A model for cooperative scientific research inspired by the ant colony algorithm
- Creators
- He, Zhuoran
- Zhou, Tingtao
Abstract
Modern scientific research has become largely a cooperative activity in the Internet age. We build a simulation model to understand the population-level creativity based on the heuristic ant colony algorithm. Each researcher has two heuristic parameters characterizing the goodness of his own judgments and his trust on literature. We study how the distributions of contributor heuristic parameters change with the research problem scale, stage of the research problem, and computing power available. We also identify situations where path dependence and hasty research due to the pressure on productivity can significantly impede the long-term advancement of scientific research. Our work provides some preliminary understanding and guidance for the dynamical process of cooperative scientific research in various disciplines.
Additional Information
© 2022 He, Zhou. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received: August 23, 2021; Accepted: January 9, 2022; Published: January 27, 2022. We thank the helpful discussions with colleagues in Department of physics at Caltech. T. Z. acknowledges support by the Cecil and Sally Drinkward Fellowship. The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and figures. Author Contributions: Conceptualization: Zhuoran He. Software: Zhuoran He. Validation: Tingtao Zhou. Writing – original draft: Zhuoran He. Writing – review & editing: Tingtao Zhou. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Attached Files
Published - journal.pone.0262933.pdf
Submitted - 2105.02571.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC8794102
- Eprint ID
- 113202
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220201-154881000
- Cecil and Sally Drinkward Fellowship
- Created
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2022-02-01Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-02-01Created from EPrint's last_modified field