Topic recipe-based social simulation for research dynamics analysis

In this paper, we introduce an agent-based modeling and simulation model for research dynamics analysis. Since researchers constitute research systems in research dynamics, modelling the behavior of a researcher is a key to this method. A researcher makes topic recipes for research products projecting his/her interest and fulfilling financial needs under his/her capability and topical trends. A topic recipe means a combination of topics in a research field. A topic can be related to a methodology or domain knowledge. However, the researcher chooses the favorable topic recipe among the recipes for each. We analyzed the forecasting power of our model. We also examined research dynamics, in terms of foresight, with respect to the social network structure of researchers. In result, we confirmed many topical trends generated by our model had similar pattern to the real topical trends. However, there still are future works to improve the forecasting power.