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The validity of publication and citation counts for Sociology and other selected disciplines

Schools of Social Science and Population Health, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Belinda Hewitt

School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St Lucia

The use of bibliometric data is a means of comparing research productivity and scholarly impact for individuals, work groups, institutions and nations within and between disciplines. Central to this debate is the notion that disciplines differ in the ways in which they exchange ideas and disseminate information and therefore have diverse publishing and citation patterns. In this article we use two different approaches to compiling bibliometric data to compare publishing patterns of five different disciplines that encompass Molecular Biology, Administration/Political Science, Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology/Anthropology. We find that the social sciences differ from each other as well as from the physical sciences in their publication and citation patterns. Further, while the different ways of organizing the data produce somewhat different results, the substantive findings for the general patterning of publications and citations of disciplines are consistent for both data sets. Sociology/Anthropology, when compared with the other disciplines, shows substantial differences across universities.

Key Words: citation counts • performance indicators • Sociology

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 39, No. 1, 62-80 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/144078330303900106


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