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57 Responses to “Help generate the initial list of subtopics for v.2 of ResearchBlogging.org”

1. Anne McLaughlin Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

   I’d like to suggest under Psychology include:
   Human Factors/Ergonomics

2. Muggu Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

   How about Aerospace Engineering under Engineering?
   Aerodynamics, Structures and Propulsion related work can be put under Aerospace Engineering.

3. Steve Higgins Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

   I agree with Anne on that one. I’m also a little unclear under which heading vision would be? The most obvious would be cognitive but it isn’t always cognitive is it? Perhaps Vision & Psychophysics or something like that? or Perception…that would cover other sensory modalities.

4. Coturnix Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   Biology:

   anatomy
   physiology
   reproductive biology (a.k.a. sex)
   endocrinology
   behavioral biology
   paleontology
   botany
   systematics/taxonomy

5. Christian Sinclair Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

   The Health section looks good right now. Hopefully with more research blogging in medicine we could add more categories in the future. It is sad how behind health care is in this new format.

6. Dave Munger Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

   Coturnix: Is there anything you’d suggest cutting from biology? I’m perfectly willing to admit the biology is a huge field — maybe we’re just going to need to have tons of subtopics.

7. Austin Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

   Would think clinical research should include neurology & health perhaps rehabilitation of some kind…

   good work

8. Dexter Edge Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

   Animal Behavior and/or Animal Cognition should certainly be on the list somewhere,either under Biology or Psychology.

   Perhaps also/or Ethology and Comparative Psychology?

   As a refugee from the humanities, I was a little surprised to find Sociology as subfield of Anthropology rather than under the Social Sciences. I suspect sociologists won’t agree with the present placement.

   But this list is a great start.

9. Bryan S Says:
   June 25th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

   Animal Physiology possibly in conjunction with Animal Cognition/Behavior as suggested by Dexter Edge.

10. Andrea Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    For math (and maybe for physics too) it might be a good idea to use the subtopics already in use at http://arxiv.org
    I know that these are a lot of subtopics, but arXiv is the standard repository for math preprints and i can’t see good reasons to deviate from their classification.
    The subtopics for mathematics are:

    Algebraic Geometry;
    Algebraic Topology;
    Analysis of PDEs;
    Category Theory;
    Classical Analysis and ODEs;
    Combinatorics;
    Commutative Algebra;
    Complex Variables;
    Differential Geometry;
    Dynamical Systems;
    Functional Analysis;
    General Mathematics;
    General Topology;
    Geometric Topology;
    Group Theory;
    History and Overview;
    Information Theory;
    K-Theory and Homology;
    Logic;
    Mathematical Physics;
    Metric Geometry;
    Number Theory;
    Numerical Analysis;
    Operator Algebras;
    Optimization and Control;
    Probability;
    Quantum Algebra;
    Representation Theory;
    Rings and Algebras;
    Spectral Theory;
    Statistics;
    Symplectic Geometry

11. Dave Munger Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Andrea:

    One reason to depart from these subtopics is that there just aren’t many blog posts in these areas. You really want the subtopics to encompass many different posts, to give you access to meaningful sets of data. I can see eventually having this many subcategories, but for now it probably makes sense to to have so many in one of our less popular topics.

    As I said above, these are just the starting subtopics. In practice, we can see if users are creating a lot of custom subtopics and then start creating more standardized subtopics to match actual usage.

12. Mike Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    I’d replace “Encryption” under Computer Science with the more general “Cryptography”, or “Cryptography/Security” even.

    Combinatorics should certainly be included under math. “Computer Science” as a subtopic of Math is a little redundant, perhaps.

    I would have expected to find Linguistics under Social Science, but found it under Anthropology instead..

13. Maria Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 7:06 pm

    I’d add Biogeosciences, Geodesy, and Planetary Science to the geosciences. Also, I’m used to seeing “Atmospheric Science”, not “Atmosphere Science”. And I had a bit of WTF about Ag Science – wouldn’t that be better in biology?

    If you’re worried about filling the subtopics, you could probably get away with Geophysics/Seismology – and a combined Atmospheric & Climate Science, though I imagine climate is high-output enough to hold its own.

14. Coturnix Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    The almost entire Anthropology list can/should go under the heading of Social Sciences:

    Archaeology
    Biological Anthropology
    Cultural Anthropology
    Linguistics
    Sociology

    …except perhaps Biological Anthropology should be under Life Sciences (Biology) instead.

