daniel’s theories
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ClearWritingDavidWorlock.com15 May 2026Password required
From the Information Annullus to the Impact of AI: an interview with Dr Daniel Hook, CEO, Digital Science.
In this interview, Dr Daniel Hook discusses the growing influence of AI, the challenges of information overload, and the future of digital research and innovation. Watch the interview: www.patreon.com/davidworlock/
PaperarXiv.org21 April 2026
Market Dynamics, Governance and Open Research Metadata in the AI Era
The debate about scholarly knowledge infrastructure has long been framed as a contest between openness and commercial enclosure. This framing distorts both policy and practice. The real tension lies between the persistent cost of producing and refining structured metadata under deep technological friction, and the differentiated demands distinct communities place on data quality, focus and granularity. We introduce the innovation annulus: the zone between freely available structured data and the advancing frontier of commercially refined knowledge products. This zone is a permanent, functio…
TalkDeSci Foundation8 May 2023
Scholarly Communication at the Dawn of Exponential Revolution
It is clear that we are entering a new phase of technological growth: Not an industrial revolution of the type that we have seen before but an exponential revolution awaits with all the challenges and wonders that entails. An abundance of data coupled with sophisticated tools for both capturing and analysing data has transformed research over the last half century. And yet, scholarly communication is still reliant on 17th Century technology. In this seminar we examine why this is the case and what the future of scholarly communication could look like.
Articledirect.mit.edu26 December 2022
Recategorising research: Mapping from FoR 2008 to FoR 2020 in Dimensions
In 2020 the Australia New Zealand Standard Research Classification Fields of Research Codes (ANZSRC FoR codes) were updated by their owners. This has led the sector to need to update their systems of reference and has caused suppliers working in the research information sphere to need to update both systems and data. This paper focuses on the approach developed by Digital Science’s Dimensions team to the creation of an improved machine-learning training set, and the mapping of that set from FoR 2008 codes to FoR 2020 codes so that the Dimensions classification approach for the ANZSRC codes could be improved and updated.
PaperFrontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics1 June 2022
Editorial: Trust and Infrastructure in Scholarly Communications
When Dickens wrote: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” in A Tale of Two Cities, he was describing the effects of two separate but linked revolutions—one in the UK where industrialization and technology had changed the social fabric as cities garnered population at the expense of their rural surroundings; and the other in France, were bloody revolution had overthrown the ancien régime, only to replace it with a new reign of terror. Today, we stand at the beginning of the first exponential industrial revolution.
PaperFrontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics12 January 2021
Real-Time Bibliometrics: Dimensions as a Resource for Analyzing Aspects of COVID-19
Dimensions was built as a platform to allow stakeholders in the research community, including academic bibliometricians, to more easily create and understand...
ArticleResearch Outreach15 December 2020
Digital Science: A more collaborative approach to research
Daniel Hook, CEO of Digital Science, looks to improve old research practices with new tools and technologies.
ArticleLSE Impact - Understanding impact and practice in academic research17 January 2020
Not yet the default setting – in 2020 open research remains a work in progress.
Responding to Daniel Hook’s post, The Open Tide - How openness in research and communication is becoming the default setting, Daniel Spichtinger argues that there remains much work to be done in order for open research practices to become the “new normal”. Highlighting unresolved issues around learned societies and the globalisation of open research policies,
Articledirect.mit.edu5 December 2019
Dimensions: Bringing down barriers between scientometricians and data
Until recently, comprehensive scientometrics data has been made available only in siloed, subscription-based tools that are inaccessible to researchers who lack institutional support and resources. As a result of limited data access, research evaluation practices have focused upon basic indicators that only take publications and their citation rates into account. This has blocked innovation on many fronts.
ArticleIQOQI Vienna3 September 2019
Rethinking Academia 1: Daniel Hook - Deconstructing research: a future for scholarly communication
The research paper has been around for more than 350 years and has become embedded in scholarly research as the centre of scholarly communication. However, as the fundamental relationships that define research are changing, the core of scholarly communications is under increasing pressure to change. This talk defines and discusses these fundamental relationships, the pressures that they are experiencing and examine how that could change scholarly communication.
ArticleLSE Impact - Understanding impact and practice in academic research11 March 2019
The Open Tide – How openness in research and communication is becoming the default setting
Open Access to research findings is often presented as an end unto itself. However, the ethos of open access, to enable a greater sharing and utilisation of research knowledge, suggests a more complex network of scholarly communication. Presenting the findings of a recent report on the development of Open Access, Daniel Hook explores how the
PaperDigital Science24 January 2019
The Ascent of Open Access
This report is an analysis of the Open Access landscape since the turn of the millennium. It compares the leading countries for research outputs with those producing the most Open Access papers over a 16-year period, as well as Open Access collaboration trends.
PaperDigital Science8 May 2017
Digital Research Report: The Landscape of Climate Research Funding
The USA government proposes policy and funding changes around environmental protection and climate research. As is often the case, it will be difficult to assess the impact until years after the policy has been enacted. However, funding data provide us with a more proximate bellwether than the traditional research analytics. In this report, we profile the balance of ‘climate research’ investment and note its impact on a diverse research portfolio that runs from ecology and atmospherics to economics and public health. We explore the use of funding data as an analytical source, track the growth of ‘climate change’ as a topic and differentiate this from ‘global warming’. We also disaggregate funding across fields of research and demonstrate a research shift from global climate to biological impact and adaptation and, now, towards response and mitigation. The data highlight the ratio between a relatively small pool of research funds and its support of a much greater infrastructure for monitoring, regulation and response. The USA is identified as the largest single source of research grants, although European funds are growing rapidly. The USA provides key support and data worldwide, and may have been agile in shifting from background research into adaptation and mitigation. USA policy change could undermine many other efforts. The global research effort is shared because the climate is shared; so should be the responsibility to sustain these commitments.
PaperDigital Science14 March 2017
The Connected Culture of Collaboration Report
Overleaf, a collaborative writing and publishing platform that makes the process of writing, editing and publishing academic papers quicker and easier, has released this report which takes an in-depth look at active collaborative research patterns. Rather than examining post-published collaboration patterns, “The Connected Culture of Collaboration” explores new, real-time information on collaboration to provide insights on collaboration patterns on national, state and institution-level scales. The report features a number of thought leadership contributions and includes a foreword from Laurel Haak, Executive Director, ORCID. The report focuses on the varying aspects of collaboration: how collaboration is valued in science, the role of university libraries in research communication, and how the growth of open access facilitates collaboration.
ArticleDigital Science25 October 2016
The State of Open Data Report
* ordered by publication date, which is not the same as when any of it was written.