Articles from the Sackler Colloquium on Modeling and Visualizing Science and Technology Developments explore trends in science, technology, education, and employment. The articles demonstrate how forecasts based on such trends can be used to inform decision-making in academia, industry, and government. In academia, researchers describe a "chaperone effect," whereby a researcher's likelihood of being published as a senior author increases if they have previously co-authored a paper with a more experienced author in the same journal. Another article identifies relationships among scientific prizes and prizewinners that can predict individuals most likely to push scientific boundaries. With regard to the workforce, researchers report that scientific careers have shortened on average over the past 50 years and the likelihood of publishing as lead authors has greatly diminished. To illustrate how models can aid regional economic and infrastructure planning, another article identifies industry, occupation, and location-specific factors that contribute to the survival of pioneer firms, and a model of urban traffic dynamics reveals features that influence travel times and potentially lead to bottlenecks.
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Article #18-18750: "Forecasting innovations in science, technology, and education," by Katy Börner, William B. Rouse, Paul Trunfio, and H. Eugene Stanley.
MEDIA CONTACT: Katy Börner, Indiana University Bloomington, IN; tel: 812-855-3256; e-mail: katy@indiana.edu
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences