Journal citation among heterodox economists 1995‐2007: dynamics of community emergence

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the pattern among 17 heterodox economic journals over a prolonged period to provide evidence about the social dynamics among the group of researchers who publish in them and the extent to which they hold or develop a collective identity as heterodox economists.Design/methodology/approachTraditional approaches to citation analysis are extended by the use of techniques from social network analysis. In addition to citation counts, measures of network position and clique membership are used to identify key journals and turning points in a longitudinal analysis.FindingsImportant shifts in the nature of citation within the network of journals are identified in the 1998‐2001 period and evidence is found of the emergence of a collective identity.Research limitations/implicationsThe methods prove a valuable extension of citation analysis and also focus greater consideration on the social relationships that citations represent. They are well suited to addressing the principal limitation of the study, its restriction to journals within the defined community rather than journals in general.Originality/valueThis extends traditional approaches to citation analysis, provides an important new technique in identifying emergent collective identities and provides insight into the history and nature of the heterodox economic community.

Orthodox Core–Heterodox Periphery? Contrasting Citation Networks of Economics Departments in Vienna

“…Recently, network graphs have also been used to illustrate citation patterns. Cronin (2008) uses citations between heterodox journals from 1995 to 2007 to show the changing position of journals within the heterodox group over time. Similarly, Dolfsma and Leydesdorff (2008) use social network analysis to visualize the structural properties of a set of key heterodox journals.…”

The Diffusion of Heterodox Economics

“…Each citation of an article in a heterodox journal by an article in another journal was counted as an observation. The citation data were analyzed as a cumulative social network (for an examination of citation patterns among heterodox journals themselves, see Cronin 2008) using UCINET 6.0 and NETDRAW 2.1 software (Borgatti et al. 2002) to map the network of journal interrelationships formed by cross‐journal citations.…”

“…As a field self‐defined outside the disciplinary core of economics, heterodox economics faces the challenge of maintaining its own core while developing complementarity with the hierarchically ordered adjacent fields. This study therefore aims to extend existing research on the constitution of the heterodox economic community (Cronin 2008; Dolfsma and Leydesdorff 2008; Lee 2008) to explore its interactions with adjacent subdisciplines of economics, making use of the emergent bibliometric applications of social network analysis. By examining the borders of the subfield of heterodox economics formed by interjournal citation these techniques provide a means to identify adjacent or overlapping subfields.…”

Research Quality Rankings of Heterodox Economic Journals in a Contested Discipline

“…Alternatively, a journal may be significant not because it engages with journals that are highly central, but because it spans parts of the discipline that are otherwise weakly connected, a brokering role termed betweenness centrality (BC). SNA also allows the identification of groups of more closely related journals, that is, different regions of a network (k‐cores), and the discrimination of different roles in brokering situations between these groups, such as representing or gate‐keeping in relation to a group (Bonacich 1972; Freeman 1979; Seidman 1983; Cronin 2008; Dolfsma and Leydesdorff 2008).…”

“…In Lee (2008a, 2009) and Lee, Grijalva, and Nowell (2010) a case is made for ranking heterodox economic journals, a ranking methodology developed, and a select group of 17 and 20 heterodox journals ranked. Dolfsma and Leydesdorff (2008) and Cronin (2008) examined the same heterodox journals to explore their network relationships relative to the formation of a community of heterodox economists that engaged in common theoretical and applied pursuits and utilized a common theoretical language. In addition, Lee, Grijalva, and Nowell (2010) argue that the research quality measures used to rank mainstream and heterodox journals can be combined to produce a single overall quality‐equality ranking of economic journals.…”