Curriculum Vitae

Anthony F.J. van Raan (1945) is Professor of Quantitative Studies of Science at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. Since 1985 he is director of the Leiden Centre for Science and Technology Studies.

He studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Utrecht and graduated in 1969. In 1973 PhD in Utrecht. From 1969 to 1973 lecturer and junior research fellow in Utrecht, from 1973 to 1977 post-doctoral fellow at the University of Bielefeld (Germany), from 1977 senior lecturer and research fellow in Leiden, 1991 Professor. He has been visiting scientist in several universities and research institutes in the US, UK, and France. Previous work in experimental atomic and molecular physics, astrophysics, and in science policy and research management. In 1985 'field switch' from physics to science studies.

He published (as author and co-author) about thirty articles in physics and around hundred in science and technology studies. He is editor of the Handbook of Quantitative Studies of Science and Technology (Elsevier) and of the international journal Research Evaluation. His main research topics include: research performance assessment by advanced bibliometric methods, mapping of science and technology, science as a 'self-organizing' cognitive ecosystem.

In 1995 he received in Chicago, together with the American sociologist Robert K. Merton, the Derek de Solla Price Award, the highest international award in the field of quantitative studies of science.

CRIS for Technology Watch: Monitoring the cognitive ecosystem of our knowledge.

Parallel session A.5

For an optimal socio-economical state of our society it is necessary to monitor those technological developments which are now and, particularly, in the nearby future of vital importance. Such 'key technologies', often with the features of 'innovations', are closely connected with the other human domain of skills and knowledge, science. Usually, activities in the 'interface' between science and technology are characterized as 'R&D'. But undoubtedly the whole scientific process, and certainly knowledge exchange between basic research, applied research, and technology -often via instrumentation- form the driving force of new key technologies. So it is crucial to find out which scientific activities are related to these key technologies, where, and in which direction the developments evolve. And a lot of activity does not necessarily imply a high quality, a high durable impact.

We state that in most cases technological experts (often from industry) contrary to common believe (certainly that of the experts themselves and policy-makers) do have a too limited judge of the scientific processes involved. Science and technology are an extremely complex system of countless existing and possible linkages and interactions.

If only the 'demarcation' of research in terms of a specific field is highly subjective, particularly the 'outer' regions of a field which often provide the interdisciplinary connections.

Technology watch therefore is monitoring and analyzing the entire network of interactions between scientific knowledge and applications. We have developed an objective, expert-independent approach based on self-organizing principles of the encoded knowledge in a very large data-system. This approach links up with the perception of knowledge as a 'cognitive ecosystem'. Expert-independence does not mean that experts are superfluous. But we add a new, powerful instrument. Patterns become visible which are otherwise unobservable.

In this presentation we discuss the basics of the method and concrete, practical examples.

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