Title: How to define a scientific term such as A Work American Society for Information Science and Technolo
1How to define a scientific term such as A
Work American Society for Information Science
and TechnologyAnnual Meeting, November 12-17,
2004, Providence, Rhode Island, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER
14, 330-5pmSession Interdisciplinary Concepts
of the Work Entity   By Birger Hjørland
2Overview of Presentation
- Defining terms developing theories
- Works as entities in LIS
- Bibliometrics
- Modeling work-producing processes
- 5. Conclusion
- References
31. Defining terms developing theories
- Smiraglia, possibly more that anybody else, has
contributed to the scholarly literature about the
concept of A Work (e.g., Smiraglia, 2001,
2002).
41. Defining terms developing theories
- This way of doing scholarly work is in line with,
among others, Buckland (1997, 1998) who has
contributed to our concept of a document and my
own conceptual analysis of core concepts in
Library and Information Science (LIS), such as,
for example, information (Capurro Hjørland,
2001) and subject (Hjørland, 1992, 1997, 2001).
51. Defining terms developing theories
- The principle of the hermeneutic circle tells us
that you cannot understand a whole unless you
already understand the parts and that you cannot
understand the parts unless you have an
understanding of the whole which these parts are
contributing to.
61. Defining terms developing theories
- In the case of conceptual analysis in LIS the
implication is that you have to work with the
understanding of single concepts such as
document, information and work while at the
same time considering the understanding of LIS as
a whole. - Such concepts form part of a developing theory
of LIS (or perhaps of a number of conflicting
views or paradigms).
71. Defining terms developing theories
- The purpose of knowledge, meanings and concepts
is, according to pragmatic philosophy, to
contribute to human action. The nature of such
concepts is thus depending on what kind of
actions they are meant to serve. - Different views in LIS thus tend to use
different terms and to understand them
differently.
81. Defining terms developing theories
- The concept of a work has, in particular, been
investigated by the library profession in
relation to so-called descriptive cataloging,
while it has been relatively ignored by the
online community and information science part of
LIS. - (There may still be different subcultures or
paradigms within LIS which tend to ignore each
other!).
91. Defining terms developing theories
- In the documentation/information science
tradition usually only documents are represented
in databases, not the works which they represent.
- It is a problem, for example, that a database
such as PsycINFO has indexed many more or less
accidental editions of Sigmund Freuds books and
it is difficult to overview the works of Freud.
Here the notion of the collocation of a work
would be helpful.
101. Defining terms developing theories
- Another important example is the citation
databases. If one wish to examine where a given
work has been cited (doing a kind of reception
analysis), it is a problem that there is no
collocation of references to a specific work
(cited reference). The searcher has to identify
all the different documents (e.g. editions of a
book, versions of a paper) and search them
individually. In some cases this is almost
impossible.
111. Defining terms developing theories
- It should be mentioned, however, that scholars
ideally tend to use and quote scholarly editions.
For this reason high-level scholarship has a kind
of built-in collocation in their citing
practices. - This fact cannot, however, substitute the need
for the collocating of works in abstract and
citation databases. Such databases normally do
not have the beauty of carefully edited
collections (but have, of course, other
qualities).
121. Defining terms developing theories
- One thing is, however, to conclude that the
online community has ignored the concept of a
work. - Another question is whether the concept of a
work in itself needs to be changed when used in
this environment? (Or whether it needs to be
changed for other reasons?). How do we
investigate that issue?
131. Defining terms developing theories
- One of my inspirations has been the Hegelian
distinction between abstract and concrete.
Whereas the positivist understanding of the
concrete is what we can identify with our senses,
the Hegelian notion of the concrete is what can
be understood in itself. - For positivists a single man is concrete, while
society is something abstract. For Hegel, it is
the opposite
141. Defining terms developing theories
- The single man is an abstraction because he
cannot be understood in isolation from society. - Similarly with documents and works. In the
Hegelian understanding (and in mine) a single
document or a single work cannot be understood
(or described or indexed) in abstraction from the
domains or discourses of which it is a product
and to which it has given potential to
contribute.
