Huimin Xu

She studies the dynamics of scientific collaboration, asking how patterns of hierarchical structure, leadership, and diversity influence knowledge production

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Projects

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Team power dynamics and team impact

Power dynamics influence every aspect of scientific collaboration. Team power dynamics can be measured by team power level and team power hierarchy. Team power level is conceptualized as the average level of the possession of resources, expertise, or decision-making authorities of a team. Team power hierarchy represents the vertical differences of the possessions of resources in a team. In Science of Science, few studies have looked at scientific collaboration from the perspective of team power dynamics. By analyzing over 7.7 million teams from Science (e.g., Computer Science, Physics), Social Sciences (e.g., Sociology, Library & Information Science), and Arts & Humanities (e.g., Art), we find that flat team structure is associated with higher team impact, especially when teams have high team power level. 

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Heterogeneous Shared Leadership in Science

Leadership is evolving dynamically from an individual endeavor to shared efforts. This paper aims to advance our understanding of shared leadership in scientific teams. We define three kinds of leaders, junior (10-15), mid (15-20), and senior (20+) based on career age. By considering the combinations of any two leaders, we distinguish shared leadership as heterogeneous when leaders are in different age cohorts and homogeneous when leaders are in the same age cohort. Drawing on 1,845,351 CS, 254,039 Sociology, and 193,338 Business teams with two leaders in the OpenAlex dataset, we identify that heterogeneous shared leadership brings higher citation impact for teams than homogeneous shared leadership. Compared with homogeneous leaders, heterogeneous leaders are more adaptive in large teams, have more diverse expertise, and trace both the newest and oldest references.

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The Cinderella Complex

Using the word embedding techniques, we reveal the constructed emotional dependency of female characters on male characters in stories. We call this narrative structure “Cinderella complex,” which assumes that women depend on men in the pursuit of a happy, fulfilling life. Our analysis covers a substantial portion of narratives that shape the modern collective memory, including 7,226 books, 6,087 movie synopses, and 1,109 movie scripts. The “Cinderella complex” is observed to exist widely across periods and contexts, reminding how gender stereotypes are deeply rooted in our society.

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The Geometry of Information Cocoon

Accompanied by the rapid development of digital media, the threat of information cocoon has become a significant issue in our society. The purpose of this study is threefold: first, to provide a geometric framework of information cocoon; second, to examine the existence of information cocoon in the daily use of digital media; and third, to invistigae the relation between information cocoon and social class. We construct the cultural space with word embedding models among three large-scale datasets of digital media use. Our analysis reveal that information cocoons widely exist in the daily use of digital media across mobile apps, mobile reading and computer use. Moreover, people of lower social class have a higher probability of being stuck in the information cocoon filled with the content of entertainment. The disadvantages in accessing and using digital media prevent the vulnerable groups from acquiring knowledge better, which may further widen social inequality

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Latest Conference

2023.10

Using Explainable AI to Understand Team Formation and Team Impact

86th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (asis&t), London, UK  

2023.10

Mapping the Impact of Research Software in Science 

CZI Open Science Impact Mapping Workshop, California, USA

2023.07

The Impact of Heterogeneous Shared Leadership in Scientific Teams

International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI) Team Science and Innovation workshop, Bloomington, USA 

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Contracts

University of Texas at Austin
School of Information

1616 Guadalupe St, Suite #5.554, Austin, TX 78701

huiminxu@utexas.edu

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