15. Alan Kellogg Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    Somebody’s has to mention it.

    Other

    Gathering Evidence

    Assessing Evidence

    Scientific Procedure

    Acknowledging Bias

    Correcting Bias

    Why Supernatural Entities With a Taste for Human Nookie are Non-existent

    Are You A Creationist?

16. Melissa Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    Psychology and Neuroscience listing suggestions:
    1) I would like to recommend a change of some type to the listing of Quantitative Psychology under Psychology. All research in psychology is either qualitative or quantitative. An inclusion of Qualitative Research may allow the division of research but not sure it is necessary; a more concise list would simply have subfields without differentiations as to types of research.
    2) Additional listings:
    Affective Neuroscience
    Sensation & Perception (under Psychology)
    Existential-Phenomenological Psychology

17. Dan Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    Hi Dave,
    How about Kinesiology and/or Biomechanics under Health?
    Thanks!

18. Kurt Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 12:44 am

    Under Math, since having Computer Science as a subtopic is somewhat redundant given that Computer Science is already a major topic, I’d suggest changing the subtopic to the broader label of Discrete Math. That would encompass the computer science-y posts, plus things like combinatorics and graph theory.

    While I’m at it, I might change the wording of a couple of other subtopics: Logic, to Logic and Foundations, to explicitly include set theory and related ideas; and Probability, to Probability and Statistics.

    Under the major heading of Computer Science, I believe that the Algorithms people tend to think of themselves as distinct from the Theory of Computation folks, but I doubt that you’ll get enough posts to justify making that addition. On the other hand, Quantum Computing has been getting a lot of press coverage lately, so it might be worthwhile adding that as a separate subtopic.

19. Matt Heeney Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 1:16 am

    The Philosophy subtopics should probably include ‘Continental Philosophy (phenomenology, existentialism, post-modernism, critical theory)’. It might include ‘History of Philosophy’ as well. But besides that it looks in good order.

20. william v gelazin Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 2:27 am

    Under psychology: Perception, Experimrntal

21. Nele Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 2:38 am

    I agree with Melissa that Sensation and Perception is a good addition for Psychology. I am not sure about a division between quantitative and qualitative, but rather something about experimental methods or how to create measures (scale development, link between behaviour and physiological reactions, etc.).
    Also, although there’s a probability subsection within mathematics, is it a good idea to have “Statistics for social sciences” under “Social Sciences”?

    Eric Schwitzgebel recently wrote a post about experimental philosophy, which sounds very interesting, but I’m not sure how many blogs there are covering this.

22. Rense Nieuwenhuis Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 3:35 am

    #8: “I suspect sociologists won’t agree with the present placement.”

    I think you’re right. As a sociologist myself I’d rather see sociology gathered under ‘Anthropology’.

    I think that a rather more realistic solution would be to gather both sociology and anthropology under social sciences.

23. David Bradley Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 3:44 am

    I don’t see nano in there…

24. Toma Susi Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 5:08 am

    I concur, I’d add “Nanoscience” to Physics or “Nanomaterials” to Engineering. Or both. The amount of stuff published on those is so high I think it warrants an own section.

25. sushi Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 5:25 am

    i think you people skipped electronics its also a major part of physics

26. Eric Robertson Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 5:42 am

    I would also suggest “rehabilitation” be included, and feel it could have a home under both clinical research and health. Another thought under Health section could be “Health Policy”

27. Jeremy Cherfas Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 7:37 am

    I have to mention this. I can find neither agriculture nor food. Nutrition is there, under health. Could we add Agriculture to Biology?

    I’d be happy with that; you don’t even have to subdivide agriculture!

28. Dave Munger Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am

    Jeremy/Maria

    Agriculture got orphaned under what used to be Earth/Environmental Science and is now Geosciences. You’re right; it should probably be under Biology.

    Everyone:

    Your suggestions are excellent, keep ‘em coming!

29. Derek James Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    I’m a little bummed that there isn’t a major topic category for Cognitive Science, with subtopics that include the major contributing disciplines such as:

    Cognitive Neuroscience
    Cognitive Psychology
    Artificial Intelligence
    Cognitive Linguistics

    Instead it looks like cognitive research will be spread out among the other major topics.

    This leads me to a question about how topics even work. Currently, when a user registers, are you associated with a particular topic? How do you change the topic of a given post, if you want to blog about another topic? So far all my posts are listed under “Computer Science”, but here is my list of posts for Research Blogging:

    *Is Nothing Something? XOR, Negative Patterning, Rats, and Neural Networks

    *Neuroevolution: Building and/or Training Artificial Neural Networks with the Power of Evolution

    *Computers Know What You’re Thinking: An fMRI Study of Common Neural Activation

    *Chimps Hunt With Spears

    *The Cortical Column: A Structure Without a Function

    *A Whale of a Brain: Comparing Whale and Human Neuroanatomy

    *Are Humans “Socially Smarter” Than Other Apes?

