Same data—different results? Towards a comparative approach to the identification of thematic structures in science

Jochen Gläser (), Wolfgang Glänzel () and Andrea Scharnhorst ()
Additional contact information
Jochen Gläser: TU Berlin
Wolfgang Glänzel: KU Leuven
Andrea Scharnhorst: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW)

Scientometrics, 2017, vol. 111, issue 2, No 20, 998 pages

Abstract: Abstract Science studies are persistently challenged by the elusive structures of their subject matter, be it scientific knowledge or the various collectivities of researchers engaged with its production. Bibliometrics has responded by developing a strong and growing structural bibliometrics, which is concerned with delineating fields and identifying thematic structures. In the course of these developments, a concern emerged and is steadily growing. Do the sets of publications, authors or institutions we identify and visualise with our methods indeed represent thematic structures? To what extent are results of topic identification exercises determined by properties of knowledge structures, and to what extent are they determined by the approaches we use? Do we produce more than artefacts? These questions triggered the collective process of comparative topic identification reported in this special issue. The introduction traces the history of bibliometric approaches to topic identification, identifies the major challenges involved in these exercises, and introduces the contributions to the special issue.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-017-2296-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:111:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2296-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2296-z

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().