Abstract
Scholarly journals primarily address the scientific community to facilitate communication but a few journals are regularly used as a source for issue selection in science journalism that widens the scope from the peers to a broader public. At the forefront are the multidisciplinary journals Science and Nature, looking for so-called “firsts” that are relevant both for science and society. A professional press service allows for broad news coverage of published new scientific findings. Because of their impact on science and the mass media alike, it comes as a surprise that the medialization discourse has fairly ignored the role of scholarly journals. This chapter tries to fill this gap by investigating the journals’ operation modes concerning the science/media coupling. The argument that is to be developed is that expectations of both scientific rigor and newsworthiness are conflicting in high-impact journals and thus can irritate the self-reproduction mechanism of science. An empirical analysis of a sample of 58 original articles in stem cell research will unfold the characteristics of a media conflict in science.
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Notes
- 1.
In the humanities, however, monographs are still dominant to communicate new findings.
- 2.
The preference for novelty is expressed in the so-called Ingelfinger rule.
- 3.
- 4.
However, the argument of a direct reflection of the process of discovery is disputable, given the media specific discrepancy of the production and presentation mode of science.
- 5.
Nearly the same procedure can be applied for Science’s competitor Nature. See Franzen (2009) for more details.
- 6.
Information is gathered from the Science Contributors FAQ at http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/faq/index.dtl (last accessed on December 1, 2010).
- 7.
Science’s Information for Reviewers of Research Articles. http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/RAinstr.pdf (last accessed on January 26, 2009).
- 8.
The same figure can be applied for other top journals. See McCook (2006).
- 9.
Successful media relations serve in general the goal to legitimate an organization (see Peters et al. 2008 and Chapter 11).
- 10.
http://www.nature.com/authors/author_resources/why_publish_with_npg.html (last accessed on December 7, 2010).
- 11.
ISI was acquired by Thomson in 1992 and is now part of the Thomson Reuters Corporation.
- 12.
The PLoS Medicine Editors (2006) for instance highlight: “This is not a theoretical question; it is well-known that editors at many journals plan and implement strategies to massage their impact factors.”
- 13.
See for a discussion on the utility of a citation theory the special issue of Scientometrics 1998, 43(1).
- 14.
Science Watch regularly calculates the citation thresholds for highly cited papers, so-called top papers with a citation rate that comprise the top 1% of papers in a field according to the year of publication.
- 15.
It is moreover the popularity of the journal, its impact factor, that influences the citation rates of papers which can be described in the notion of Merton’s Matthew effect (Larivière and Gingras 2010).
- 16.
Although an editorial policy of handling retractions is demanded in publication ethics, only a small percentage of biomedical journals have one (see Atlas 2004).
- 17.
A concentration of retractions in Science and Nature was also identified in a sample of stem cell papers that were each highlighted as important milestones in science policy reports (Franzen 2011).
- 18.
These two are considered as agenda-setters for international science journalism (Nisbet et al. 2003).
- 19.
For a detailed version, see Franzen (2011).
- 20.
The field of “molecular biology and genetics” contains the most conservative numbers for “top papers.” The citation thresholds used here were updated in July 2008 on the Science Watch website provided by Thomson Reuters (http://www.sciencewatch.com).
- 21.
However, other journals like Cell started to adapt such amplifications, introducing the “Leading Edge” section in 2005 or PLoS Biology with its “primers” and “synopses,” “serve as mini science education modules and are designed to enhance public understanding of a key area of biology” (Chapter 18, p. 354).
- 22.
Meetings of the AAAS as the “World’s Largest General Scientific Society” are probably the most important event worldwide in bringing together scientists and science journalists.
- 23.
It later turned out that the human stem cell line derived by Hwang and colleagues was in fact of parthenogenetic origin (Kim et al. 2007).
- 24.
Cole and Cole (1971: 25) have argued: “It is unlikely that any work which is wrong without being a ‘fruitful error’ will ever accumulate many citations.” This case is a counter-example, however. Thus, more qualitative studies on citation counts are needed to address questions like these.
- 25.
I only know of one example in which this special treatment for a cloning paper was used (see Byrne et al. 2007).
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I would like to thank Sascha Dickel, Fran Osrecki and the reviewers for their comments on a draft of this chapter.
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Franzen, M. (2012). Making Science News: The Press Relations of Scientific Journals and Implications for Scholarly Communication. In: Rödder, S., Franzen, M., Weingart, P. (eds) The Sciences’ Media Connection –Public Communication and its Repercussions. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2085-5_17
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