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Comparative Analysis of Networks of Collaboration of Canadian Researchers in the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and the Humanities
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Larivière, Vincent |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | A basic dichotomy is generally made between publication practices in the natural sciences and engineering (NSE) and social sciences and humanities (SSH). However, while researchers in the NSE share lots of common practices with researchers in SSH, the spectrum of practices is broader in the latter. Drawing data from the CDROM versions of the Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index from 1980 to 2002, this paper analyses collaboration in the SSH compared to the NSE. We show that, contrary to a widely held belief, researchers in the social sciences and the humanities have distinct collaborative practices. In fact, collaborative activities of researchers in the social sciences are more comparable to those of researchers in the NSE than to scholars in the humanities. Also, we see that language and cultural proximity influences the choice of collaborators in the SSH, but also in the NSE. Introduction A basic dichotomy is generally made between natural science and engineering (NSE) and social sciences and humanities (SSH). However, while researchers in the NSE share practices with researchers in SSH, the spectrum of practices is broader in the latter. In addition, while some studies have compared collaborative activities in the NSE and the social sciences (SS) (Glänzel 1995; Stefaniak 2001), none has analysed collaborative practices of scholars in the humanities. This paper analyses collaboration practices of researchers in the SSH compared with those in the NSE, using Canada as an example. The first section will present some methodological issues related to the application of bibliometric methods to literature in the SSH and will detail the sources and methods used in this study. In the second section, we analyse the different collaborative practices of researchers in the SSH and the NSE by using the Canadian example. This empirical analysis sheds a new light upon the collaborative activities of researchers in the NSE compared to those in the SSH. Methods The application of bibliometric methods to the analysis and evaluation of research practices in the NSE is well established. Their application to the analysis of the SSH is, however, made with greater care. In this section, we review the shortcomings associated with bibliometric analyses of research in the SSH. The methods and sources used in this study will also be detailed. Bibliometrics in the SSH Bibliometric methods are very useful for measuring the dissemination of knowledge in the natural sciences, but they are less effective in some applied fields, such as engineering (van Raan 2003). Applied to the SSH, bibliometric methods poses three main problems. 1 This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The authors wish to thank François Vallières for the construction of the bibliometric database and the two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. 2 For an exhaustive profile of the use of bibliometrics in the SSH, see Archambault and Vignola Gagné (2004). Vincent Larivière, Yves Gingras and Éric Archambault 566 First, knowledge dissemination media and, by extension, communication media in general are more varied in the SSH than in the NSE. A number of scholars have highlighted these fundamental differences between the scientific communication practices of scholars in the NSE and those in the SSH (Glänzel and Schoepflin 1999; Hicks 1999 and 2004; Moed, Luwel and Nederhof 2002; van Raan 2003). This is reflected in the greater role played by monographs, conference papers and proceedings, and non-scientific literature in the SSH. Depending on the discipline, articles may be a relatively minor publishing medium compared with others, such as books. Unfortunately, no database covers these other forms of publication as systematically and exhaustively as Thomson ISI does for journal articles. Second, SSH research subjects are sometimes more local in orientation and, as a result, the target readership is more often limited to a country or region (Glänzel 1996; Hicks 1999; Hicks 2004; Ingwersen 1997; Nederhof et al. 1989; Nederhof and Zwaan 1991; Webster 1998; Winclawska 1996). SSH scholars reportedly publish more often in their mother tongue and in journals with a more limited distribution (Gingras 1984 and 2002; Line 1999). These research and publication practices have important consequences on the coverage of SSH publications from countries which main language is not English. Furthermore, according to Hicks (1999), a number of SSH disciplines have more paradigms competing with one another than do those in the NSE, and as a result SSH literature is more fragmented – a situation that hinders the formation of a solid “core” of scientific journals (Hicks 1999), thereby making article-based bibliometric analysis more difficult to conduct successfully. Therefore, one cannot rely on Thomson ISI’s data to calculate publication rates or produce research impact indicators, nor to compare, rank or