Science 2.0 - Blog or/and Perish?

Social Software like blogs, wikis and so on are used in scientific communities to facilitate the exchange of knowledge in the field faster than e.g. by journal papers. These new technologies are therefore challenging traditional communication channels in science and technology. Well known example are the science portals in Wikipedia, OpenWetWare and ScienceBlogs. Nevertheless, reputation mechanisms and rewarding of scientific work as worked out in traditional media (impact factor, number of citations etc.) are not established in these new media. Dynamic network analysis is a tool to study the growth of networks the and speed of network evolution. In this sense, it can be used to develop new measures for the reputation and impact of a scientist. In this thesis we want to develop a model of scientific careers based on both traditional impact factors and new network measures based on the example of scientific collaboration in wikis and blogs. The chair has developed a MediaBase to sample, analyze and visualize social software traces. The MediaBase shall be developed into a scientometric database for Science 2.0. Applicants should have interests in wiki and blog technologies, XML, dynamic social network analysis, graph theory and visualization. On the practical side, they should have experiences in databases, Web 2.0 technologies, XML, Perl and Java. Lehrstuhl Informatik 5 offers an inspiring working environment with high-end hardware and software. Applicants should be open-minded to cooperate with international students and research institutes. For further information or submission of your application please contact: Dr. Ralf Klamma Lehrstuhl Informatik 5 RWTH Aachen University klamma[at]dbis.rwth-aachen.de