|
© Peter Maaswinkel, 2001; last modified: 31 July 2009 |
|
|
|
|
|
Presentation
|
|
SEMAC® - A short presentation
Dr. A. Peter MAASWINKEL |
|
Page 2
|
|
Do title words reflect the contents, the trends and the oppositions within a domain, e.g. the school subject drawing, nowadays called art education? In order to answer this question the results brought forth by research in information science have to be compared with other knowledge about the said subject. As a basic material for this purpose its bibliography has been compiled. A preliminary examination conducted for practical reasons by means of a limited number of periodical papers shows that there exist something like paradigms in the field of education and that title words could express them. In order to surmount some weaknesses shown by current methods like factor analysis and cluster analysis when applied to informetric data a new informetrics method has been developed. This method, called SEMAC®, offers an alternative to innovation centred scientometrics and technometrics. Its basis is the concept of semantic activity that is claimed to proceed as well from single words as from word co-occurrences. For that reason words and co-occurrences are treated the same way. This equalization rests upon graph theory. In order to avoid distortion SEMAC® works without a threshold and without statistics. On the one hand this allows the method to be applied to very small databases. On the other hand it will not any longer be required to neglect a part of the dates. By the aid of a simple spreadsheet program the data are arranged in a way they prepare the making of a diagram that is called a semactigram. An additional program, named THEMAC, helps to draw forth the topics. THEMAC calculates the thematic activity; thematic activity is the semantic activity that takes place in the formation of a topic. THEMAC makes the drawing of semactigrams superfluous. The new method has been validated by comparing all results with historical facts.
|
|
|
|
|