    *Lying Robots…Big Deal

    *Deceptive Chimpanzees…Big Deal

    Can we currently tag a particular post as another topic, and am I just overlooking this functionality? If not, will we be able to when the topics and subtopics are updated?

30. Steven Edwards Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    Neural Repair, under Neuroscience of course.

31. Judith Liebman Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Engineering subsets should include industrial engineering and environmental engineering

32. Dave Munger Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    How do you change the topic of a given post, if you want to blog about another topic?

    In the new system, when you generate a citation, your topic and subtopic will default to those that you set up with your blog. But you can specify other topics and subtopics, and they will be associated with that post alone.

    So for example if you blog primarily about cognitive psychology, you could specify Psychology as your major topic and Cognitive Psychology as your subtopic. But if you then blogged about a linguistics paper that took an anthropological perspective, you could change the major topic to Anthropology and the minor topic to Linguistics. It would affect only that post.

33. Grace Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    Nanoscience should be listed under chemistry, engineering and physics

34. Arthur Hunt Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

    Under Biology, I have two suggestions (off the top of my head): Plant Biology, and Biotechnology.

35. Jennie Bolton Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    Under chemistry or perhaps biology, there should be a subtopic for toxicology – it isn’t just medical people doing toxicology, there is a lot of toxicology going on re wildlife and environmental science.

36. ZC Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    One area missing from the psychology list is parapsychology. Don’t laugh, it is a legitimate, albeit small, sub-specialization. Despite the specialization’s size, it differs enough from the other psychology specializations to really need it’s own category.

37. Dave Munger Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    Jennie,

    You can put any subtopic under any topic; these are just suggested configurations.

    Arthur: What’s the difference between Plant Biology and Botany?

    ZC: No. Just no.

38. FhnuZoag Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 8:20 pm

    Well, you’ll definitely need a separate subtopic (under Mathematics, possibly duplicated under Computer science) for statistics – it’s very distinct from probability.

39. Christina Pikas Says:
    June 26th, 2008 at 9:45 pm

    Can we change library science to library & information science? That covers a lot more ground. Also I agree that sociology does not belong under anthropology. Normally I’d have lingustics and anthropology both under humanities and sociology under social sciences. Oh and add communication under humanities, too, I think.

40. Matt Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 3:16 am

    Sociologist here. I would definitely move all the Anthropology categories under the Social Science heading, including Anthro and Linguistics, which I think are both a lot more positivistic than they once were (I could be wrong. Frankly, I think that the social sciences categories are insanely limited next to the others. I mean, if the point of this is to be useful in helping people identify interesting posts, then each of the social sciences needs to be broken out into about as many categories as Psychology has. Sociology is a huge field, and I don’t give a damn about at least 90% of it. Same goes for economics, geography, history, and law. Just shoot me an email and I can provide you with some suggestions for sociology subtopics, as well as pointers to people who would be able to give you good subtopics for econ, law, etc.

    Furthermore, I think that the best structure for this is probably more along the lines of tagging, rather than topic->subtopic. For example, then Derek James can slap a “Cognitive” tag on anything he wants, Jennie can tag her posts as toxicology + environmental science, and I can tag my posts about stealing from computer science to make sociology better with both labels.

41. Levi Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    Evolutionary Psychology under Psychology?

42. Judith Liebman Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Why not stick with the same categorizations that libraries use?

43. Moreen Carvan Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Two suggestions:

    A major heading under interdisciplinary research, to include areas such as genomics, bioinformatics, and biogeochemistry

    A subheading under both Psychology and Sociology for human learning (as differentiated from education)

44. Arthur Hunt Says:
    June 27th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Hi Dave,

    Hmmm…., “botany” vs. “plant biology”. I guess that there is no formal difference, but I think the latter may better encompass plant physiology, crop science, and other more plant-related agricultural fields (that would not fall under the Geosciences heading).

45. Robert Says:
    June 28th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    You might want to add Aerospace Engineering and Industrial (Systems) Engineering under the Engineering category.

46. Greg Laden Says:
    June 29th, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Sociology is NOT a subfield of anthropology under any nomenclature that has ever, ever, been proposed or considered. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology,which are different, are. Most nomenclatures would use “sociocultural anthropoloyg” as the sub topic.

    Putting sociology under anthropology is like putting osteopathy under chiropractry.

