Scientific Integration in Sociology

James Moody Duke University

Achim EdelmannDepartment of Sociology, University of Bern

Duke Network Analysis Center

With thanks to:Ryan Light – University of Oregon

Erin Leahey – U ArizonaCrystal Peoples, Duke U

"Science, carved up into a host of detailed studies that have no link with one another, no longer forms a solid whole."

Durkheim, 1933

Organizations

Historical Sociology

Crime

Health

Stratification

Gender

SocialWelfare

Networks & Science

1. Topical Diversity. Consider the number of ASA sections…

Two Problems of Intellectual Integration:

52

Num

bers

of A

SA S

ectio

ns

Year

2. Local vision. We all see our own local point in the topic space as larger than it is…

Two Problems of Intellectual Integration:

Which combined leads to shallow & largely misinformed views of the remainder of the discipline.

I want to move away from caricatures towards an “evidence based” map of the discipline.

Focus on two types of integration: intellectual & social

Two Problems of Intellectual Integration:

•Data Sources:•Citation Networks

• Compiled from the ISI web of science Journal citation tables• Covers 1681 social science journals indexed in 2003,

• - 2925 in 2009

•Topic & Collaboration Networks• Compiled from Sociological Abstracts or Web of Science.

• Web of Science: 1865-present (focus 1970),146 journals (all of the sociology category, plus the top Demography journals and top Management journals); N(papers):126,925

• Sociological Abstracts. 1965-2011, with full coverage of ~530 journals and at least one observation on over 4000 (many not primarily recognized as sociology); N(papers) 472,275.

• SRA members list: Names of the 453 SRA members.

Publication Patterns

13

68.1%

Publication PatternsWho publishes?

Publication volume distribution

WoS corpus; 1970 to 2015.

68.5%

22.3%

12

Publication PatternsWho publishes?

Publication volume distribution

WoS corpus; 1970 to 2015.

Non SRA Top 1%

SRA Top 1%

43

Most work is shaped by a minority of scholars at the tail of the distribution

Building co-citation networks

Links in a co-citation network are constructed by measuring how similar each journal is to every other journal.

Similarity is gauged by correlating the pattern of citations received by each journals from every other journal.

AJS ASR AER … JER

J1

J2

J3

J4 . . .JER

# #

# #

# #

# #

0 0

0 0

0 0

0 # # #

0 0

Comparing across columns tells us whether the two journals are recognized by others as similar.

Intellectual integrationView from 30,000ft

AJS ASR AER … JER

AJS

ASR

AER . . . JER

1.0

1.0

1.0

1.0

High

MedLow

HighLow Low

This create a valued network of ties between two journals. I use a cosine similarity score developed in bibliometrics, selected for those with ties > 0.45 & at sharing at least 2% of their citation volume.

Source: Loet Leydesdorff

Building co-citation networks

Links in a co-citation network are constructed by measuring how similar each journal is to every other journal.

Similarity is gauged by correlating the pattern of citations received by each journals from every other journal.

Intellectual integrationView from 30,000ft

Density = 0.197N=152Isolates (not shown): 5

Economics co-citation similarity network

Node size proportional to log(degree)

Intellectual integrationView from 30,000ft

Political Science co-citation similarity network

Density = 0.160N=69Isolates (not shown): 10

Node size proportional to log(degree)

Intellectual integrationView from 30,000ft

Sociology co-citation similarity network

Density = 0.140N=69

Isolates : 7

Intellectual integrationView from 30,000ft

(2005)

Intellectual integration

(2005)

Intellectual integration

(2009) – really no substantive change, some growth

Intellectual integration

Intellectual integration

• Sociology “fits” at the center of the social sciences. We are not as internally cohesive as Economics or Law, but more so than many (anthropology, allied health fields).

• This represents a tradeoff. We have traded unique dominance of a topic (markets, politics, mind, space) for diversity & thus centrality.

• Sociology is an interstitial discipline in at least two-senses:

• There is no content topic we can reasonably exclude• We pull together, and generate, the ideas and topics covered by

specialty disciplines.

• This makes us uniquely positioned to provide insights on many different empirical questions; but also makes it difficult to recognize disciplinary coherence. Intellectual coherence rests on a common intellectual core…does sociology have one?

Intellectual integrationView from 30,000ft

Citation Distributions

50% of papers

6

90% of papers

56

Intellectual integrationWhat gets noticed?

WoS corpus, 1970-2015

Non-SRA paper

SRA paper

About 0.4% of SRA papers go uncited

About 16% of non-sra papers go uncited

Notes some of the most cited papers are non-SRA…

Citation Distributions

WoS corpus, 1970-2015

Intellectual integrationWhat gets noticed?

Intellectual integrationWhat gets noticed?

Intellectual integrationWhat gets noticed?

Intellectual integrationWhat gets noticed?

Intellectual integration:Within-Discipline Citation Structure

In practice, Sociologists recognize a common set of works. This is the co-citation core for the most commonly cited papers…

Intellectual integration: Topic Structures

Soc Abs Corpus

Sample restricted to just those with more than 1 publication in a core sociology journal, Soc Abs Corpus

(compiled)

Equality

Intellectual integration: Topic StructuresTopical Specialization(Soc only Sample)

Expanding to all clusters identified over this same 10-year period (color indicates k-core level; a measure of cohesion)

692 clustersMean size: 45 (std=30)Min=12, max=203:

A fine grained view: Content(Soc only Sample)

Intellectual integration: Topic Structures

Our lack of specializations create topical connectivity

Intellectual integration: Brief summary

• Big Picture: Sociology is centrally located; lacking a strong boundary

• But, a set of key papers (many published in the 70s and 80s) provide explanatory power and are mutually recognized by top producers

• The distribution of recognition is highly unequal; which for science suggests agreement

• Explanation is about verbs: how and why things get done, and we have a cohesive set of such works.

• Topical diversity is large, but authors migrate between adjacent topics in cross-cutting ways..

• Which generates heavy topical cohesion (even before you add in bridges created through collaboration)

• Collaboration provides the social dimension of disciplinary integration…

Social integration: Collaboration

Mean number of authors per paper

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus. Since 1970, 46% of all papers are collaborative.

Mean number of authors per paper

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus. SRA authored papers are about 2.4 times more likely to be coauthored

SRA Authors

Non SRA Authors

Social integration: Collaboration

Papers indexed by SocAbs 1965-2012

Social integration: Collaboration

Collaboration Variability across journals

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100

Coauthorship Rank

Prop

ortio

n of

pap

ers

w. >

1 au

thor

AJS

Soc.Forces

ASR

Soc.Theory

Signs

AtcaPolitica

J. Soc.History

J.Am.Statistical A.

J. Health &Soc. Beh.

Child Development

Sociological Abstracts, 1963-1999*; The figures through 2015 WoS sample are similar …more journals and a slightly steeper curve…

Social integration: Collaboration

Short-term connectivity:Overall connectivity is increasing over time

Sociological Abstracts, core sociology journals only, 5-year moving average

Social integration: Collaboration

Total number of unique collaboratorsNon-SRA members

SRA members

Social integration: Collaboration

Collaboration results in an expansive network

Largest collaboration component amongst SRA members

92% of SRA members are connected to each other within the full WoS corpus;

Social integration: Collaboration

Closeness Centrality*

Non-SRA members

SRA members

*Only applicable for those in the largest component

Social integration: Collaboration

Why?

Social integration: Collaboration

How do we account for the increase in collaboration volume and cohesion over time?

