Canadian collaboration networks: A comparative analysis of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities

Vincent Larivière, Yves Gingras and Éric Archambault
Additional contact information
Vincent Larivière: Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec ? Montréal
Yves Gingras: Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec ? Montréal
Éric Archambault: Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST), Université du Québec ? Montréal; Science-Metrix

Scientometrics, 2006, vol. 68, issue 3, No 13, 519-533

Abstract: Summary A basic dichotomy is generally made between publication practices in the natural sciences and engineering (NSE) on the one hand and social sciences and humanities (SSH) on the other. However, while researchers in the NSE share some common practices with researchers in SSH, the spectrum of practices is broader in the latter. Drawing on data from the CD-ROM versions of the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index from 1980 to 2002, this paper compares collaboration patterns in the SSH to those in the NSE. We show that, contrary to a widely held belief, researchers in the social sciences and the humanities do not form a homogeneous category. In fact, collaborative activities of researchers in the social sciences are more comparable to those of researchers in the NSE than in the humanities. Also, we see that language and geographical proximity influences the choice of collaborators in the SSH, but also in the NSE. This empirical analysis, which sheds a new light on the collaborative activities of researchers in the NSE compared to those in the SSH, may have policy implications as granting councils in these fields have a tendency to imitate programs developed for the NSE, without always taking into account the specificity of the humanities.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-006-0127-8 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:68:y:2006:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-006-0127-8

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-006-0127-8

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 ().