[Sigmetrics] The continuation of "the decline of UK science"
Loet Leydesdorff
loet at leydesdorff.net
Sun Oct 15 04:22:39 EDT 2017
In his comments on the debate between Butler (2003) and van den
Besselaar, Heyman, & Sandström (2017), Martin (2017, at p. 937)
describes an earlier debate between his group and me in the 1980s about
“the decline of British science” as an example of disagreement which, in
his opinion, is inherent to the social sciences. A working party is said
to have concluded “that Leydesdorff’s use of ‘whole counting’ failed to
take account of the fact that, with this particular indicator, virtually
all countries’ shares were increasing (because of the growing
international collaboration) […].” At the time, I was not informed about
this party or its report. However, my argument was that using fractional
counting, “a simple increase in international co-authorships could
ceteris paribus cause a decline in national performance” (Leydesdorff,
1988, pp. 150f.). Internationalization had thus led to what appeared to
be a decline of British science.
This effect was, moreover, reinforced by the use of a fixed (1973)
journal set by my opponents (Narin, 1976). The innovativeness of British
science—in terms of both internationalization and the exploration of new
developments—was not sufficiently appreciated using these methods. I
advocated the use of the online Science Citation Index, which includes
new journals, albeit with a delay. In this dynamic dataset, the UK was
not losing ground during the period under discussion (Braun, Glänzel, &
Schubert, 1991; Kealey, 1991; Leydesdorff, 1991, p. 365; cf. Martin,
1991). In my opinion, “the decline of British science” was a
scientometric artifact based on these two erroneous assumptions: (i)
using fractional counting, internationalization was counted negatively
and (ii) using a fixed journal set, new developments were not
sufficiently appreciated. At that time, however, the decline-argument
could be used in a science-policy context (e.g., Irvine & Martin, 1986).
Leydesdorff, L. (2017). The positive side of discursive disagreements in
the social sciences. Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 1043.
See also: Martin, B. R. (2017). When Social Scientists Disagree:
Comments on the Butler-van den Besselaar Debate. Journal of Informetrics
11(3), 937-940.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loet Leydesdorff
Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
loet at leydesdorff.net <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net>;
http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/>University of
Sussex;
Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/>,
Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC,
<http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html>Beijing;
Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/>, University of London;
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en
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