SIGMETRICS Digest - 15 Jun 2010 to 16 Jun 2010 (#2010-78)

[David Watkins]

How are "fields" defined in bibliometrics....?

Dear Jacques

You say you are interested in sub-fields of computer science, so it 
depends on how much 'granularity' you want. Science is a social activity 
so you only get part of the picture using quantitative bibliometrics - and 
less of it as the scale reduces. Diana Reader and I used a combination of 
ACA and cluster analysis to identify sub-fields in 'Entrepreneurship 
Research' - a very contentious topic since some argue that even the 
'metafield' at that level doesn't warrant such a label. We then checked 
out the validity of the clusters using qualitative methods and got good 
agreement by the scholars in the metafield that the sub-fields had some 
substance. Time consuming (Diana's PhD!), but it worked out well.

Regards

David Watkins
Professor of Management Development
Southampton Business School

Reader, D. and D. Watkins (2006). "The Social and Collaborative Nature of 
Entrepreneurship Scholarship: A Co-Citation and Perceptual Analysis." 
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 30(3): 417-441.
        This article explores the structure of the "metafield" of 
entrepreneurship in two related ways. First, author co-citation analysis 
establishes a collective view of the structure of the entrepreneurship 
literature as perceived by its research-active members. The co-citation 
frequencies of 78 prominent entrepreneurship researchers were analyzed 
using multivariate techniques. Cluster analysis and multidimensional 
scaling were used to explore the intellectual structure of 
entrepreneurship research by identifying groups of scholars whose work 
falls into similar areas. Factor analysis was then used to identify the 
underlying themes that characterize and define the field. Finally, the 
scholars within these nominal groupings were approached using 
individualized questionnaires to explore what social interactions might 
parallel, reflect, or underpin the intellectual ones. The study has given 
empirical support to a number of oft-quoted beliefs about entrepreneurship 
as a field of study, such as: (1) the occurrence of fragmentation from an 
early stage in its development; (2) that the difficulty of categorizing 
subfields unambiguously mirrors that in the metafield itself; (3) that 
there is a relative paucity of scholarship cited across-as opposed to 
within-these subfields; and (4) that there is evolution within the 
meta-field of national differences in the topics studied and citation 
patterns thereto. In addition, the study demonstrates that there are real 
and robust social and collaborative networks underlying the generation of 
the work which is cited jointly by third parties. The latter authors may 
be unaware of these networks. Equally, the co-cited authors, while 
recognizing overlapping interests, may have difficulty in categorizing 
this commonality in their contributions. Entrepreneurship research is 
shown to be very much a social activity, although this may be invisible to 
outsiders or novitiates.