Universalist Science model:• Change in nature of the work requires team production• Tools are largely content-free and thus methodologists float across topics• Theories are similarly empirically portable (though more constrained than

methods)• Creativity and new ideas derive from bridging methods & areas

Cynical Market Model:• Market for PhDs is acceleration, requiring longer CVs to win, leading to more

(but “softer”) faculty-student publications• Striving for “interdisciplinary work”: token names on grants from different fields

• Seems inconsistent w. the coherence of topics mixing, but can’t rule it out entirely…

Intra-disciplinary discipline model:• Sociology is a unique field; positioned at the cross-roads of many social

sciences. This creates a wide individual variance in topics that create linkages across distinct sub-disciplinary areas.

Social Integration

Inte

llect

ual I

nteg

ratio

n

Completely Fractured:People working (largely) alone w. idiosyncratic theory, data and methods

Opportunistic CollaborationWork with others in ad-hoc manner to promote particular projects, but no work done to link ideas across projects.

Archival IntegrationWell-defined problem frontiers and techniques allow individuals to build on each other’s work independently

Integration Space for Scientific Disciplines

Sociological integration: Linking Collaboration and Knowledge Production

Complete IntegrationPeople working with each other & employing similar theoretical toolkits

Complete IntegrationPeople working with each other & employing similar theoretical toolkits

Social Integration

Inte

llect

ual I

nteg

ratio

nOrganic IntegrationPeople working with each other, but on diverse and distinct topics employing cross-pollinating theoretical and methodological tools

Completely Fractured:People working (largely) alone w. idiosyncratic theory, data and methods

Opportunistic CollaborationWork with others in ad-hoc manner to promote particular projects, but no work done to link ideas across projects.

Archival IntegrationWell-defined problem frontiers and techniques allow individuals to build on each other’s work independently

Integration Space for Scientific Disciplines

Sociological integration: Linking Collaboration and Knowledge Production

Sociological integration: Good news:

• Socially cohesive discipline with• Increasingly clustered topical structure• Moderately cohesive citation structure

• Individually diverse publication trajectories – low specialization levels

• Coauthors cross (sub)disciplines quickly

• This is the structure of Organic Solidarity in science; contrasts with the naïve view of a discipline as united under one singular point of view (Econ is closer, it appears, to this). But not clear that’s a bad thing..• Sociology as an Accidental Science

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Average number of pages* per paper

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus. *Yes, pages is a silly metric due to different word counts…but wait…

Papers are getting longer…

SRA Authors

Non SRA-Authors

Average number of pages* per paper

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus. *Yes, pages is a silly metric due to different word counts…but wait…

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Artic

le L

engt

h (e

stim

ated

wor

ds)

Goodman (1974)

Padgett & McLean (2006)

Maris (1970)

Aral & Van Alstyne (2010)

Goldstone (1986)

Powell et al. (2005)

Boorman & White (1976)

DiMaggio et al. (1996)

Giordanno et al. (2002)

Estimated number of words per paper, ASR/AJS

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Artic

le L

engt

h (e

stim

ated

wor

ds)

A simple model suggests SRA authors are about 25% more likely to publish papers in the top 10%of the length distribution , in any given year. Some of you are multiple offenders…

Estimated number of words per paper, ASR/AJS

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Average number of references per paper

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Average number of references per paper

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus. SRA authors are about 1.2 times more likely to be in the top 10% of bibliography lengths, within journal and year (decreasing over time)

Has SRA Author

Non SRA Author

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Average number of word in the title

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus.

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Average number of word in the title

Excludes obvious notes/comments/responses; full WoS Sociology+ corpus. SRA authors are less likely than average, since 2003.

Publication of Moody’s landmark paper on title length…

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

Number of papers published each year…

Note these are accepted papers, What reviewer load is implied here?

• Assume 25% of papers submitted disappear• Papers are reviewed by 2.5 people..• And go through 1.5 review cycles

Our papers are getting longer and more heavily referenced.• Ho: This is both cause and consequence of our current review system.

Publication PatternsWhat to worry about next…

…results in many required reviews.

This implies a need for about 26K reviews in 2014(and the shape of the curve is not promising)

Our papers are getting longer and more heavily referenced.• Ho: This is both cause and consequence of our current review system.

Solutions?Let’s try an alternative mode of publication…