One of those yikes! moments today, when I experienced the bizarre feeling of being a researcher and a research subject at the very same time. Today I saw that the new March 2011 issue of the Journal of American Society for Information Science & Technology contained both my “The Production of Practice Theories” article and an article by Donald Case and Joseph Miller on “Do Bibliometricians Cite Differently From Other Scholars?,” which analyzed responses to a survey of scholarly citing practices they did back in June 2009. Their survey included a reasonably-sized sample (that happened to include me) of authors that cited one or more of six well-known bibliometrically-oriented articles in their own recent work.
One of the questions was whether the respondents considered themselves bibliometricians. Interestingly, I can’t recall what I answered to that (though I recall the survey itself) and I don’t know even now whether I would consider myself a “bibliometrician.” Certainly not in the sense that someone like Anthony van Raan is. And, yet, since I cite a lot of bibliometric work and use bibliometrics in my little bag of tricks, maybe I am. I do seem to fit the major criterion that Case and Miller use to differentiate self-identified bibliometricians from other citing scholars: I often cite articles as concept symbols. Perhaps if they had phrased their question differently (“Are you a huge fan of Henry Small’s work?”), I would have had less difficulty, because the answer would be yes, yes, yes!
Well, I can’t say that I haven’t been reviewed by some of the best people in the field with this one! *fans self*
Interestingly, it’s also very good evidence for the importance of what Cronin termed “the scholar’s courtesy” (acknowledgment for help given: reviewers comments, etc.) as the article is now greatly improved for the rounds of critique. (Not my research methodology, which didn’t garner much in the way of criticism, but for the way in which the rationale for focusing on practice theories could be best framed within the literature of the field— I know the literature reasonably well, but not quite as well as some of these reviewers do, as they wrote a lot of it!)
So, some minor revisions, and this one is finally “done.”
Good practice for the next one!
I’m not a current member of the Popular Culture Association, but I’m seriously thinking about joining, if only to become a member of the Comics Citation Committee. During the past few years, I’ve been doing bibliometrics based on the research front, the patent frontier, the practice field… and, perhaps, now the punch line?
Well, my AERA paper went over well: our excellent discussant in the session made some helpful comments, and people appeared to find it intriguing, though a little “different” from the other papers presented. Conceptual papers rule!
My favorite moment, though, was when I explained that my research specialty was citation analysis and asked for a show of hands by anyone who kept track of their own citation counts. Talk about asking for intimate details: maybe I should have gotten IRB approval before doing that….
The 2008 ARIST chapter by Steve Morris and myself has been cited by Howard White in his magisterial entries on both:
White, Howard D. ‘Bibliometric Overview of Information Science’, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition, 1:1, 534 – 545.
White, Howard D. ‘Citation Analysis’, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition, 1:1, 1012 – 1026
Now I can boast that I’ve met Derek de Solla Price, written with Robert Taylor, reviewed for Blaise Cronin, been read by Henry Small, edited by Marcia Bates, and cited by Howard White. Not bad for a lil’ ol’ Oklahoma outlier like myself!!!!
Oh, that’s good news: guess I will be able to hear Stephen Wolfram speak at the iSchools conference in February, as my paper (“The impact of outliers: Practice theories and informetrics”) has been accepted for the associate deans’ special “Measuring Research Impact” track. Quite useful comments about the work, too, from a couple of reviewers who obviously know the field. Not bad for someone who’s so obviously an “outlier” herself (nobody else from Oklahoma is going to be there, I suspect.) Go, me!
So I’m reading The Chaos of Disciplines by Andrew Abbott, whose The System of Professions I absolutely adored, and I’m a little taken aback not to be liking it better. Abbott still writes like an archangel, but I can’t believe that he give more than a passing nod to the role of scholarly citations as evidence in how disciplines evolve (whether as fractals, or factions, or figments of his imagination, doesn’t matter). He is focusing on the social sciences, not the “hard” sciences, but still the omission makes me think that he didn’t do that much of a literature review on how his ideas might be examined empirically before deciding to emphasize “chaos.” Even I could suggest some useful studies that have used citation analysis to explore the “fractal structure” of a few fields.
That’s rather disconcerting: I was expecting to love this book and to be able to use it in my own work.
Finally got around to reading the recent issue of the Journal of Education for Library & Information Science which had a thought-provoking study that tracked “mentoring” relationships, using the MPACT database (a database which lists LIS doctoral dissertations, along with the advisors and committee members for each doctoral graduate). It’s an interesting but somewhat misleading article, at least as far as I’m concerned (and I’m in the MPACT data!) The reason I say this is that my listed dissertation advisor is someone who very kindly “came to my rescue” after my original advisor left Syracuse for a distinguished professorship elsewhere. (He remained on my committee, but University rules were such that I had to find a new dissertation advisor within my school in order to continue the process of preparing to defend the dissertation.) So the idea that my dissertation was strongly influenced by my titular advisor is actually wrong (though she did a wonderful job in supporting me through the remainder of the writing and helping to insure that the methodology was as rigorous as we could make it). Interestingly enough, however, the related MPACT idea that I’m in the intellectual “lineage” of William Goffman is right, though not through my titular advisor: my original advisor was a student of the late Everett Rogers, so the (very strong) connection is actually through his knowledge of and expertise in the diffusion of innovation literature.
Which brings me back to my original motive for posting: the reason that I’m somewhat fascinated by all this is similar to the reason that I’m fascinated by citation analysis and indicator theories in general. But I was far, far more influenced by the writings of say, Derek de Solla Price, Blaise Cronin, and Henry Small than by anyone I actually studied under at Syracuse in the doctoral program, as bibliometrics was not a particular strength on the faculty while I was there. In fact, I would say that now I am more influenced by Ray von Dran, with whom I never took a class, but who was such an enthusiastic advocate of Donald Schön’s work on reflective practice that I became very interested in it while I was his graduate teaching assistant during one semester. And since I am now working on the idea of practice-in-theories ( a corollary to Schön’s concept of theories-in-use), I would say that Ray’s MPACT on me was very significant, but is the type that will never appear in an MPACT analysis. A useful reminder for me of the limitations of this kind of very objective but not always informative data!
Anyone who thinks that looking at the diffusion of liberation theology over the past three decades through the Web of Science and through the documents of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Catholic Church in a single project is a good idea probably needs to have their head examined.
Or somehow have a good deal of faith that it’s worth doing.
Quo vadis?!
To celebrate the new look of my blog, here’s a totally self-indulgent link to some bibliometrics humor, via Stewart’s Professional Notes blog. Thanks, Stewart (and Toni!)
