Scholarly communication as a socioecological system

Pamela E. Sandstrom
Additional contact information
Pamela E. Sandstrom: Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne

Scientometrics, 2001, vol. 50, issue 3, No 23, 573-605

Abstract: Abstract Among Belver C. Griffith's many contributions to disciplinary communication is the idea that science and scholarship at large constitute a social system to be investigated empirically. This paper reports findings of an author co-citation analysis of the field of human behavioral ecology that expands Griffith's concept of the social system of scientific communication to fit a socioecological framework. Cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling techniques are used to characterize the research specialty at large and portray five respondents' individual resource maps. The techniques reveal co-citation relationships among authors whose work they had referenced in recent articles. Survey data on searching and handling behaviors for an aggregated sample of 180 cited references are correlated with core-periphery zones of the individual maps. Findings that types of socially mediated communication and distinctive information foraging behaviors correlate with different zones of a bibliographic microhabitat support an interpretation that active specialty members conform to foraging efficiency principles as predicted by prey-choice models from optimal foraging theory.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1023/A:1012786609066 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:50:y:2001:i:3:d:10.1023_a:1012786609066

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

DOI: 10.1023/A:1012786609066

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 ().