Abstracts - Earli

P 2001 September 2007 11:00 - 12:20Room: 0.89 JedlikEARLI Invited Expert Panel DiscussionScientometrics as the quantitative self-reflection of the social sciencesChair: Benő Csapó , University of Szeged, HungaryPresenter: András Schubert , Hungarian Academy of Sciences, HungaryDiscussant: Erno Lehtinen , University of Turku, FinlandDiscussant: Roger Säljö , Göteborg University, SwedenDiscussant:Wolfgang Schnotz , University of Koblenz-Landau, GermanyScientometrics in its broadest sense covers all quantitative aspects of the study of scientific andscholarly activity. Its primary interest is in the structural and dynamical analysis of sets of authors,publications, citations, etc. The notorious evaluative aspects are just one of the possible fields ofapplication.Since scientific and scholarly research are unquestionably social activities, their study should becategorized into the social sciences, even if some of its concepts and methods are borrowed fromthe harder sciences. On the other hand, social sciences as a form of scientific and scholarlyactivity, is a legitim target of scientometric studies. As a result, scientometrics offers a uniquepossibility for self-reflection: the quantitative way for social science to study itself.Social sciences as compared to most areas of sciences, has certain handicaps as targets forscientometric studies. Just to mention a few: because of a relatively high percentage of singleauthoredworks, co-authorship networks are less definite; language and cultural barriers inhibitmore markedly the formation and use of a common knowledge pool; the number and even thefunction of references vary rather widely among the different disciplines, etc. These features makethe scientometrics of social sciences challenged but by no means disabled. Not only one of theearliest pioneering attempts of sceintometrics concerned with a social science discipline(psychology), but both structural and dynamical, as well as evaluative scientometrics of socialsciences are amply represented in the most recent literature.In this presentation some typical examples of scientometrics analysis and evaluation techniqueswill be shown on the model of the papers published in a set of social science journals. Analysis ofauthor networks, publication and citation dynamics, as well as macro-, meso- and micro-levelevaluative techniques will be illustrated, and some comparisons with earlier results and withsimilar characteristics of science fields will be made.– 864 –