Is regional science a scientific discipline? Answers from a citation based social network analysis

  • Gunther Maier (Ko-Autor*in)
  • Michael Vyborny (Ko-Autor*in)
  • Alexander Kaufmann (Ko-Autor*in)

Aktivität: VortragWissenschaftlicher Vortrag (Science-to-Science)

Beschreibung

One of the characteristics of a scientific discipline, it can be argued, is that its members publish in the journals of the discipline and refer to one another in their scientific work. Since ist beginnings regional sciences has been open to influences from various other related disciplines. Economics, geography, and planning are just the obvious examples.

The paper raises the question to what extent after fifty years of existence regional science constitutes a scientific discipline. We use journal based citation information for 2006 from the database of the social science citation index and apply techniques of social network analysis to answer the question. The available citation information allows us to identify groups of journals that are more closely related than others. We use blockmodelling and filtering techniques to identify cohesive subgroups as well as journals that act as bridges between these empirically determined disciplines. In a final step we compute indicators for the identified journal subgroups in order to highlight some of the differences in the publication culture of these various disciplines.
Zeitraum27 Aug. 200831 Aug. 2008
Ereignistitel48th Congress of the European Regional Science Association
VeranstaltungstypKeine Angaben
BekanntheitsgradInternational