Academic discipline
An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined (in part), and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to which their practitioners belong.
Pierce (1991, p. 22-23) writes: "Although most studies fail to define the term [discipline] explicitly, they typically assume that boundaries of disciplines closely follows those of academic departments. The use of such boundaries may seem to fix overly concrete limits on a highly abstract phenomenon, excluding too large a number of people with interest in the subject. But its importance in creating and maintaining disciplinary communities makes the academic department the building block from which disciplines are created".[1]
Fields of study usually have several sub-disciplines or branches, and the distinguishing lines between these are often both arbitrary and ambiguous.[2]
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[edit] History of the concept
"The scientific discipline as the primary unit of internal differentiation of science is an invention of nineteenth century society. There exists a long semantic prehistory of disciplina as a term for the ordering of knowledge for the purposes of instruction in schools and universities.".[3]
Some researchers find that academic disciplines seem to be replaced by what is termed Mode 2[4] or "post academic science".[5]
[edit] Functions and criticism
"The disciplines characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate." (Foucault, 1975/1979, p 223.[6])
[edit] Bibliometric studies of disciplines
Bibliometrics can be used to map several issues in relation to disciplines, for example the flow of ideas within and among disciplines (Lindholm-Romantschuk, 1998) [7] or the existence of specific national traditions within disciplines.[8]
[edit] See also
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[edit] Notes
- ^ Pierce, S. J. (1991). Subject areas, disciplines and the concept of authority. LISR [Library and Information Science Research], 13, 21-35.
- ^ Andrew Abbott, Chaos of Disciplines University Of Chicago Press 2001 ISBN 0-226-00101-6
- ^ Stichweh, R. (2001). Scientific Disciplines, History of. IN: Smelser, N. J. & Baltes, P. B. (eds.). International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Elsevier Science (pp. 13727-13731).
- ^ Gibbons, Michael; Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott, & Martin Trow (1994). The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage.
- ^ Ziman, John (2000). Real Science. What it is, and what it means.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Foucault, Michel (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage.(Translation of: Surveiller et punir; naissance de la prison. [Paris] : Gallimard, 1975).
- ^ Lindholm-Romantschuk, Y. (1998). Scholarly book reviewing in the social sciences and humanities. The flow of ideas within and among disciplines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
- ^ Ohlsson, H. (1999). Is there a Scandinavian psychology? A bibliometric note on the publication profiles of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 40, 235-239.
[edit] References
Association for Integrative Studies http://www.units.muohio.edu/aisorg/
Dogan, Mattei & Pahre, R. (1990). The fate of formal disciplines: from coherence to dispersion. In Creative marginality: innovation at the intersections of social sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview. pp. 85–113.
Dullemeijer, P. (1980). Dividing biology into disciplines: Chaos or multiformity? Journal Acta Biotheoretica, 29(2), 87-93.
Gibbons, M.; Limoges, C.; Nowotny, H.; Schwartzman,S.; Scott, P. & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage.
Golinski, Jan (1998/2005). Making natural knowledge. Constructivis, and the history of science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2: Identity and discipine. Part II: The disciplinary mold (pp. 66–78).
Hicks, Diana (2004). The four literatures of social science. IN: Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research: The Use of Publication and Patent Statistics in Studies of S&T Systems. Ed. Henk Moed. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.http://www.tpac.gatech.edu/papers/4lit.PDF
Hyland, Ken (2004). Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. New edition. University of Michigan Press/ESL.
Klein, J. T. (1990). Interdisciplinarity. History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Leydesdorff, Loet & Rafols, Ismael. (2008). A global map of science based on the ISI subject categories. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. The decomposition of scientific literature into disciplinary and subdisciplinary structures is one of the core goals of scientometrics. How can we achieve a good decomposition? The ISI subject categories classify journals included in the Science Citation Index (SCI). The aggregated journal-journal citation matrix contained in the Journal Citation Reports can be aggregated on the basis of these categories. This leads to an asymmetrical matrix (citing versus cited) that is much more densely populated than the underlying matrix at the journal level. Exploratory factor analysis of the matrix of subject categories suggests a 14-factor solution. This solution could be interpreted as the disciplinary structure of science.
Lindholm-Romantschuk, Y. (1998). Scholarly book reviewing in the social sciences and humanities. The flow of ideas within and among disciplines. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Martin, B. (1998). Information Liberation: Challenging the corruptions of information power. London: Freedom Press. Book freely available at: http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/98il/ilall.pdf
Morillo, F.; Bordons, M. & Gomez, I. (2003). Interdisciplinarity in science: A tentative typology of disciplines and research areas Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(13), 1237-1249.
Morillo, F.; Bordons, M; & Gomez, I. (2001). An approach to interdisciplinarity bibliometric indicators. Scientometrics, 51(1), 203-222.
Newell, A. (1983). Reflections on the structure of an interdiscipline. In Machlup, F. & U. Mansfield (Eds.), The study of information: Interdisciplinary messages (pp. 99–110). NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Pierce, S. J. (1991). Subject areas, disciplines and the concept of authority. LISR [Library and Information Science Research], 13, 21-35.
Porter, A. L.; Roessner, J. D.; Cohen, A. S. & Perreault, M. (2006). Interdisciplinary research: meaning, metrics and nurture. Research Evaluation, 15(3), 187-195.
Prior, Paul (1998). Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Lawrence Erlbaum. (Rhetoric, Knowledge and Society Series)
Qin, J.; Lancaster, F. W. & Allen, B. (1997). Types and levels of collaboration in interdisciplinary research in the sciences. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(10), 893-916.
Rinia, E. J.; van Leeuwen, T. N.; Bruins, E. E. W.; van Vuren, H. G. & van Raan, A. F. J. (2002). Measuring knowledge transfer between fields of science. Scientometrics, 54(3), 347-362.
Sanz-Menendez, L.; Bordons, M. & Zulueta, M. A. (2001). Interdisciplinarity as a multidimensional concept: its measure in three different research areas. Research Evaluation, 10(1), 47-58.
Stichweh, R. (2001). Scientific Disciplines, History of. IN: Smelser, N. J. & Baltes, P. B. (eds.). International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Elsevier Science (pp. 13727–13731).
Szostak, R. (2000). Superdisciplinarity: A Simple Definition of Interdisciplinarity With Profound Implications. Association for Integrative Studies, Portland, Oregon, October, 2000. (Meeting presentation)
Tengström, E. (1993). Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskapen - ett fler- eller tvärvetenskapligt område? Svensk Biblioteksforskning(1), 9-20.
Tomov, D. T.& Mutafov, H. G. (1996). Comparative indicators of interdisciplinarity in modern science. Scientometrics, 37(2), 267-278.
van Leeuwen, T. N. & Tijssen, R. J. W. (1993). Assessing multidisciplinary areas of science and technology - A synthetic bibliometric study of Dutch nuclear-energy research. Scientometrics, 26(1), 115-133.
van Leeuwen, T. N. & Tijssen, R. J. W. (2000). Interdisciplinary dynamics of modern science: analysis of cross-disciplinary citation flows. Research Evaluation, 9(3), 183-187.
Weisgerber, D. W. (1993). Interdisciplinary searching - problems and suggested remedies - A Report from the ICSTI Group on Interdisciplinary Searching. Journal of Documentation, 49(3), 231-254.
Wittrock, B. (2001). Disciplines, History of, in the Social Sciences. IN: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, (pp. 3721–3728). Ed. By N. J. Smeltser & P. B. Baltes. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
