Abstract
What are the factors which render an article more likely to be cited? Using social network analysis of citations between published scholarly works, the nascent field around Social Studies of Science is examined from its incipience in 1971 until 2008. To gauge intellectual positioning, closeness centrality and orthodoxy rates are derived from bibliographic networks. Bibliographic orthodoxy is defined as the propensity of an article to cite other highly popular works. Orthodoxy and closeness centrality have differing effects on citation rates, varying across historical periods of development in the field. Effects were modest, but significant. In early time periods, articles with higher orthodoxy rates were cited more, but this effect dissipated over time. In contrast, citations associated with closeness centrality increased over time. Early SSS citation networks were smaller, less structurally cohesive and less modular than later networks. In contrast, later networks were larger, more structurally cohesive, more modular and less dense. These changes to the global SSS knowledge networks are linked to changes in the scientific reward structure ensconced in the network, particularly regarding orthodoxy and closeness centrality.
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Notes
Risks associated with nascence are tempered by the notion of first-mover advantage, and the fact that priority is the most prized resource in academia (Merton 1968; Dasgupta and David 2002). Being first to claim ownership for a valued idea in academia, is the means by which academics accrue credit and professional benefits (Latour and Woolgar 1979). Thus, while there are generally risks associated with nascence, rewards can also simultaneously exist. Or alternatively, liabilities of senescence (Ranger-Moore 1997; Ganz 2000) can exist alongside liabilities of newness.
A question this raises, is when and how some fields or networks will maintain intellectual homogeneity and deference to elites with growth, while others will “calve off” and become a subfield, usually with new elites, shared information, identity and foci (see Abbott (2001) on fractalization).
This includes its initial incarnate as Science Studies, between 1971 and 1974.
Digitization may enable the large-scale study of book citations in the near future.
For example, in this case the most cited work in the SSS network was a book, Kuhn’s (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
This measure was taken prior to the pruning of asymmetric pendants (i.e. works cited only once by a single SSS focal article).
For occasional references, due to multiple editions of books existing published in different years, there is an inevitable amount of noise associated with this measure. As a rule, the date of earliest edition of a book was used.
Giant components of each network were extracted using Pajek. The vast majority of all articles in each network were connected.
For articles published in the first decade of SSS, the citation history in the journal a given article has to draw upon is obviously less extensive. Thus, while the entire citation history of the journal is included in the networks of articles published in 1971–1979; the network cannot go back the entire 10 years, as scholars work with a shorter time-horizon during nascent years.
The institutions were identified through their prominence in early Science Studies and Social Studies of Science. They include: Bath, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Lancaster, Leicester and Manchester, in the United Kingdom. In the United States, they include Cornell, MIT, RPI and UCSD. The American departments were spurred by NSF grants in the 1980s designed to establish Science Studies, emulating the successful diffusion in the United Kingdom in the 1970s (Jasanoff 1992).
The vast majority of articles with fewer than six citations were ‘non-articles’, such as book reviews and editorial material. However, given that many influential works were not listed by the ISI as formal ‘articles’ (e.g., Review Essays), parsing by citation count was chosen over merely restricting analyses to what the Thomson Reuters dubbed as an ‘article.’ Amongst articles with at least six cited works in the bibliography, all were included, regardless of how many citations they received.
Models were also run without these time periods, instead interacting time with key variables to gauge trends and changes over time. Results were quite similar to the models reported with four different time periods, with significant relationships in the same directions. However, as the analyses focusing on the time periods yielded higher variance explained, they are reported in the results section.
While creative accumulation of citations is a sign of intellectual vitality and corpus development, Abbott (1999: 166–167) observed that the expanding space longer reference lists demand from can create problems for journals, sometimes necessitating a decrease in manuscripts accepted.
To ensure that results were not being unduly skewed by shorter articles, an additional set of models was generated, limiting analysis to articles with 20 or more citations in the bibliography. Results were quite similar to the results in Table 3.
As articles are published in volumes throughout each calendar year, but Thomson Reuters only tabulates citation counts yearly, this means that this variable will actually mean citations from anywhere from 5 to 6 years since publication. Further, since this is a relatively small amount of time for ideas to diffuse on a large scale, this reduces citation inequality sharply, and obviates the need to log this dependent variable.
While there was no gender effect in the first time period, it should be noted that as per Table 1, only roughly nine percent of publications came from females (some of whom were repeat authors) during that time slice. Thus, there were very few published female STS scholars to make a comparison with.
Of note is that calculations for networks before 1974 were not computed by UCInet due to the primitiveness and small-size of the network. Thus, modularity levels were very low for the first 4 years of the network.
The majority of contributors to Social Studies of Science have only published a single article in the journal. The breakdown is: 690 with one publication, 177 with two, 74 with three, 37 with four and 19 with five or more.
Access and connections to interpersonal and institutional networks is an additional cause which has been argued to adversely affect women in professions (Burt 1998).
In other fields, tradeoffs and equilibria may be different than in SSS and Science Studies.
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Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges helpful feedback on previous drafts of this article from Matthew Brashears, Stephen Hilgartner, Neil McLaughlin, Tony Puddephatt, David Strang, Sarah Soule and Pamela Tolbert. Further, the author is especially grateful to Katherine McCain for introducing him to citation analysis. This research was supported in part by a seed grant from the Cornell University Center for the Study of Economy and Society.
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Appendix
Appendix
Correlation matrix
Received citations per year (log) | Average signal (orthodoxy) | Out-degree (bibliography length) | Out-closeness | Citation age | Non-Elite Univ. | Outside North Amer. | Non-core STS Univ. | Gender (M) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Received citations per year (log) | 1.000 | ||||||||
Average signal | 0.062 | 1.000 | |||||||
Out-degree (bibliography length) | 0.271 | −0.131 | 1.000 | ||||||
Out-closeness | −0.068 | −0.146 | −0.029 | 1.000 | |||||
Citation age | −0.070 | −0.126 | 0.253 | −0.007 | 1.000 | ||||
Non-Elite Univ. | −0.036 | −0.044 | −0.019 | 0.007 | −0.025 | 1.000 | |||
Outside North Amer. | −0.069 | 0.019 | 0.002 | 0.049 | −0.006 | 0.489 | 1.000 | ||
Non-core STS Univ. | −0.027 | 0.032 | 0.003 | −0.091 | 0.024 | 0.199 | −0.004 | 1.000 | |
Gender (M) | 0.065 | 0.057 | 0.084 | −0.072 | −0.018 | −0.101 | −0.013 | 0.065 | 1.000 |
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Siler, K. Citation choice and innovation in science studies. Scientometrics 95, 385–415 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0881-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0881-8