Scholarly Book Reviewing in the Social Sciences and Humanities: The Flow of Ideas Within and Among Disciplines (Contributions in Librarianship and Information Science, vol. 91)

164 Pages·1998·1.77 MB·English

by  Ylva Lindholm-Romantschuk

Scholarly Book Reviewing
in the Social Sciences and
Humanities: The Flow of
Ideas Within and
Among Disciplines
Ylva Lindholm-Romantschuk
Greenwood Press
Scholarly Book Reviewing
in the Social Sciences
and Humanities
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Scholarly Book Reviewing
in the Social Sciences
and Humanities
The Flow of Ideas Within and
Among Disciplines
Ylva Lindholm-Romantschuk
Contributionsin Librarianship and Information Science,
Number 91
Michael Buckland, Series Editor
GreenwoodPress
Westport,Connecticut • London
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Lindholm-Romantschuk,Ylva.
Scholarlybookreviewinginthesocialsciencesandhumanities:
theflowofideaswithinandamongdisciplines / YlvaLindholm-
Romantschuk.
p. cm. — (Contributionsinlibrarianshipandinformation
science,ISSN0084–9243 ; no.91)
Includesbibliographicalreferences(p. )andindex.
ISBN0–313–29514–X(alk.paper)
1. Communicationinthesocialsciences. 2. Communicationinthe
humanities. 3. Socialsciences—Authorship. 4. Humanities—
Authorship. 5. Scholarlypublishing. 6. Bookreviewing.
I. Title. II. Series.
H61.8.L56 1998
028.1—dc21 97–16126
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:1)1998byYlvaLindholm-Romantschuk
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,withoutthe
expresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:97–16126
ISBN:0–313–29514–X
ISSN:0084–9243
Firstpublishedin1998
GreenwoodPress,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
TM
Thepaperusedinthisbookcomplieswiththe
PermanentPaperStandardissuedbytheNational
InformationStandardsOrganization(Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Introduction vii
1 The Social Study of Science 1
2 Disciplinarity: The Nature and Structure of Scholarly
Disciplines 23
3 Book Reviews: Evaluative Systems in Scholarship 35
4 Book Reviews: Data and Analysis 45
5 Scholarly Book-Reviewing Journals 55
6 Information Flow: Direction, Volume, and Speed 85
7 TwoCaseStudies:Marchand’sAdvertisingandWeber’s
Peasants 119
Conclusion 129
Bibliography 137
Index 145

Introduction
This study explores the flow of information within and among academic
disciplines in the social sciences and humanities through analyses of the
patterns of scholarly book reviewing generated by an elite sample of
scholarly monographs published by university presses between 1971and
1990. Thus, the study deals with the communication of information nec-
essary for the advancement of scholarship. I have chosen to study the
social sciences and humanities because there appears to be a dearth of
studies of the communication patterns in these disciplines, while com-
munication within the natural sciences has been the subject of numerous
studies. In fact, it is within the study of the natural sciences that the
theoretical underpinnings of the present study lie.
The first two chapters discuss those underpinnings. Chapter 1 presents
a survey of the sociology of knowledge and of science. Chapter 2 dis-
cusses scholarly communication in science. Derek de Solla Price was
among the first to establish the measurability of scientific communica-
tion, and after him many others have developed this area of inquiry.
Robert Merton, the sociologist of science, also dealt with communica-
tion, as did Thomas Kuhn. They both discussed the relationshipbetween
communication and social and cognitive events.
The main assumptions of my study may be summarized here. First, I
assume that academic disciplines are social constructs. Recent work in
this area has shown that the organizational division of knowledgeisboth
historically and socially defined, rather than a reflection of some inher-
ently correct way of categorizing knowledge. In fact, the disciplinary
viii Introduction
structure is in a more or less constant state of flux if we look at it over
time, and if we compare it across nations. My definition of an academic
discipline, which I have borrowed from Burkart Holzner and JohnMarx,
is that it is a delimited cultural domain, a socially and culturally defined
organizational arrangement that focuses on knowledge production and
growth. A discipline can be characterized as an epistemic community
whose members have a special frame of reference oriented toward spe-
cific abstract objects of investigation. Further, I assume that there is a
certain degree of dependence and diffusion of innovations between dis-
ciplines. There are overlapping neighborhoods, and disciplines occupy
certain territories in the matrix of knowledge. To a certain extent my
interest in the academic structure is topological. However, the goal is
not merely to acquire a map of the disciplines (although that certainly
is one of them); the linkages between disciplines and the distances be-
tween them are of interest theoretically as well as practically.
In chapters 3–7 I present the methods and data of my study investi-
gating the flow of ideas between academic disciplines in the social sci-
ences and humanities. I demonstrate that this flow of ideas exhibits
communication patterns that are different from those in the natural sci-
ences. Researchers in thehumanitiesand socialsciencesdo,forinstance,
exhibit fairly heavy reliance on monographs as opposed to journal arti-
clesassourcematerial,andresearchfindingsareoftenpublishedinmon-
ograph form as well as in articles. Previous studies measuring scholarly
communication have used bibliometric techniques such as citation or
cocitation analysis. In citation analysis it is assumed that a citation of a
document in a subsequent document constitutes evidence of a commu-
nication act, thus providing indirect measures of scholarly communica-
tion. It is presumed that the citing author has been exposed to the ideas
in the work he or she cites. These bibliometric techniques have provided
attractive, quantitative yardsticks for measuring communication. How-
ever, in this study, I have identified scholarly monographs as a primary
means of communication in the humanities and social sciences. The dif-
fusion and reception of this means of communication may be measured
by examining book reviews in the scholarly journal literature.
The study shows that scholarly book reviews are significant indicators
of scholarly communication, and can successfully be utilized to tracethe
flow of information within and across knowledge domains. The results
showthatthereisagreatdealofcross-disciplinaryinformationexchange
within and among the humanities and social sciences. The disciplines
vary as to the speed, the direction, and the volume of the flow of infor-
Introduction ix
mation in observable ways. Maps of the communication flows, based on
the empirical data, reveal fairly complex networks of information flows
among the disciplines. There are consistent bilateral relationships be-
tween disciplines as well. The boundaries between disciplines may be
more permeable than has previously been thought.
Even an elite scholarly monograph generates only an average of eight
reviews. The prestige of the publisher and the disciplinary origin of the
monograph affect the number of reviews generated. The main direction
of the flow of information across disciplinary groups is from the social
sciences to the humanities. Moreoever, the humanities are becoming in-
creasingly interested in the social sciences. The distribution of reviews
among journals reveals that 20% of the journals yield 80% of the re-
views. This supports the notion that a small core of journals in eachfield
determines the intellectual direction of the field.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would probably never havebeenpublishedwithoutthehelp
of the following people: Yale Braunstein, Michael Buckland, Wayne
Christopher, Mikael Paltschik, WilliamRobertson,MartinRomantschuk,
Judy Weedman, and Patrick Wilson. You all know how grateful I am.