Classifications of scholarship

This page lists the Classifications of scholarship; the classifications, thesauri or maps developed to categorise scholarly research.

Contents

• Classifications covering the whole of scholarly endeavour
• Classifications covering broad fields
• Classifications covering entire disciplines
• Classifications covering specific sub disciplines
• References

Classifications have been created by many organisations to classify scholarly research. The kinds of activity covered by these classifications include the research itself, the outputs of the research (such as articles in learned journals) and funding for the research.

The classifications operate at different levels of granularity. Some cover the whole of scholarly endeavour; some cover broad fields, such as medicine; some cover entire disciplines, such as physics; some cover a specific sub-discipline, such as high-energy physics. In total there are probably hundreds or thousands of different classifications.

The classifications have found new applications in the digital era as the basis for many commercial text-mining algorithms [1]

The classifications are the subject of ongoing inquiry and development among academics (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039464) and agencies studying the system of science. These agencies include the OECD (Frascati below), National Research Council in the US (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12772 page 67 of the PDF). A recent conference on the topic was held http://cns.iu.edu/workshops/event/131104.html