So Poor We Can't Even Pay Attention: Identifying Important Serials for Political Science during the Great Recession

Abstract

Determining the best journals to support an academic discipline is often a challenge. The article examines the most prominent political science journals and discusses a method for using the ISI Web of Science database to identify titles that the local academic faculty are using to support their scholarship.

Keywords:

• political science
• Web of Science
• bibliometrics

Notes

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Membership information per phone call to APSA headquarters on June 29, 2009.

2. A number of sources are useful for an understanding of both the history and the methodological evolution of political science scholarship over the past 100 years. Excellent intellectual overviews can be found in Bernard Crick, The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959) and David M. Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship and Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). For historical background, see Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (New York: Irvington Publishers, Inc., 1982). Also valuable for its learned perspective is Gabriel A. Almond's chapter entitled “Political Science: The History of the Discipline” in A New Handbook of Political Science, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 50–96. Evron M. Kirkpatrick provides additional historical context in his chapter, “From Past to Present,” in Foundation of Political Science: Research, Methods, and Scope, ed. Donald M. Freeman (New York: Free Press, 1977), 3–41. A recent overview of the condition of the profession is found in Ira Katznelson and Helen V. Milner, “American Political Science: The Discipline's State and the State of the Discipline,” the introductory chapter in their highly significant co-edited work, Political Science: The State of the Discipline (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 1–26. Even more recently, Richard E. Goodin surveyed the current status of his profession with his informative essay, “The State of the Discipline, the Discipline of the State,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, ed. Robert E. Goodin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3–57. Finally the larger disciplinary context for the growth of political science as a distinct academic enterprise is provided by Dorothy Ross in her classic The Origins of American Social Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

3. “What is Political Science,” http://www.apsanet.org/content_9181.cfm?navID=727 (accessed June 29, 2009).

4. For a comparison of the 1930s to the 1980s, see Dean Astle and Charles Hamaker, “Journal Publishing: Pricing and Structual Issues in the 1930s and the 1980s,” Advances in Serials Management 2 (1988): 1–36. On the German serials pricing controversy, see Hendrik Edelman, “Precursor to the Serials Crisis: German Science Publishing in the 1930s,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 25 (April 1994): 171–178. Another good source for scholarly assessments of economic challenges in the more recent past is Richard E. Abel and Lyman W. Newlin, eds., Scholarly Publishing: Books, Journals, Publishers, and Libraries in the Twentieth Century (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002). Similarly, the contemporary grim serials budget environment for smaller academic institutions is critiqued by John S. Spencer and Christopher Millson-Martula, “Serials Cancellations in College and Small University Libraries: The National Scene,” Serials Librarian 9, no. 4 (2006): 135–155.

5. For some insights into current thinking about the ongoing difficulties in sustaining contemporary scholarly communication, see Hillary Corbett, “The Crisis in Scholarly Communication, Part I: Understanding the Issues and Engaging Your Faculty,” Technical Services Quarterly 26, no. 2 (2009): 125–134; and Faye A. Chadwell, “What's Next for Collection Management and Managers?” Collection Management 34 (January–March 2009): 3–18.

6. For three excellent overviews of what core journals are and how they are identified, see Thomas E. Nisonger, “Journals in the Core Collection: Definition, Identification, and Applications,” Serials Librarian 51, nos. 3/4 (2007): 51–73; Thomas E. Nisonger, “The 80/20 Rule and Core Journals,” Serials Librarian 55, nos. 1/2 (2008): 62–84; and Katherine Corby, “Constructing Core Journal Lists: Mixing Science and Alchemy,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 3, no. 2 (2003): 207–217. For a recent impressive analysis of a huge set of articles published at Ohio State University, see Sarah Anne Murphy, “The Effects of Portfolio Purchasing on Scientific Subject Collections,” College & Research Libraries 69 (July 2008): 332–340.

7. For a recent well-crafted article that assesses political science journals by reputation, see James C. Garand and Michael W. Giles, “Journals in the Discipline: A Report on a New Survey of American Political Scientists,” PS: Political Science & Politics 36 (April 2003): 293–308. Loet Leydesdorff examines some of the new approaches and tools available for citation analysis in his “How are New Citation-Based Journal Indicators Adding to the Bibliometric Toolbox?” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60 (July 2009): 1327–1336.

8. Thomas E. Nisonger, “Journals of the Century in Political Science and International Relations,” Serials Librarian 39, no. 3 (2001): 79–94. The studies that helped inform Nisonger include: Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, American Political Science: A Profile of a Discipline (New York: Atherton Press, 1964), pp. 86–98; Michael W. Giles and Gerald C. Wright, Jr., “Political Scientists’ Evaluations of Sixty-Three Journals,” PS: Political Science and Politics 8 (Summer 1975): 254–256; Walter B. Roettger, “The Discipline: What's Right, What's Wrong, and Who Cares,” Paper presented at the 1978 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in New York, NY, cited by Naomi B. Lynn, “Self-Portrait: Profile of Political Scientists,” in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. Ada W. Finifter (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1983), 95–123; James A. Christenson and Lee Sigelman, “Accrediting Knowledge: Journal Stature and Citation Impact in Social Science,” Social Science Quarterly 66 (December 1985): 964–975; Michael W. Giles, Francie Mizell, and David Patterson, “Political Scientists’ Journal Evaluations Revisited,” PS: Political Science and Politics 22 (September 1989): 613–617; James C. Garand, “An Alternative Interpretation of Recent Political Science Journal Evaluations,” PS: Political Science and Politics 23 (September 1990): 448–451; Ivor Crewe and Pippa Norris, “ British and American Journal Evaluation: Divergence or Convergence?” PS: Political Science and Politics 24 (September 1991): 524–531; Pippa Norris and Ivor Crewe, “The Reputation of Political Science Journals: Pluralist and Consensus Views,” Political Studies 46 (March 1993): 5–23; Thomas E. Nisonger, “A Ranking of Political Science Journals Based on Citation Data,” Serials Review 19, no. 4 (1993): 7–14; Anne L. Buchanan and Jean-Pierre V.M. Hérubel, “Profiling Ph.D. Dissertation Bibliographies: Serials and Collection Development in Political Science,” Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 13, no. 1 (1994): 1–10.

9. Nisonger, “Journals of the Century in Political Science and International Relations,” Serials Librarian 39, no. 3 (2001): 279–286.

10. Cheryl LaGuardia, ed., Magazines for Libraries 17th ed. (New Providence, NJ: ProQuest LLC, 2008): 773–782.

11. James C. Garand and Michael W. Giles, “Journals in the Discipline: A Report on a New Survey of American Political Scientists,” PS: Political Science and Politics 36 (April 2003): 296–297.

12. For those unfamiliar with the rather strange and initially complex world of the JCR and its various analytical approaches to assessing journal worthiness, see chapter 5, “The Application of Citation Analysis to Serials Collection Management” in Thomas E. Nisonger, Management of Serials in Libraries (Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1998), pp. 121–156. For a useful complementary analysis of citation impact factors on political science journals, see Thomas Plümper, “Academic Heavy-Weights: The Relevance of Political Science Journals,” European Political Science 6 (March 2007): 41–50.

13. The JCR data was gathered on July 9, 2009.

14. For a discussion of the how political science faculty conduct their research, see Fahad M. Al Dosary, “The Relationship between Research Approach and Citation Behavior of Political Scientists,” Library & Information Science Research 10 (July–September 1988): 221–235.

15. These data were obtained from the ISI Web of Science database on July 20, 2009.