IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v126y2021i10d10.1007_s11192-021-04126-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin as highly cited researchers? Historical bibliometrics study

Author

Listed:
  • Emanuel Kulczycki

    (Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy)

  • Władysław Marek Kolasa

    (Pedagogical University of Cracow)

  • Krystian Szadkowski

    (Adam Mickiewicz Univeristy)

Abstract

The motivation for our research is the view, widespread among Polish scientists, that under the Communist Party’s rule it was always necessary to refer to Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin (we call them ‘classics’), especially in the highly-politicised fields like humanities and social sciences, in order for the work to pass the censorship procedures and be published. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to determine whether the 'classics' were commonly cited in a formally socialist country under the rule of the Communist Party (Polish Workers' Party/Polish United Workers’ Party). To address the main research question, we use the Citation Index of the History of Polish Media that covers all publications, whether scholarly articles or book publications, on the history of Polish media; in total, 6880 publications and 59,827 citations from the 1945‒2009 period. We found that citations of the works of the ‘classics’ (N = 296) constitute 0.49% of all citations in the database used and that the practice of citing the 'classics' was extremely rare (just 64 occurrences in the analysed sample). Our research also contributes to the development of reflection in historical bibliometrics and argues that bibliographical databases need to cover various types of publications, especially scholarly book publications, written in different languages (not only in English).

Suggested Citation

  • Emanuel Kulczycki & Władysław Marek Kolasa & Krystian Szadkowski, 2021. "Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin as highly cited researchers? Historical bibliometrics study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8683-8700, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:126:y:2021:i:10:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04126-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-04126-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-021-04126-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-021-04126-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diana Hicks, 1999. "The difficulty of achieving full coverage of international social science literature and the bibliometric consequences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 44(2), pages 193-215, February.
    2. Éric Archambault & Étienne Vignola-Gagné & Grégoire Côté & Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingrasb, 2006. "Benchmarking scientific output in the social sciences and humanities: The limits of existing databases," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(3), pages 329-342, September.
    3. Ülle Must, 2012. "Alone or together: examples from history research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 527-537, May.
    4. Anton J. Nederhof, 2006. "Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A Review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 66(1), pages 81-100, January.
    5. Władysław Marek Kolasa, 2012. "Specific character of citations in historiography (using the example of Polish history)," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(3), pages 905-923, March.
    6. Björn Hammarfelt, 2011. "Interdisciplinarity and the intellectual base of literature studies: citation analysis of highly cited monographs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(3), pages 705-725, March.
    7. Anne-Wil Harzing & Satu Alakangas, 2016. "Google Scholar, Scopus and the Web of Science: a longitudinal and cross-disciplinary comparison," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(2), pages 787-804, February.
    8. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giovanni Colavizza, 2017. "The structural role of the core literature in history," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(3), pages 1787-1809, December.
    2. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    3. Kousha, Kayvan & Thelwall, Mike, 2018. "Can Microsoft Academic help to assess the citation impact of academic books?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 972-984.
    4. Yang, Siluo & Zheng, Mengxue & Yu, Yonghao & Wolfram, Dietmar, 2021. "Are Altmetric.com scores effective for research impact evaluation in the social sciences and humanities?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1).
    5. Ramón A. Feenstra & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2022. "Philosophers’ appraisals of bibliometric indicators and their use in evaluation: from recognition to knee-jerk rejection," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 2085-2103, April.
    6. Sándor Soós & Zsófia Vida & András Schubert, 2018. "Long-term trends in the multidisciplinarity of some typical natural and social sciences, and its implications on the SSH versus STM distinction," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 795-822, March.
    7. Alesia Zuccala & Roberto Cornacchia, 2016. "Data matching, integration, and interoperability for a metric assessment of monographs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(1), pages 465-484, July.
    8. Mladen Djuric & Marina Dobrota & Jovan Filipovic, 2020. "Complexity-based quality indicators for human and social capital in science and research: the case of Serbian Homeland versus Diaspora," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 303-328, July.
    9. Andrea Mervar & Maja Jokić, 2022. "Core-periphery nexus in the EU social sciences: bibliometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(10), pages 5793-5817, October.
    10. Ekaterina L. Dyachenko, 2014. "Internationalization of academic journals: Is there still a gap between social and natural sciences?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 241-255, October.
    11. Andrea Diem & Stefan C. Wolter, 2011. "The Use of Bibliometrics to Measure Research Performance in Education Sciences," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0066, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised May 2013.
    12. Pei-Shan Chi, 2014. "Which role do non-source items play in the social sciences? A case study in political science in Germany," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1195-1213, November.
    13. Ekaterina Dyachenko, 2013. "Internationalization of academic journals: is there still a gap between social and natural sciences?," HSE Working papers WP BRP 28/HUM/2013, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    14. Giovanni Colavizza, 2018. "A diachronic study of historiography," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 2117-2131, December.
    15. Vanessa Sandoval-Romero & Vincent Larivière, 2020. "The national system of researchers in Mexico: implications of publication incentives for researchers in social sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 99-126, January.
    16. Daniela De Filippo & Fernanda Morillo & Borja González-Albo, 2023. "Measuring the Impact and Influence of Scientific Activity in the Humanities and Social Sciences," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-17, June.
    17. Mehdi Rhaiem & Nabil Amara, 2020. "Determinants of research efficiency in Canadian business schools: evidence from scholar-level data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 53-99, October.
    18. Geert Campenhout & Tom Caneghem & Steve Uytbergen, 2008. "A comparison of overall and sub-area journal influence: The case of the accounting literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 77(1), pages 61-90, October.
    19. Eugenio Petrovich, 2022. "Bibliometrics in Press. Representations and uses of bibliometric indicators in the Italian daily newspapers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2195-2233, May.
    20. Ülle Must, 2012. "Alone or together: examples from history research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(2), pages 527-537, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:126:y:2021:i:10:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04126-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.