Skip to main content

Personometrics: Mapping and Visualizing Communication Patterns in R&D Projects

  • Conference paper
Context: Nature, Impact, and Role (CoLIS 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 3507))

  • 774 Accesses

Abstract

People such as R&D engineers rely on communication with their colleagues to acquire information, get trusted opinion, and as impetus for creative discourse. This study investigates the prospects of using bibliometric citation techniques for mapping and visualizing data about the oral communication patterns of a group of R&D engineers. Representatives of the R&D engineers find the resulting maps – we term them personometric maps – rich in information about who knows what and potentially useful as tools for finding people with specific competences. Maps of old projects are seen as particularly useful because old projects are important entry points in searches for information and the maps retain information indicative of people’s competences, information that is otherwise not readily available. Face-to-face communications and communications via phone, email, and other systems are more ephemeral than scholarly citations, and (semi-)automated means of data collection are critical to practical application of personometric analyses.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Ackerman, M.S.: Augmenting organizational memory: A field study of Answer Garden. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 16(3), 203–224 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Allen, T.J.: Managing the flow of technology: Technology transfer and the dissemination of technological information within the R&D organization. MIT Press, Cambridge (1977)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Börner, K., Chen, C., Boyack, K.W.: Visualizing knowledge domains. In: Cronin, B. (ed.) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, vol. 37, pp. 179–255. Information Today, Medford (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Cronin, B.: The citation process: The role and significance of citations in scientific communication. Taylor Graham, London (1984)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Dunlop, M.D.: Development and evaluation of clustering techniques for finding people. In: Reimer, U. (ed.) Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management. CEUR, Technical University of Aachen, Aachen, pp. 9-1 – 9-7 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Fisher, D., Dourish, P.: Social and temporal structures in everyday collaboration. In: Proceedings of the CHI 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 551–558. ACM Press, New York (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Foner, L.N.: Political artifacts and personal privacy: The Yenta multi-agent distributed matchmaking system. MIT, Cambridge (1999) PhD Thesis, Available from http://foner.www.media.mit.edu/people/foner/PhD-Thesis/Dissertation (consulted January 3, 2005)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Grosser, K.: Human networks in organizational information processing. In: Williams, M.E. (ed.) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, vol. 26, pp. 349–402. Knowledge Industry Publications, White Plains (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hertzum, M.: Six roles of documents in professionals’ work. In: Bødker, S., Kyng, M., Schmidt, K. (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 41–60. Kluwer, Dordrecht (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Hertzum, M.: People as carriers of experience and sources of commitment: Information seeking in a software design project. New Review of Information Behaviour Research 1, 135–149 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Hertzum, M., Pejtersen, A.M.: The information-seeking practices of engineers: Searching for documents as well as for people. Information Processing & Management 36(5), 761–778 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Ingwersen, P.: Cognitive perspectives of information retrieval interaction: Elements of a cognitive IR theory. Journal of Documentation 52(1), 3–50 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Kautz, H., Selman, B., Shah, M.: Referral web: Combining social networks and collaborative filtering. Communications of the ACM 40(3), 63–65 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. King, D.W., Casto, J., Jones, H.: Communication by engineers: A literature review of engineers’ information needs, seeking processes, and use. Council on Library Resources, Washington (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kruskal, J.B., Wish, M.: Multidimensional scaling. Sage, Newbury Park (1978)

    Google Scholar 

  16. MacRoberts, M.H., MacRoberts, B.R.: Problems of citation analysis: A critical review. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 40(5), 342–349 (1989)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Mockus, A., Herbsleb, J.D.: Expertise browser: A quantitative approach to identifying expertise. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 503–512. ACM Press, New York (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Mueller-Prothmann, T., Finke, I.: SELaKT – Social network analysis as a method for expert localisation and sustainable knowledge transfer. Journal of Universal Computer Science 10(6), 691–701 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Noyons, E.: Bibliometric mapping of science in a science policy context. Scientometrics 50(1), 83–98 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Pinelli, T.E., Bishop, A.P., Barclay, R.O., Kennedy, J.M.: The information-seeking behavior of engineers. In: Kent, A., Hall, C.M. (eds.) Encyclopedia of library and information science, vol. 52, pp. 167–201. Marcel Dekker, New York (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Scott, J.: Social network analysis: A handbook. Sage, London (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Small, H.: Co-citation in scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between publications. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 24(4), 265–269 (1973)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. van Raan, A.F.J.: In matters of quantitative studies of science the fault of theorists is offering too little and asking too much. Scientometrics 43(1), 129–139 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. White, H.D., McCain, K.W.: Visualizing a discipline: An author co-citation analysis of information science, 1972-1995. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49(4), 327–355 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Zipperer, L.: The creative professional and knowledge. Special Libraries 84(2), 69–78 (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Zucker, L.G., Darby, M.R., Brewer, M.B., Peng, Y.: Collaboration structure and information dilemmas in biotechnology: Organizational boundaries as trust production. In: Kramer, R.M., Tyler, T.R. (eds.) Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research, pp. 90–113. Sage, Thousand Oaks (1996)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Skovvang, M., Elbæk, M.K., Hertzum, M. (2005). Personometrics: Mapping and Visualizing Communication Patterns in R&D Projects. In: Crestani, F., Ruthven, I. (eds) Context: Nature, Impact, and Role. CoLIS 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3507. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11495222_12

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11495222_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26178-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32101-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics