Les mandarins et la horde bibliométrique

Fie, foh, and fum, smelling the work of other urban scholars

“…In Italy, why has the UrbEur doctoral program of the University of Milan-Bicocca been included, when it is neither a research center nor particularly multidisciplinary? These are just a few examples from the national academic contexts that I know best (Authier et al, 2019; Cousin, 2015, 2017; Cousin and Demazière, 2014a, 2014b; Cousin and Lamont, 2009, 2020; Cousin et al, 2022), but I could have kept going on and am sure colleagues familiar with other areas of the world share similar interrogations. Furthermore, and as partially acknowledged by the author himself, the dataset of publications built using Scopus is skewed toward peer-reviewed articles in English, while it captures only partially other formats that might still be valued in several national contexts, especially when urban scholars try to participate in the public debate and influence policies.…”