantitative study of scholarly communication is developed; methodologically, the outcome is a set of systematic approaches to evaluate impact (i.e., topic-based PageRank), explore collaboration (i.e., a mix method incorporating community detect, linear regression, and link prediction), identify research topics and specialties (i.e., topic dynamic attributes), and study knowledge flow (i.e., scientific trading and knowledge paths); and empirically, a systematic investigation of scholarly communication (in the above mentioned aspects) in the field of library and information science is accomplished.
ILS faculty member Dr. Ying Ding chaired Dr. Yan’s research committee.
Beta Phi Mu was founded in 1948 by a group of leading librarians and library educators to recognize and encourage scholastic achievement among library and information studies students. The motto, Aliis inserviendo consumor, meaning “Consumed in the service of others” was selected by the founders to reflect the profession’s dedication to service. Membership in Beta Phi Mu is by invitation of the faculty from an American Library Association-accredited professional degree program.
The Chi Chapter of Beta Phi Mu supports graduates from Indiana University. They also host events for current students and sponsor scholarship opportunities.
Posted September 24, 2013