TY - JOUR
T1 - Citation Elites in Polytheistic and Umbrella Disciplines
T2 - Patterns of Stratification and Concentration in Danish and British Science
AU - Kladakis, Alexander
AU - Mongeon, Philippe
AU - Bloch, Carter W.
PY - 2024/9
Y1 - 2024/9
N2 - The notion of science as a stratified system is clearly manifested in the markedly uneven distribution of productivity, rewards, resources, and recognition. Although previous studies have shown that institutional environments for conducting research differ significantly between national science systems, disciplines, and subfields, it remains to be shown whether any systematic variations and patterns in inequalities exist among researchers in different national and domain specific settings. This study investigates the positioning of citation elites as opposed to ‘ordinary’ researchers by way of examining three dimensions of concentration (accumulation of publications and citations, specialisation, and institutional concentration) in biology, economics and physics in Denmark and the UK. Across all three dimensions, we put Richard Whitley’s bipartite theory to the test, suggesting a nexus between the intellectual structure of a discipline and the configuration of its elite. The study draws on a dataset of researchers who published most of their publications in either physics, biology, or economics over the 1980–2018 period and with at least one publication in 2017–2018 while affiliated to either a British or a Danish university. We find higher degrees of concentration in the UK compared to Denmark, and that physics and biology respectively display the greatest and lowest degree of concentration. Similar patterns in disciplinary differences are observed in both countries, suggesting that concentration patterns are largely rooted in disciplinary cultures and merely amplified by the national context.
AB - The notion of science as a stratified system is clearly manifested in the markedly uneven distribution of productivity, rewards, resources, and recognition. Although previous studies have shown that institutional environments for conducting research differ significantly between national science systems, disciplines, and subfields, it remains to be shown whether any systematic variations and patterns in inequalities exist among researchers in different national and domain specific settings. This study investigates the positioning of citation elites as opposed to ‘ordinary’ researchers by way of examining three dimensions of concentration (accumulation of publications and citations, specialisation, and institutional concentration) in biology, economics and physics in Denmark and the UK. Across all three dimensions, we put Richard Whitley’s bipartite theory to the test, suggesting a nexus between the intellectual structure of a discipline and the configuration of its elite. The study draws on a dataset of researchers who published most of their publications in either physics, biology, or economics over the 1980–2018 period and with at least one publication in 2017–2018 while affiliated to either a British or a Danish university. We find higher degrees of concentration in the UK compared to Denmark, and that physics and biology respectively display the greatest and lowest degree of concentration. Similar patterns in disciplinary differences are observed in both countries, suggesting that concentration patterns are largely rooted in disciplinary cultures and merely amplified by the national context.
KW - Citation concentration
KW - Citation elites
KW - High and low consensus disciplines
KW - National comparison
KW - Patterned inequalities
KW - Stratification in science
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85187302060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11024-024-09521-7
DO - 10.1007/s11024-024-09521-7
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85187302060
SN - 0026-4695
VL - 62
SP - 397
EP - 426
JO - Minerva
JF - Minerva
IS - 3
ER -