benchmark the research performances of research institutions. However, these data can be used to map SSH scholars’ collaborative activities by measuring joint publication of articles and highlighting differences among disciplines. The resulting collaboration rates must be interpreted as being the output of scholars who publish articles, not the output of all scholars in the SSH. In fields in which the article is not a major dissemination medium, our analysis will probably provide less insight into overall practices. However, it will still bring out the characteristics of an important subset of the SSH scholar population: those who publish articles. Furthermore, in spite of its limitations, measuring collaboration on the basis of articles is probably the best approach currently available. According to Moody (2004), the collaboration rate for books is generally lower than that for articles. Therefore scholarly articles are a more informative medium for analysing collaboration not only in the natural sciences but also in the social sciences and humanities, although we must be careful not to generalize the results to all scholarly research output. Building bibliometric statistics The bibliometric data presented here comes from Thomson ISI’s databases on CD-ROM: SCI, SSCI and AHCI. From these three data sources, a relational database has been created in which each piece of information was inserted into specific tables (articles, authors, addresses, journals, research fields, etc.) and fields (author's names, departments, institutions, cities, countries, etc.) For all Canadian addresses, a complete harmonization of institutions has been performed to regroup under one designation the multiple ways an institution could be written. Also, each institution was classified into sectors such as universities, governments, hospitals, industries, etc. Although these three databases list several types of document, only articles, research notes and review articles are generally used for bibliometric studies because they are the main knowledge dissemination media. However, there are no clear standards on this subject (Moed, 1996): other types of document are deemed to be important in some disciplines but not in others. 3 McGill University, for instance, could be written as McGill-Univ, MacGill-Univ, McQuill-Univ, or as one of its affiliated colleges, Macdonald-Coll. 4 For example, meeting abstracts in engineering disciplines. See Godin (1998). Comparative Analysis of Networks of Collaboration of Canadian Researchers in... 567 Table 1 gives the number and percentage share of the various document types in the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences. It shows that, while the three types generally used for bibliometric studies – articles, research notes and review articles – account for nearly 80% of NSE scholars’ research output and 62% of those in the social sciences, they account for slightly less than 35% of documents listed in the humanities. Book reviews play an important role in knowledge dissemination in the social sciences (27%) and in the humanities (57%) reflecting the importance of books in those disciplines. Including this type of document for bibliometric statistics would no doubt have yielded increased coverage. Yet, as Table 1 shows, the mean number of addresses per book review is very low, suggesting that book reviews are rarely co-published. Accordingly, while the selected document types (articles, notes and review articles) represent a lower percentage of publications listed in the SSH database than in the NSE, they are most likely to be produced collaboratively, and since the purpose of the study is to measure the collaborative activities of SSH scholars, we have decided to use only these three document types. Table 1: Document types in all fields of the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities— percentage share and mean number of addresses, 1980-2002 Natural Sciences Social Sciences Humanit ies No. of Documents % Mean No. of Addresses No. of Documents % Mean No. of Addresses No. of Documents % Mean No. of Addresses Art icle 10 050 775 72,194% 1,80 908 483 58,640% 1,43 371 240 31,682% 1,06 Artistic Production 2 0,000% 1,50 83 0,005% 1,06 32 397 2,765% 1,03 Bibliography 950 0,007% 1,52 454 0,029% 1,41 1 911 0,163% 1,18 Biography 14 059 0,101% 1,25 4 713 0,304% 1,19 5 113 0,436% 1,09 Book Review 8 252 0,059% 1,07 421 800 27,226% 1,03 665 994 56,836% 1,01 Chronology 49 0,000% 1,29 39 0,003% 1,08 58 0,005% 1,02 Correction 14 034 0,101% 1,89 530 0,034% 1,48 130 0,011% 1,10 Criticism 4 0,000% 1,25 389 0,025% 1,02 19 702 1,681% 1,03 Discussion 20 922 0,150% 2,29 3 868 0,250% 2,08 3 027 0,258% 1,88 Editorial Content 256 537 1,843% 1,39 58 757 3,793% 1,23 20 682 1,765% 1,16 Letter 577 003 4,145% 1,39 34 109 2,202% 1,09 15 374 1,312% 1,03 Meeting Abstract 2 024 856 14,544% 1,51 49 184 3,175% 1,26 2 755 0,235% 1,09 News 2 767 0,020% 1,23 302 0,019% 1,13 365 0,031% 1,04 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.issi-society.org/proceedings/issi_2005/Lariviere_et_al_ISSI2005.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://ost.openum.ca/files/sites/132/2017/06/Comparative_analysis_networks_collabo_NSE_vs_SSH-1.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
