对某国外基金会一份申请书的意见（2012）

武夷山

Mapping the genealogy of science is a challenging and meaningful work. The proposing team has sufficient expertise to complete the project.

However, since it will not be the first of genealogy maps, a larger data source does not necessarily guarantee the quality of the proposed project. I like to make two recommendations to the applicants:

1.     Evolution of the working language used by scientists is a significant part of science evolution. If they also request the data on the language of the journals concerned, they could visualize the linguistic evolution of academic journals from a picture where, say, German played a greater role to a modern picture where English is a dominant power. This is something no one has done so far.

2.     Genealogy of science seems to be better reflected by “science giants” than by journals. Therefore they could consider to map the genealogy of Nobel laureates through the papers they co-authored with their tutors or students, and their citations to the works of their tutors or students.

With these two additions, I believe the project would present a fresh and amazing look to the scientific community.