Utilizing Journal Dissertation Listings for Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the use and importance of examining dissertations listed in scholarly journals, while focusing on a critical period of French doctoral education in historical studies. French dissertations in history were bibliometrically examined from Revue historique, a mainstream history journal published in France. Prior to 1984, there existed three separate doctoral degrees in France for the social sciences and the humanities. Data from 1976 to 1990 were profiled reflecting critical changes to the French doctoral process as it underwent a period of doctoral reform. The period 1983–1990 is examined critically for its significance with respect to transformation and changes in degree structure, subdisciplinary evolution and periodization. Journals listing dissertations can be examined for their disciplinary indicators. Understanding these changes in gray literature is critical for researchers using French doctoral dissertations in historical studies.     

Communication's quest for whiteness: the racial politics of disciplinary legitimacy

ABSTRACT

This essay examines communication's historical anxieties regarding disciplinary legitimacy as an investment in whiteness. We argue that such anxieties are predicated upon a normative ideal of citizenship. As such, rhetorics of disciplinary legitimacy enact white civil society's originary exclusion, which is antiblackness. To illuminate the ways antiblackness finds expression in these anxieties, we engage the field's lengthy archive of public musings regarding legitimacy to trace the rhetorical workings of antiblackness therein.     

Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy applied to iMetrics: Scientometrics,Journal of Informetrics,and a relevant subset of JASIST

We have developed a (freeware) routine for “Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy” (RPYS) and apply this method to the historiography of “iMetrics,” that is, the junction of the journals Scientometrics, Informetrics, and the relevant subset of JASIST (approx. 20%) that shapes the intellectual space for the development of information metrics (bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, and webometrics). The application to information metrics (our own field of research) provides us with the opportunity to validate this methodology, and to add a reflection about using citations for the historical reconstruction. The results show that the field is rooted in individual contributions of the 1920s to 1950s (e.g., Alfred J. Lotka), and was then shaped intellectually in the early 1960s by a confluence of the history of science (Derek de Solla Price), documentation (e.g., Michael M. Kessler's “bibliographic coupling”), and “citation indexing” (Eugene Garfield). Institutional development at the interfaces between science studies and information science has been reinforced by the new journal Informetrics since 2007. In a concluding reflection, we return to the question of how the historiography of science using algorithmic means—in terms of citation practices—can be different from an intellectual history of the field based, for example, on reading source materials.     

University press publishing and the ecology of disciplinary fluidity: General observations

Academic book and journal publishing constitutes the majority focus of university presses. Besides commercial scholarly publishers, academic scholars and researchers view the opportunities provided by university presses as important venues for the dissemination of their research. This discussion focuses on the disciplinary imperative to publish scholarship that is ever more fluid and specialized as academic disciplines continue to become further nuanced in their response to the increasing knowledge produced by humanities and social science inquiry. The focus is on university presses and not commercial scholarly presses, although constitute a significant locus of scholarly publishing. What are the general characteristics of academic specialization and university press publishing? Further, how is disciplinary fluidity, especially evolving specialization, reflected in university press book publishing nomenclature and how scholarship is tied to the intellectual preoccupations of academic specialization? Multi- and inter-disciplinarities further articulate disciplinary publishing, accelerating disciplinary fluidity. Examples from disciplinary and emerging configurations of disciplinary nomenclature utilized by university presses offers insight into specialization and publishing. Academic history publishing is used to illustrate newly emerging fluid disciplinary configurations.     

The Effects of Discipline Membership and Experience in the Field on Scholars’ Book and Journal Format Preferences

Abstract

Using data from Ithaka S?+?R US Faculty Survey 2015, the current study examined the influence of disciplinary differences and experience levels as well as their interactions on scholars’ attitudes toward print and electronic materials. While results of 3?×?5 factorial ANOVA procedure indicated both disciplinary membership and experience played a role in scholars’ attitudes, effect size indicated disciplinary membership played a more crucial role. Significant findings include rising popularity of electronic formats across examined groups.     

Periodizations and History of Science

Abstract

The significance of historical periodizations is explored for the purpose of collection development. As historians often rely upon utilizing historical periods for discussion and research in their scholarship, an understanding of the nature of historical periods as a collection perspective and approach can be useful for the subject librarian engaged in or responsible for the history of science collections. An examination of the last 20 years of ISIS bibliographies using historical periods as a chronological tool provides useful framework and knowledge for research, scholarship, and collection management, especially selection for library collections, of the history of science. Data revealed periodizations and their emphases, evolution over time, and possible scholarly directions, pertinent for collection purposes. Informed knowledge of periodizations and how they may affect collections, acquisitions, and instruction enables librarians to effectively interact with the specialists in the history of science.     

