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The Four Literatures Of Social Sciences

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  • Diana Hicks

    (School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology)

Abstract

This paper reviews bibliometric studies of the social sciences and humanities.The premise of the chapter is that quantitative evaluation of research output in the social sciences and humanities faces severe methodological difficulties.Bibliometric evaluations are based on international journal literature indexed in the SSCI, but social scientists also publish books, and write for national journals and for the nonscholarly press.These literatures form distinct, yet partially overlapping worlds in which each literature serves a different purpose.For example, national journals and the nonscholarly press represent research in interaction with contexts of application.Each literature is more transdisciplinary than its scientific counterpart, which itself poses methodological challenges.The nature and role of each of the literatures will be explored here, and the chapter will argue that by ignoring the three other literatures of social science bibliometric evaluation produces a distorted picture of social science fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Diana Hicks, 2005. "The Four Literatures Of Social Sciences," IBT Journal of Business Studies (JBS), Ilma University, Faculty of Management Science, vol. 1(1), pages 1-20.
    • Handle: RePEc:aib:ibtjbs:v:1:y:2005:i:1:p:1-20
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.46745/ilma.ibtjbs.2005.11.1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    4. Galt, Ryan E. & Pinzón, Natalia & Robinson, Nicholas Ian & Baukloh Coronil, Marcela Beatriz, 2024. "Agroecology and the social sciences: A half-century systematic review," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    5. Nestor Gandelman & Osiris J. Parcero & Matilde Pereira & Flavia Roldán, 2021. "Ventajas comparativas reveladas en disciplinas científicas y tecnológicas en Uruguay," Documentos de Investigación 125, Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales.
    6. Alice Fleerackers & Lise Nehring & Lauren A. Maggio & Asura Enkhbayar & Laura Moorhead & Juan Pablo Alperin, 2022. "Identifying science in the news: An assessment of the precision and recall of Altmetric.com news mention data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6109-6123, November.

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