A year ago, Science’s Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt highlighted two new journals in the Science fam- ily. Indeed, with the 2016 launches of Science Im- munology and Science Robotics, the Science fam- ily now has six members including, in addition, Science, Science Signaling, Science Translational Medicine, and Science Advances. This growth has
occurred through a number of distinct opportunities,
involving the emergence of new multidisciplinary research areas as well as alternative ways to accelerate
the communication of research. The family now embod-ies a range of publishing and editorial models, with the
content of Science Robotics and the open-access journal
Science Advances handled
by academic editors. But
the Science journals share a
common focus on high quality and, in general, relatively
broad scopes. This focus will
be maintained as we consider
adding to the family. We encourage enthusiasts and the
curious to peruse our newest journal, Science Robotics,
which is now freely available with a trial subscription
through May 2017 to individuals and institutions with
Science site licenses.
How can we describe the
contents of the Science family of journals and relate this
profile to that of other journals? Of course, this can be
most directly done by examining editorial statements
and reading papers from the different journals. An alternative approach involves using natural language processing methods to analyze the contents as described in
the accompanying post in Sciencehound (http://blogs.
sciencemag.org/sciencehound/2017/01/05/science-fam-
ily-journal-content-analysis). Briefly, my approach involves taking abstracts from a large body of published
papers, measuring the “distance” between each pair of
papers based on the fraction of words that the abstracts
have in common, weighting words that are rare in the
overall body of papers, and then depicting these relative
distances in a two-dimensional projection.
Assessing abstracts in this manner from 3 years of
Science, as well as most papers from the other Science
family journals published in 2016, results in a three-
pointed figure. Examination of the papers that lie in
each of the three arms reveals that one arm corresponds
primarily to biomedical sciences, one to physics and
physical sciences, and one to Earth sciences and evolu-
tion. That this relatively simple analysis generates an
intuitive structure relating the different disciplines is
perhaps not surprising. However, it is reassuring that
an unbiased analysis of the language that describes
scientific projects captures this essential feature of the
scientific enterprise.
What is the value of such an examination for the Sci-
ence family of journals? More detailed analysis reveals
that these journals cover different portions within each
arm, albeit with some overlap. Papers from Science and
Science Advances cover the
landscape broadly with substantial representation in
all three arms and in the
central core. Those from
Science Signaling, Science
Translational Medicine,
and Science Immunology lie
primarily in the biomedical
arm. As expected, papers
from the inaugural issue of
Science Robotics lie near the
center extending toward the
physical sciences arm. This
raises interesting questions
about the characteristics of
papers that lie close to one
another in the three-arm
landscape and the relative
outliers. Following trends
over time using this kind
of analysis could reveal aspects of the evolution of different disciplines and subdisciplines, and may even influence the launching of new journals or other modes
of scientific communication. Applying analytical tools
such as this natural language processing approach to
journal content has considerable potential for assessing
the structure of the scientific enterprise and the relationships of different disciplines. Gleaning knowledge
from such data sets is an important goal; the challenge
is to find the best questions and tools.
As the new year begins, I anticipate that many exciting manuscripts will be published in the Science family
of journals. For active researchers, we hope that you will
continue to consider our journals for your most exciting
results. For all readers of our journals, I welcome feedback on all fronts.
–Jeremy Berg
A family analysis
Editor-in-Chief,
Science Journals.
jberg@aaas.org
10.1126/science.aam6743
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Science
Science Advances
Science Signaling
Science Translational Medicine
Science Immunology
Science Robotics