Print and Electronic Books

Abstract

Historical research and scholarship form a matrix of specialties depending on the object studied and the period under examination. The history of science is examined for its particular characteristics as evidenced in the cumulative bibliographies published in Isis, a premier journal devoted to the history of science for 1986–2003. A bibliometric examination of publication trends and specializations are explored through the historical periodizations inherent in historical studies. The history of science conforms to a unique evolution and professional orientation among the various fields in professional and academic history.     

Approval plans,discipline change,and the importance of human mediated book selection

This study examines holdings of 21 members of the Association of Research Libraries for books reviewed in American Historical Review. The study asserts that approval plans are inadequate for collecting from small publishers or from scholarship that crosses disciplinary boundaries. Although approval plans increase efficiency in collection development, the need for expert selection cannot be overstated. Results indicated that small publisher's books were less likely to be in libraries than university press publisher's books, and that history monographs are frequently classified outside disciplinary boundaries, and are therefore invisible to approval plans that define disciplines based on classification systems.     

Phantom Conflict: Lippmann,Dewey, and the Fate of the Public in Modern Society

Contrary to the prevailing view in media and cultural studies, philosopher John Dewey and journalist Walter Lippmann did not represent different schools of thought. They were not adversaries in a great public debate about the fate of the public in modern democracies in the 1920s. Rather, their exchange about the “phantom” public was reframed as a conflict in the early 1980s, a reframing which has achieved broad interdisciplinary acceptance even though its rests on a casual rhetorical trope, not historical documentation. The reframing provides a salutary but inaccurate origin story for American media and cultural studies, illustrates the hazards of relying on secondary interpretations of historical sources, and deflects attention away from realistic assessment of the problems confronting democracy today. Dismantling this disciplinary folklore is essential to the integrity of the emerging “new history” of media and communication.     

Changes in confidence during a period of speech training: Transfer of training and comparison of improved and non‐improved groups on the bell adjustment inventory

The Examiner papers, the Conduct of the Allies, the History of the Four Last Years of the Queen, and the other productions which Jonathan Swift composed during his years as chief publicist for the Tory administration of Harley and St. John (1710–1714) are among the most effective examples of persuasive discourse in the history of British political pamphleteering. Much of this effectiveness is attributable to the skill with which Swift‐steadily aware of the prejudices and demands of his predominantly rural and conservative audience—manipulated such specific rhetorical devices as imagery, anecdote, analogy, historical example, allegory, insinuation, and other such items from the vast catalogue available to the polemicist.     

Materials Used in Historical Scholarship

Citation analysis can be used to determine the kind of materials cited in any history subdiscipline. The history of gardens was chosen as the subdiscipline to be examined. As a field in art history and landscape architecture, garden history constitutes a highly articulated field of scholarly research open to current trends in historical research. A citation study of volume 1, number 1 of the Journal of Garden History reveals patterns of research materials which clearly demonstrate garden history's place in the bibliographic context of materials used in mainstream historical publication. This limited examination can be easily and effectively used by bibliographers in examining materials used in academic historical scholarship.     

Personal Beliefs and National Stories: Theater in Museums as a Tool for Exploring Historical Memory

How does what we remember about history relate to true historical understanding, and how can the museum become a location for these conversations? During the summer of 2011, the National Museum of American History challenged audiences to consider issues of historical memory and national history through the performance of an interactive museum theater program, The Time Trial of John Brown. Using the Time Trial approach as a case study, this article reveals that interactive theater in museums can provide a platform from which audiences assert their own historical understanding while learning firsthand about their role in creating a shared knowledge of American history. As the role of museums evolves in the twenty‐first century, new attention must be paid to this personal process of examining and creating history and memory through performance. It is through performance and participation that history and memory are both examined and created by the audience.     

档案学史研究的意义、基础与路径探析

学术史研究对于构建国家学术创新体系、推动中国特色社会主义文化自信、促进学科的成熟发展具有重要意义。档案学史研究不仅是对档案学术领域、学术人物、学术话语、学术著作、学术传统、学派与师承等“学术成果”的钩沉,更是对这些“学术成果”的学术意义和历史意义予以透视后的历史哲学反思。探讨档案学史研究的意义、基础和路径,不仅可深化档案学史的研究内容,还可丰富学术史理论的研究成果,促使档案学人树立一种恰当的学科史观、构建学史意识。纵观国内外档案学史研究成果,历时性和共时性相结合的学术史研究路径不仅促进了档案学科的学术回归,同时也为学术史研究提供了一种可能。     

Challenging the Context: Perception,Polity, and Power

The Art Institute of Chicago opened its new Kraft General Foods Education Center in 1992. Its inaugural gallery exhibition, ART INSIDE OUT: Exploring Art and Culture Through Time, was designed to help visitors explore the historical and cultural context of twelve works of art. “Contextual areas” are provided for six of them. They employ models, replicas, artwork, art materials and tools as well as interpretive panels and interactive computer installations to enable visitors to fully comprehend and appreciate the immediate world from which each work emerged. the six other works are contextualized by interactive computer installations.     

