An Overview of Our Profession Using Bibliographic Data and a Co-Authorship Network

Patterns of Publishing in Political Science Journals: An Overview of Our Profession Using Bibliographic Data and a Co-Authorship Network

by Thomas Metz, University of Freiburg (Germany) and , University of Freiburg (Germany)

We draw a map of the social network that makes up the global political science community. Based on the idea that two scientists who have written a paper together will know each other quite well, we have collected data on more than 67,000 articles published between 1990 and 2013 in today‘s 96 most important journals. Connecting those researchers that wrote a paper together, we have built a network of more than 40,000 individuals active in political science during that time and investigated their patterns of publishing. What we see is that the community of political scientists forms a tightly integrated social network (indeed, more tightly integrated than many other sciences), yet a substantial number of authors remains unconnected since they prefer to publish on their own. In terms of output, we find that a comparatively small number of scientists is highly productive while most individuals publish only a single article, suggesting that the field is very dynamic. During the 23 years surveyed, the community has grown more tightly connected and by today, most research output is the work of many hands although the trend is still strongest among colleagues active in empirical research.

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PS: Political Science & Politics / Volume 50, Issue 1 / January 2017, pp. 157-165