Abstract
AbstractThis article relies on the analysis of social networks to compare the networks at work in the composition of thesis committees between 2003 and 2008 in a French provincial university in three very different disciplines (astrophysics, archaeology, and economics) so as to test the hypothesis that connections actually existed before graduation. Were members coauthors of scientific publications or were committees constituted only for the sake of awarding a PhD? Astrophysics and its “equipment” ethos is the one that most often superimposes committee membership and copublishing. Archaeology falls somewhere in between, due to the greatest scarcity of committee members. The last of the three, economics, actually separates the two types of collaboration by most frequently inviting international researchers.
Highlights
Entering the field of science implies meeting a series of demands meant to test the graduate’s capacity to propose original scientific approaches and to comply with the requirements generally set and agreed to by the research community (Millett & Nettles, 2006)
This article relies on the analysis of social networks to compare the networks at work in the composition of thesis committees between 2003 and 2008 in a French provincial university in three very different disciplines so as to test the hypothesis that connections existed before graduation
Economics is oriented more towards humanities or fundamental mathematics (Hagstrom, 1964) and values individual production. We found that this overall organization of publication modalities in astrophysics, archaeology, and economics was the case and should be contemplated as the background to the various specific patterns of copublishing practices as instantiated at the time of a thesis defense
Summary
Entering the field of science implies meeting a series of demands meant to test the graduate’s capacity to propose original scientific approaches and to comply with the requirements generally set and agreed to by the research community (Millett & Nettles, 2006). We use social network analysis (SNA) to reveal the various types of thesis validation communities This methodological and heuristic choice relies on a great number of research works carried out in sociology of science (Katz & Martin, 1997; Kretschmer, 1994; Moody, 2004; Newman, 2001, 2004). Our investigation focuses on the formation of PhD thesis committees in three research departments from 2003 to 2008 in the city of Toulouse, France The choice of this specific period allows us to grasp the way thesis committees were formed before the significant institutional changes that affected the French university system in 2009: a generalized trend to shorten thesis duration (including in social sciences), parity of standards in the constitution of juries, and the gradual disappearance of unfunded theses.
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