arXiv subjects

Alexander Krauss

Publications and source records attributed to Alexander Krauss.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Rising Dominance of Methods Across Science

Scientific progress is traditionally narrated through the interplay of theoretical insights and experimental findings. Yet this view of science underplays a third and central pillar of progress: the methods that underlie both conceptual advances and empirical evidence. By analysing more than 3 million articles across science published between 1980 and 2019, we find that science has undergone a fundamental structural transition. The share of papers that primarily contribute new methods-methods papers-has doubled across science over the past four decades, rising universally across disciplines and citation impact levels. Rather than a gradual evolution, this transition marks a pivotal shift beginning in the early 1990s, aligning with the computational revolution and the emergence of data-intensive science. The surge in methodological research is not confined to the most cited, elite publications; it spans the full spectrum of scientific output. These findings reveal a systemic reorientation of the scientific ecosystem where reusable methods increasingly serve as the essential infrastructure of scientific advances, challenging the traditional dichotomy of theory and experimental research. As science becomes increasingly methods-driven, our results call for rethinking how research is evaluated, funded and organised-towards better incentivising method innovations. This is especially the case as expanding AI must be effectively integrated with scientific instruments to realise its full potential.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2022

Differences in collaboration structures and impact among prominent researchers in Europe and North America

Scientists collaborate through intricate networks, which impact the quality and scope of their research. At the same time, funding and institutional arrangements, as well as scientific and political cultures, affect the structure of collaboration networks. Since such arrangements and cultures differ across regions in the world in systematic ways, we surmise that collaboration networks and impact should also differ systematically across regions. To test this, we compare the structure of collaboration networks among prominent researchers in North America and Europe. We find that prominent researchers in Europe establish denser collaboration networks, whereas those in North-America establish more decentralized networks. We also find that the impact of the publications of prominent researchers in North America is significantly higher than for those in Europe, both when they collaborate with other prominent researchers and when they do not. Although Europeans collaborate with other prominent researchers more often, which increases their impact, we also find that repeated collaboration among prominent researchers decreases the synergistic effect of collaborating.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2022

FindFacts: A Scalable Theorem Search

The Isabelle Archive of Formal Proofs (AFP) has grown to over 500 articles in late 2019. Meanwhile, finding formalizations in it has not exactly become easier. At the time of writing, the site-specific AFP google search and the Isabelle find_theories resp. find_consts commands (that only work on imported theories) are still the only tools readily available to find formalizations in Isabelle. We present FindFacts, a novel domain-specific search tool for formal Isabelle theory content. Instead of utilizing term unification, we solve the problem with a classical drill-down search engine. We put special emphasis on scalability of the search system, so that the whole AFP can be searched interactively.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2010

Recursive Definitions of Monadic Functions

Using standard domain-theoretic fixed-points, we present an approach for defining recursive functions that are formulated in monadic style. The method works both in the simple option monad and the state-exception monad of Isabelle/HOL's imperative programming extension, which results in a convenient definition principle for imperative programs, which were previously hard to define. For such monadic functions, the recursion equation can always be derived without preconditions, even if the function is partial. The construction is easy to automate, and convenient induction principles can be derived automatically.

cs.LO↗