Mapping the Knowledge Artifact Terrain - A Quantitative Resource for Qualitative Research

Federico Cabitza, Angela Locoro

2015

Abstract

In this paper, we present a method by which to build a metaphorical map of a portion of the scholarly literature along conceptual dimensions that have been previously characterized in terms of positive, negative and neutral terms. The method allows to “locate” scholarly works in this space, according to multiple criteria, like the definitions that they contain; the relevant concepts that can be extracted by means of a content analysis; and relevant passages that researchers can extract in studying their content. The resulting maps are not representational, nor trying to extract any objective essence of a scientific contribution. Rather, they are resources for the qualitative research, review and interpretation of literature sources. As such, these maps are “knowledge artifacts” in themselves, as they visualize, so to say, the interpretation of a set of works by qualitative researchers, and allow to build a visual comprehension of topological and qualitative relationships between the considered literature contributions. We applied the method to the case of the “knowledge artifact” literature and report the main results in this paper.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Cabitza F. and Locoro A. (2015). Mapping the Knowledge Artifact Terrain - A Quantitative Resource for Qualitative Research . In Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 3: KITA, (IC3K 2015) ISBN 978-989-758-158-8, pages 444-451. DOI: 10.5220/0005662704440451

in Bibtex Style

@conference{kita15,
author={Federico Cabitza and Angela Locoro},
title={Mapping the Knowledge Artifact Terrain - A Quantitative Resource for Qualitative Research},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 3: KITA, (IC3K 2015)},
year={2015},
pages={444-451},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005662704440451},
isbn={978-989-758-158-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 3: KITA, (IC3K 2015)
TI - Mapping the Knowledge Artifact Terrain - A Quantitative Resource for Qualitative Research
SN - 978-989-758-158-8
AU - Cabitza F.
AU - Locoro A.
PY - 2015
SP - 444
EP - 451
DO - 10.5220/0005662704440451