Standardizing STS? The emergence of the typical journal article in science & technology studies Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner (Leiden University) Kean Birch (York University) Thed van Leeuwen (Leiden University) Maria Amuchastegui (York University)
The project • Partnership Development Grant by the Canadian SSHRC • … to study recent changes in the publishing landscape of STS – effects of metrics like the journal impact factor – changes in the political and moral economy of academic publishing – restructuring of the STS journal landscape, appearance of new journals with distinct profiles – changes in peer review and editorial practices due to growing numbers of submissions – implications of these developments for the epistemic substance of STS research? • Methods – Scientometric analysis of STS journals indexed in the Web of Science – 75 interviews with editors, editorial board members, referees, authors, representatives of publishing industry
The “typical” STS journal article “I think the number of formats that STS journals are open to is rather limited , also compared to other fields. (…) If you look at SSS and STHV, I think 99% of the articles have similar formats , you know, in-depth empirical research (…) very focused on very specific theoretical debates, proposing a new concept, very in depth, very solid, interesting if you are interested in that topic. But for example review papers, positioning papers, quantitative work – it’s not there .” (junior researcher, editorial board member)
The STS journal article Production of journal articles, 1981-2018 Outgoing references in journal articles, 1981-2018 • Production of Web of Science (WoS) articles increases steadily: More journals, but also more pages per journal • WoS articles increasingly refer to other WoS articles à growing importance of journal publications with an impact factor
Development of the article format Page length of articles, 1981-2018 Reference list length of articles, 1981-2018 • Convergence around a specific page length & number of references à standardization of the article format
Which factors have promoted the emergence of the “typical” STS article? 1. The political economy of scholarly publishing – Social sciences journals particularly dominated by the “Big Five” – Reduction of marginal costs through reliance on a standardized infrastructure for submission, and review and production of articles à presupposes a singular model of academic publishing – Subtle isomorphic pressure on journals, communicated through criteria for inclusion in WoS and through recommendations for increasing citations 2. The emergence of the “typical” journal article as part of a reaction to various new epistemic, social and institutional demands towards the work of STS scholars – Quasi-disciplinary differentiation of STS Increasingly competitive job market and new evaluative demands – – More project-based funding, STS-research often an add-on to policy-defined themes – Adoption of the lab model from the natural sciences … –
STS publishing in the 1980s: Diversity, experimentation & a degree of self-indulgence – Postmodern experimentation with writing styles and format : “Especially when you saw things, well when I was a graduate students in the late 80’s, early 90’s there were all kinds of, more or less, interesting experiments in terms of how to approach text and textuality . This stuff seems to kind of gone out the door. Look, it was indulgent in a lot of ways (…), but you know the new literary forms movement and all of that stuff that was going on, that seems like a million miles you know, a million years ago in a galaxy far far away . And no graduate student, I think, would really try to take on that kind of stuff anymore .” (Professor, editor) – Concern with precocious submission/publishing “I graduated with my PhD in 1988. The idea that I would publish anything when I was still a graduate student would have been considered absurd and presumptuous . Certainly I didn't know enough to go publish anything. Now, as you probably are aware, it's expected that if you get a PhD and go out in the job market you got to have publications. (…) So you got people who are not experienced enough to probably write anything worth a damn, you know. I didn't have anything interesting enough to say when I was 30 years old and if I did I didn't know how to say it because I didn't know how to write well enough .” (Professor, editorial board member )
STS publishing currently: Research as a pipeline, concern with effortless reception – Standard format facilitates differentiation of research process (grant writing/data collection/writing papers) But quantity prevails and it prevails in so many ways. It prevails in you need to get grants, so you need to have publications to get grants(…) And so you don’t spend enough time with each grant, you don’t go farther necessarily into what's useful or interesting. (…) I've given responsibility for writing up to postdocs or I have not been able to [write] because I've had to administer grants (…) for most of my academic career until seven years ago, I didn’t do any of my own data collection . (Professor, editorial board member) – Shopping around "I wonder whether it's part of the proliferation of journals in the field, as in, there are more places you can submit to, so it almost kind of lowers the stakes of getting a rejection . And if I get one from Big Data & society, maybe I can submit to Social Media & Society (...) again that's not a great way of going about writing quality work necessarily, but it's an option for people who want to quickly publish papers“ (junior researcher)
STS publishing currently: Research as a pipeline, concern with effortless reception – “Game-y” submissions “you read the manuscript and it is crafted in such a way that it attaches itself to literature (…) and it comes up with a new concept or it does something to innovate the field . But it’s, uhm, a little bit, almost game-y (…) making a big fanfare about launching a new concept . Then the idea is that in the title you can have that new concept, then people can cite you and quote you for that concept . But then when you look at what it actually is (…), then it’s like there is not a whole lot there. (…) When the emphasis becomes on just getting through and just of tick all the boxes of what an article is supposed to look like , I get a bit frustrated.” (editorial board member)
Implications for the content of STS research • Co-word analysis of STS abstracts – Main trend: Explicitly theoretical terms gradually fade into the background over time – Relation with disciplinary differentiation and increasing reliance on project-based funding (?) – The standard article format facilitates both developments: decoupling of writing and funding, suited for contributing to established conceptual traditions Figure 7 (1991-1995) Figure 8 (2000-2005) Figure 8 (2006-2011)
Discussion • The emergence of the typical STS article as the result of a collective adaptation to changing constraints: …regarding productivity in a highly competitive job market, grant-dependence, increasingly collaborative research, growth and differentiation of the field… Ø shows that the scholarly communication system itself is restructured as a result of STS trying to find its way in the academic lifeworld of the 21s century (cf. Mueller, 2014; Sigl, 2016; Fochler & Sigl, 2018) • Standardization of publishing formats in the natural sciences has proven very productive – growing agreement on research frontiers, ability to share and concentrate epistemic and practical resources (Bazerman, 1988) • In a field like STS, growing standardization is probably a mixed bag: – Standardization facilitates empirical diversity of research topics, makes individual researchers more flexible... – But also: Preemptive “safe behavior” promotes various kinds of black-boxing – Intellectual choices replaced by risk management strategies – Opportunistic attempts to optimize effortless reception and citations – Promotes accelerated production of articles and career specialization early one – Changes the intellectual culture of STS and scholarly subjectivities – …
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