Scholarly Communication in AERA Journals, 1931 to 2014

Abstract

Scientific disciplines build on social structures, such as scholarly associations and scholarly journals, that facilitate the formation of communities of specialists. Analyses of such social structures can thus also be used to shed light on the morphogenesis of scientific specializations. The authors analyze how two journals of the American Educational Research Association, the Review of Educational Research and the American Educational Research Journal, organized communication around education in the period between 1931 and 2014. The authors focus on three interrelated aspects: (a) the changing structures of authority and authorship, (b) the national-versus-global orientation of these journals and of the association, and (c) the features of the citation networks of both journals and the ties between education research and other fields of research, especially psychology and sociology. The authors’ analyses of these interrelated aspects of the communication process enable them to provide an outline of the morphology of the community of education researchers and to raise reflectivity about the social conditions that control education research.