Six degrees of Kevin Bacon is a fun diversion that tests one's trivia knowledge. It is also eminently suitable for electronic databases (link).
I propose that a similar engine be made for scholarly publications. One could learn who has published with whom and construct academic pedigrees and lineages. It would also be useful for determining references to check on a person applying for a position or for funding. One might even use such an engine for "philosophy of science" type enterprises, which is sort of related to scientific pedigree.-- bungston, Dec 18 2009 Automatic 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon http://oracleofbacon.org/help.php [bungston, Dec 18 2009] CiteSeer http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/Here's a start... [Jinbish, Dec 18 2009] Selective attraction of monocytes and T lymphocytes of the memory phenotype by cytokine RANTES http://www.nature.c...4/abs/347669a0.htmlThis isn't Footloose! [Jinbish, Dec 18 2009] Mathematics Genealogy Project http://www.genealogy.ams.org/A start... [csea, Dec 18 2009] For the biomed research fields http://www.biomedexperts.com [swimswim, Dec 18 2009] co-authorship network http://www.visualco.../project.cfm?id=129 [swimswim, Dec 18 2009] Erdös number http://en.wikipedia...i/Erdős_number [hippo, Dec 19 2009] ENP: The Erdös Number Project http://www.oakland.edu/enp/ [hippo, Dec 19 2009] Erdös-Bacon number http://en.wikipedia...C5%91s-Bacon_number [BunsenHoneydew, Dec 21 2009] There's a version of this for mathematicians [link]. But it's based on academic advisement, rather than publications (though the two are often related.)-- csea, Dec 18 2009 I've done a search on the IEEE database too (only members can do advanced searches) - there appears to be no Kevin Bacon there.-- Jinbish, Dec 19 2009 This is entirely baked for the field of Mathematics - it's called the Erdös number. According to the Wikipedia link, there are 511 people with an Erdös number of 1, i.e. these are the people who co-authored a paper with Paul Erdös.-- hippo, Dec 19 2009 having read this several times as "Drippings of Kevin Bacon", I think I'll abstain.-- FlyingToaster, Dec 19 2009 [bigsleep] quite right - that's why I didn't [mfd] it.-- hippo, Dec 19 2009 random, halfbakery