Abstract
In this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of institutional stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy; (2) economists strongly conform to institutional incentives; and (3) modern mainstream economics is a largely self-referential intellectual project mostly inaccessible to disciplinary or paradigmatic outsiders. The validity of these claims is assessed by means of an interdisciplinary comparison of citation patterns aiming to identify peculiar characteristics of economic discourse. In doing so, we emphasize that citation data can always be interpreted in different ways, thereby focusing on the contrast between a "cognitive" and an "evaluative" approach towards citation data.
Highlights
Scientometrics is the attempt to better understand the nature of scientific discourse by employing and analyzing quantitative data as it emerges from scientific exchanges (Mingers & Leydesdorff 2015)
In this paper we use the peculiar case of economics as an example for illustrating the partially stark differences arising from these two different points of view
We have shown how citation patterns in current economics systematically differ from patterns found in other disciplines and thereby further substantiated past results regarding the peculiar disciplinary character of academic economics (e.g. Dobusch & Kapeller 2009; Fourcade et al 2015; Leijonhufvud 1973; Morgan 1988)
Summary
Scientometrics is the attempt to better understand the nature of scientific discourse by employing and analyzing quantitative data as it emerges from scientific exchanges (Mingers & Leydesdorff 2015). Thereby, we expect our results to reflect the disciplinary character of economics: we assume to find higher degrees of discursive concentration, a higher responsiveness towards incentives, and a greater propensity to engage in inward-looking or exclusionary styles of research and discourse While such findings would lend additional support to the diagnosis that economics is an exceptionally insular and hierarchical research field (Fourcade et al 2015), we hope to provide some clues on which factors – e.g. disciplinary culture, core theoretical ideas, or paradigmatic prejudices – do contribute to the emergence of these peculiarities of economics as an academic discipline.
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