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Is Regional Science a Scientific Discipline? Answers from a Citation Based Social Network Analysis

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  • Gunther Maier
  • Alexander Kaufmann
  • Michael Vyborny

Abstract

From its very beginnings, regional science has been open to intellectual exchange with many other scientific disciplines. This has led to cross-fertilization, but also to problems concerning the intellectual identity of regional science. After half a century of history of the field, it is time to ask the question, whether or not regional science has developed into a scientific discipline in these decades. In this paper we use cross-citation data between 464 journals in different disciplines to answer this question. With this data set we attempt to find out, how strongly regional science journals are interconnected by citations as compared to their citation links to journals in neighbouring disciplines. We find that when we consider the raw citation data, regional science becomes fragmented with its journals tied to those from economics, geography, planning, etc. When we standardize the citation information to take into account size differences between journals, however, regional science appears to form a strong and well connected dscientific discipline.
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  • Gunther Maier & Alexander Kaufmann & Michael Vyborny, 2008. "Is Regional Science a Scientific Discipline? Answers from a Citation Based Social Network Analysis," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2008_02, Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwsre:sre-disc-2008_02
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. John M. Quigley, 2001. "The renaissance in regional research," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 35(2), pages 167-178.
    2. Andrew M. Isserman, 1993. "Lost In Space? On The History, Status, And Future Of Regional Science (Presidential Address, April 4, 1992)," The Review of Regional Studies, Southern Regional Science Association, vol. 23(1), pages 1-50, Summer.
    3. Alexander I. Pudovkin & Eugene Garfield, 2002. "Algorithmic procedure for finding semantically related journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(13), pages 1113-1119, November.
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    6. Peter Nijkamp, 1994. "Regional Science — A Product Life Cycle Interpretation," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 73(4), pages 341-345, October.
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