The art of ignoring others’ work among academics: A guessing game model of scholarly information search

Abstract

Why do scholars pay attention to some works, but not others? This article explores a theoretical model in which scholars search the literature to make sure that their findings are new to their immediate audience. Within the present model, individuals easily disregard literatures of which their audiences are probably unaware. Institutionally organized audiences thus serve as enforcers of the information search. Their members may tacitly collaborate in maintaining unawareness of intellectual developments outside of their common attention space. This model allows us to explain phenomena on which earlier models fail – for example why academics sometimes ignore apparently relevant sources of information or how groups of scholars turn into bubbles, censoring information about findings made in the outside world.