The Digital Road to Scientific Knowledge Diffusion: A Faster, Better Way to Scientific Progress?
The process by which science knowledge is spread is called diffusion. It is therefore important to better understand and measure the benefits of this diffusion of knowledge. In particular, it is important to understand whether advances in Internet searching – such as simultaneous, ranked searching of distributed digital collections made broadly available via the Internet – can speed up the diffusion of scientific knowledge and accelerate scientific progress.
