25/04/2023

Complexity scientists and those interested in complex systems research, please do better literature reviews

Perhaps it is anecdotal on my part. But it seems to happen far too often lately. I am reading an article or book on the application of the complexity sciences to some topic only to have to endure the authors failing to cite some landmark publication or even just failing to cite the literature their peers have published on the same topic!

Worse is when authors confine their citations to scholars in their own country or their own small collegial network. Reading the literature, one would sometimes think that the complexity sciences were independently developed in various countries throughout the world, because far too often scholars ignore those outside their small collegial networks, even when doing the exact same research!

I know the complexity sciences constitute a massive field of study. I know, even when developing our map of the complexity sciences, that studies can be missed. And I know we cannot cite everyone. 

But come on! . . . 

Complexity scientists and those interested in complex systems research, please do better literature reviews. It is misleading and lacking scientific rigour.



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