On the Scientific Discourse Practice in Psychology: Professional Comments and Replies in Different Subdisciplines of Psychology up to 2015

Günter Krampen

doi:10.2174/1874350101710010019

Abstract

Background: Scientific communications—including criticisms, comments, and replies—are a significant foundation of scientific progress. Objective: To give an overview on the frequency of written professional comments and replies published in the subdisciplines of psychology till 2015. Method: Scientometric analyses refer to the psychological databases PsycINFO and PSYNDEX. Results: Firstly, the results show that 2.8% of PsycINFO and 2.2% of PSYNDEX documents refer to scientific discourse. However, time trends were different, which increased (up to 3.6% at the millennium) and then decreased (2.4% in 2013-2015) in PsycINFO, with an up-and-down trajectory in PSYNDEX (decreasing from 3.5% before 1982 to 2.2% in the 1990s, an increase up to 3.1% at the millennium, and a continuous decrease to 0.9% in 2013-2015). Secondly, distinct differences were observed between the subdisciplines of psychology and with reference to both databases: psychological/health personnel issues, psychology & the humanities, clinical psychology, history & systems, and personality psychology received the most comments and replies in PsycINFO, and educational psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and intelligent systems the least. Most comments and replies related to PSYNDEX were found in sport psychology/leisure, personality psychology, consumer psychology, and experimental psychology, and the least are found in publications on intelligent systems, animal/comparative psychology, history & systems of psychology, and military psychology. Conclusion: The results are collectively discussed (1) with respect to other indicators of scientific discourse in psychology and other sciences and (2) with respect to the different cultures of scientific discourse between the subdisciplines of psychology in the Anglo-American vs. the German-speaking countries.

Highlights

Scientific communications—including argumentations, criticisms, plaudits, professional comments, and replies—1874-3501/17 2017 Bentham Open20 The Open Psychology Journal, 2017, Volume 10Günter Krampen are a significant foundation of scientific progress and inventions
In a stratified random sample of 90 psychological journal articles published in three English- and three German-language journals in the publication years 1985, 1990, and 1995, it was shown that the most citations referred to empirical results (30%), theoretical considerations (20%), and methods (9%) in the cited original articles—or they are very general without specific content (25%; e.g., “see, for an overview” or “see, for example “)
There were no significant differences in this low occurrence of critical citations between the three psychology sub-disciplines, the two publication languages, and the three publication years included in the analysis

Summary

Introduction

Scientific communications—including argumentations, criticisms, plaudits, professional comments, and replies—1874-3501/17 2017 Bentham Open20 The Open Psychology Journal, 2017, Volume 10Günter Krampen are a significant foundation of scientific progress and inventions. Since the beginning of science in the ancient world, such scientific discourse exists and will continue to exist within and between research teams, in teaching, at scientific meetings and congresses, and in scientific publications The latter, i.e. the written comments and replies, are somewhat more important, because they potentially reach a larger audience and—even more—they are enduring. Sociology, and demographics [2 - 4], the reported percentages of critical (“negative”) citations were between 5% and 14%, far beyond 1% scarce rate observed in psychology [1]. This is somewhat astonishing because psychology is frequently described as a theoretically and methodologically competitive and heterogeneous (positively formulated: a pluralistic) science. Scientific communications—including criticisms, comments, and replies—are a significant foundation of scientific progress

Methods

Results

Conclusion