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The delineation of an interdisciplinary specialty in terms of a journal set: The case of communication studies

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  • Loet Leydesdorff
  • Carole Probst

Abstract

A journal set in an interdisciplinary or newly developing area can be determined by including the journals classified under the most relevant ISI Subject Categories into a journal–journal citation matrix. Despite the fuzzy character of borders, factor analysis of the citation patterns enables us to delineate the specific set by discarding the noise. This methodology is illustrated using communication studies as a hybrid development between political science and social psychology. The development can be visualized using animations which support the claim that a specific journal set in communication studies is increasingly developing, notably in the “being cited” patterns. The resulting set of 28 journals in communication studies is smaller and more focused than the 45 journals classified by the ISI Subject Categories as “Communication.” The proposed method is tested for its robustness by extending the relevant environments to sets including many more journals.

Suggested Citation

  • Loet Leydesdorff & Carole Probst, 2009. "The delineation of an interdisciplinary specialty in terms of a journal set: The case of communication studies," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(8), pages 1709-1718, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:8:p:1709-1718
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21052
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Manuel Goyanes & Márton Demeter & Aurea Grané & Irene Albarrán-Lozano & Homero Gil de Zúñiga, 2020. "A mathematical approach to assess research diversity: operationalization and applicability in communication sciences, political science, and beyond," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2299-2322, December.
    2. Leydesdorff, Loet & Rafols, Ismael, 2012. "Interactive overlays: A new method for generating global journal maps from Web-of-Science data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 318-332.
    3. Loet Leydesdorff, 2011. "“Structuration” by intellectual organization: the configuration of knowledge in relations among structural components in networks of science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(2), pages 499-520, August.
    4. Shengli Deng & Sudi Xia, 2020. "Mapping the interdisciplinarity in information behavior research: a quantitative study using diversity measure and co-occurrence analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 489-513, July.
    5. Ruimin Ma & Erjia Yan, 2016. "Uncovering inter-specialty knowledge communication using author citation networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 839-854, November.
    6. Leydesdorff, Loet & Welbers, Kasper, 2011. "The semantic mapping of words and co-words in contexts," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 469-475.
    7. Rafael Repiso & Antonio Castillo-Esparcia & Daniel Torres-Salinas, 2019. "Altmetrics, alternative indicators for Web of Science Communication studies journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 941-958, May.
    8. Yongjun Zhu & Erjia Yan, 2015. "Dynamic subfield analysis of disciplines: an examination of the trading impact and knowledge diffusion patterns of computer science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(1), pages 335-359, July.
    9. Manuel Goyanes & Márton Demeter & Zicheng Cheng & Homero Gil Zúñiga, 2022. "Measuring publication diversity among the most productive scholars: how research trajectories differ in communication, psychology, and political science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(6), pages 3661-3682, June.
    10. Saeed-Ul Hassan & Iqra Safder & Anam Akram & Faisal Kamiran, 2018. "A novel machine-learning approach to measuring scientific knowledge flows using citation context analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(2), pages 973-996, August.
    11. Alicia Moreno-Delgado & Juan Gorraiz & Rafael Repiso, 2021. "Assessing the publication output on country level in the research field communication using Garfield’s Impact Factor," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5983-6000, July.
    12. Mu-Hsuan Huang & Yu-Wei Chang, 2012. "A comparative study of interdisciplinary changes between information science and library science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(3), pages 789-803, June.
    13. Joshua Eykens & Raf Guns & Raf Vanderstraeten, 2022. "Subject specialties as interdisciplinary trading grounds: the case of the social sciences and humanities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7193-7213, December.
    14. Yan, Erjia & Ding, Ying & Cronin, Blaise & Leydesdorff, Loet, 2013. "A bird's-eye view of scientific trading: Dependency relations among fields of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 249-264.
    15. Fan, Yangliu & Lehmann, Sune & Blok, Anders, 2022. "Extracting the interdisciplinary specialty structures in social media data-based research: A clustering-based network approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).

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