47. Greg Laden Says:
    June 29th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    One could say that all of biology is evolutionary biology, and maybe evolutionary biology subcategory should be cahnged to “evolutionary theory”

    Or, evolutionary theory should at least be added as a subtopic.

    Even thought I think Evolutionary Psychology is usually dumb, there is a lot written in the area and IT NEEDS TO BE BLOGGED! … so, I stronly recommend adding an Evolutionary Psychology category (under either anthro or psychology?)

    I think that’s all from me. You’all are doing great work here.

48. Ted Kaminski Says:
    June 29th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    Computer Science:
    Algorithms
    Artificial Intelligence
    Databases
    Graphics
    Human-Computer Interaction
    Languages and Compilers
    Networks
    Operating Systems
    Parallel and Distributed Computing
    Robotics
    Software Engineering
    Theory

    Do Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics need to be listed twice? They’re already under their own respective fields. It seems odd to split them.

    I’m skeptical that Encryption needs its own category. It seems easily folded into Theory. And generalizing it to Computer Security seems the wrong way to go. As far as research goes, most of that stuff would end up in Software Engineering or Languages/Compilers.

    I’m not certain of the purpose of Modeling. My first thought is Model Checking, which would be a part of Software Engineering or Languages and Compilers.

    I added several fields that were simply absent entirely, and definitely need to be there. If you think there are too many categories, Networks can be fit into Operating Systems, Algorithms can be fit into Theory, and Databases can probably be pushed into Theory as well. I think it’d probably be best to keep the longer list of subcategories for now, and if they turn out to have only one post after a long time, relabel them and forget the subcategory existed.

    I also agree that the Mathematics category needs help. I’m not particularity qualified to say whether this is a good list, but I think this might be a reasonable start:

    Algebra
    Applied Mathematics
    Calculus and Analysis
    Discrete Mathematics
    Foundations of Mathematics
    Geometry
    Number Theory
    Probability and Statistics
    Topology

49. Renee Botham Says:
    July 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 am

    I’m doing work around Eating Disorders and in particular Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia so would enjoy input from everyone on this too.

50. Syed Moin Doja Says:
    July 8th, 2008 at 12:22 am

    how about SETI – Search for ETI s under astronomy list looks good though for astronomy . Thanks

51. Daniel Lende Says:
    July 8th, 2008 at 5:40 am

    For anthropology, I’d suggest including the following:
    Applied Anthropology (the so-called fifth field)
    Medical Anthropology (rapidly growing area, a place where a lot of integrative work is done btwn fields)

    For Linguistics, most anthropologists would want to call it Linguistic Anthropology to distinguish the field from straight-up Linguistics

    I’m not quite sure why “Sociology” is there, when it is its own field.

    Sociocultural anthropology is probably better than Cultural anthropology, but somehow Cultural anthro strikes me as more succinct

    As for the debate about putting anthro under social sciences, wouldn’t the same logic apply to psychology as well? Or that history, etc., could have their own set of sub-headings?

52. Jennifer Says:
    July 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    I’d recommend a couple of different subjects to add;
    health – medical terminology and abbreviations
    psychology – cultural differences and another being studies and results. I also agree with adding papapsycholgy
    philosophy or health – medical ethics
    under mathmatics or neuroscience – pharmacology including medication conversions and drug information (legal and illegal drugs)
    and adding forensics in there somewhere since it could fall in a few different categories.
    biology – senoscence (life cycles, not just human)

53. John Postill Says:
    July 22nd, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    In my view, sociocultural anthropology is more appropriate as it is far more international as a notion than cultural anthropology which has a strong US ring to it. By contrast, social anthropology is the preferred term in most UK and Commonwealth institutions. So sociocultural anthropology is a good compromise as it is not associated with any specific territory.

54. Russell Says:
    August 9th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    Consider “Human Factors” under Psychology

55. Amiya Sarkar Says:
    August 21st, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    Electronics and telecommunications under computer sc, Radio astronomy under astronomy,nanotechnology under engineering, medical imaging or medical physics under either engineering or physics.

    These subtopics also demand attention.

56. Dave Munger Says:
    August 22nd, 2008 at 6:05 am

    Thanks for all the comments everyone. We’ve now set the subtopics, so we don’t need any more suggestions. We’ll definitely revisit the subtopics from time to time, so you’ll have a chance to offer additional suggestions at that time.

    I’m sure things will change a lot once people actually start using the subtopics!

57. Fadaie, gh Says:
    January 12th, 2010 at 6:50 am

    nothing about library and information science.
    Research methodology
    religion
    Western and Eastern or Islamic philosoph

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