From work to text to document

The defining trope for the humanities in the last 30 years has been typified by the move from “work” to “text.” The signature text defining this move has been Roland Barthes seminal essay, “From Work to Text.” But the current move in library, archival and information studies toward the “document” as the key term offers challenges for contemporary humanities research. In making our own movement from work to text to document, we can explicate fully the complexity of conducting archival humanistic research within disciplinary and institutional contexts in the twenty-first century. This essay calls for a complex perspective, one that demands that we understand the raw materials of scholarship are processed by disciplines, by institutions, and by the work of the scholar. When we understand our materials as constrained by disciplines, we understand them as “works.” When we understand them as constrained by the institutions of memory that preserve and grant access to them, we understand them as “documents.” And when we understand them as the ground for our own interpretive activity, we understand them as “texts.” When we understand that humanistic scholarship requires an awareness of all three perspectives simultaneously (an understanding demonstrated by case studies in historical studies of the discipline of rhetoric), we will be ready for a richer historical scholarship as well as a richer collaboration between humanists and archivists.     

Gessoes in Portuguese Baroque gilding grounds,part 1: A study of historical documentary sources

The surviving gilded and polychrome altarpieces and sculptures in Portuguese churches, and the historical documents relating to them, offer an opportunity for understanding material and technological choices regarding gesso grounds. This paper focuses on the historical documentary research about gessoes — one aspect of a wider research project which also involved investigation of physical/chemical evidence, and archaeological reconstructions of gilded gesso grounds. Documentary research sheds light on the meaning of the terms used in historical documents, and on artists’ choice of materials and practices, production, and trade patterns of materials. It informs technological investigations and conservation decisions. The paper also stresses the importance of the evidence gained by using the historical and archaeological methodology applied in material culture studies, in which documentary, analytical, and experimental information complement and/or elucidate each other, leading to a comprehensive understanding of this technology.     

Gessoes in Portuguese Baroque Gilding Grounds: Part 2: Analytical Study of Historical Samples and Archaeological Reconstructions

This paper arises from a wider research project focussed on Portuguese gilded altarpieces and sculptures of the Baroque period, which also involved research into contemporary documents and into historical context, as well as into the history of use of materials and practices in gilding technology. It focuses on the results from analyses of historical samples and samples from archaeological reconstructions of gessoes and gilded surfaces. Analytical and experimental research shed light on diverse aspects of the technology of gilding grounds, such as range and composition of materials within historical objects, methods of production of gilding materials, gilding practices, actual performance of materials and gilded surfaces, and the science underlying the artists’ empirical choice of materials and practices. The documentary research (discussed in Part 1) elucidated the analytical and experimental research presented here, and vice-versa, resulting in a richer and more balanced understanding of the gessoes and of the motives of the people involved in their production. It is hoped that the results will inform future technological studies and conservation decisions.     

iSchool的迷思:对iSchool运动有关LIS、iField及其关系的认知的反思

本文以iSchool运动在全球范围内的迅速扩张为背景,以iSchool运动相关文献为依据,梳理iSchool运动对LIS和iField两个学科的认知,然后从学科历史性、正当性和合法性的角度反思当前认知。反思结果显示,尽管iSchool运动是一场针对原图书馆情报学院的教育改革运动,却伴随着影响更加深远的学科重组。图书馆情报学(Library and Information Science,LIS)作为运动发起者的原生学科,是其首要的重组对象;iField作为其致力打造的新学科,则是其期望的重组结果。在这一重组过程中,LIS被严重曲解,iField被过度期许。本文认为,将iSchool运动建立在上述认知之上,会使LIS学科、LIS教育甚至iSchool学院都面临巨大的自我否定风险,因此建议iSchool学院在区分LIS学科(LIS as a discipline)和LIS社群(LIS as a community)的基础上,重新审视当初的LIS教育危机。图3。参考文献65。     

Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield as Information Object: A Case Study of Serial Literature in the Victorian World of Documents

ABSTRACT

Documents reflect the historical contexts of their creation, and in doing so, become information objects. The serial novel is a type of information object, but due to re-editioning, reversioning, and digitization, most readers have lost touch with its historical significance. This analysis of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1849–1850) uses the lens of information theory, in relation to literary criticism, historiography, and the history of the book, to grasp the serial novel as an information object, arguing that doing so requires intimate familiarity with the physical nature of the book in parts and the historical context of its production.