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Changing publication and citation patterns in political science in Germany

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Abstract

By analyzing the complete 2003–2007 publication lists of two top-ranking political science departments in Germany, this study explores the publication patterns of German political scientists and also analyzes their citation and reference characteristics. Two main communication networks in the publication patterns of German political scientists are distinguished in this study. The significant local communication network covers monographs and regionally-oriented journals that are mainly written in German. Its importance has slightly decreased over time. By contrast, the relatively smaller international one, which covers international publications in English, increased its volume slightly. The younger political scientists have more internationally-oriented publication behaviors, and thus would benefit in an evaluation from an international perspective. The average impact of WoS-indexed items in this study was found to be higher than the average impact in political science. In general, a growing degree of international orientation in this field can be expected as time elapses.

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Notes

  1. Only 1 article among 221 journal articles of 33 professors in the dataset was published in American Journal of Political Science.

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Acknowledgments

This study is based on a previous work presented at the 75th ASIS&T Annual Meeting (Chi 2012), and supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF, project number 01PQ08004A). The author would like to thank Paul Donner, Sybille Hinze, Stefan Hornbostel, Vivien Petras, Jasmin Schmitz, Daniel Sirtes, Gunnar Sivertsen, Andreas Strotmann, Bart Thijs and Thed van Leeuwen, those who contribute to improve the current and previous versions. The citation data used in this paper are from a bibliometric database developed and maintained by the Competence Center for Bibliometrics for the German Science System (KB) and derived from the 2003 to 2012 Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) provided by Thomson Reuters (Scientific) Inc. (TR®), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: ©Copyright Thomson Reuters (Scientific) 2012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ECOOM and Dept. MSI, KU Leuven, Waaistraat 6, 3000, Louvain, Belgium

    Pei-Shan Chi

  2. iFQ – Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance, Schützenstraße 6a, 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Pei-Shan Chi

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Correspondence to Pei-Shan Chi.

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Chi, PS. Changing publication and citation patterns in political science in Germany. Scientometrics 105, 1833–1848 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1609-3

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