151. Defining terms developing theories
- This kind of understanding searches for criteria
for the description and indexing of documents
outside the documents themselves, in the
discourses and domains. - This is in line with Smiraglias (2001, p. 132)
conclusion In particular, scholars should
follow Velluccis path and examine specific
disciplinary literatures and document-types for
more predictive characteristics.
161. Defining terms developing theories
- The conflict between a positivist and a Hegelian
understanding may be generalized as a way to
explore any concept, including the concept of a
work. - The traditions within LIS which ignore the
concept of a work tend to be the most positivist
ones. Even then we may ask What would be the
difference between a positivist and a
non-positivist understanding of a work?
171. Defining terms developing theories
- The positivist understanding of a work tends to
emphasize qualities that may be determined by
sensory inspection (such as the same sequences of
words), while non-positivist approaches tend to
emphasize non-sensory qualities, such as same
idea. The pragmatic philosophy would consider
functional criteria When is it fruitful to
regard two texts as versions of the same work?
181. Defining terms developing theories
- It follows from the pragmatic philosophy that one
should ask For whom is it relevant or important
to consider different texts as versions of the
same work? (There is thus not the same
universality in the pragmatic way of
understanding concepts as is in the positivist
way).
191. Defining terms developing theories
- In a public library, for example, one might
regard an illustrated book as one work, while in
an art library the illustrations and the text
could be regarded as separate works. - Again we are led to Smiraglias conclusion In
particular scholars should . . . examine specific
disciplinary literatures.
202. Works as entities in LIS
- The concept of a work is not only a concept in
the library tradition (as opposed to the
information scientific tradition), it is also a
concept much more related to the humanities than
to the sciences (and to books rather than
articles). - The following figure (from Tillett, 2001) shows
a valuable (functional) way of determining the
concept of a work in the library tradition
212. Works as entities in LIS
- Some groupings, e.g. whales are mammals not
fish, are generally (but not universally) more
fruitful than other groupings (A possible
exception is books for children). - Many such fruitful groupings are discovered by
science or they are otherwise constructed by
human beings. They are not just given (neither
inborn in the human mind nor given by logical
deduction), but they are mostly documented in the
literature.
222. Works as entities in LIS
- Based on, among others, bibliometrical studies, I
will try to illuminate how the concept of a
work may differ in scientific literatures. - It is well known that scientists are much more
team-workers compared to humanists and that the
single papers tend to be just fragments in
relation to a collective work. - Derek J. de Solla Price characterizes the
research fronts in science in the following way
233. Bibliometrics
- "New papers use the other half of their
references to connect back to the relatively
small number of highly interconnected recent
papers. In a particular field each recent paper
is connected to all its neighbors by many lines
of citation. A convenient image of the pattern is
to be found in knitting. Each stitch is strongly
attached to the previous row and to its
neighbors..." (Price, 1969/1972).
243. Bibliometrics
- Such "knitting" is, according to Price, typical
of the sciences, but not of the humanities or
technology. The "knitting model" tells us that
the individual researcher works with information
that is produced almost simultaneously by his
colleagues. - However, many papers are never cited and may not
contribute to any collective work at all
253. Bibliometrics
- Schwartz (1997) Large-scale uncitedness refers
to the remarkable proportion of articles that do
not receive a single citation within five years
of publication - This publication reports a case study of library
and information science where the rate of
uncitedness is 72 percent.
263. Bibliometrics
- Seglen (1992) writes as part of a continuous
probability distribution even uncited articles
have a definite probability of contributing to
scientific progress. - The case seems to be that even uncited papers
may represent a work but that the majority of
papers do not in practice represent a work
important enough to collocate. This is a tendency
in the research culture encouraging the
production of least publishable units.
273. Bibliometrics
- There are cases in which authors publish
slightly modified papers in different journals.
Should such papers be collocated as one work in
the indexing process? - I think not because it is the role of journal
editors to ensure that only original papers are
published in the first place. Experienced users
rely on quality journals, and the indexers cannot
normally correct the editors job.
283. Bibliometrics
- Probably only important papers should be
considered worthy of being collocated as works. - The case might be that some citations function as
concept symbols (Small, 1978). - This concept might further help indicate the
nature of a work in scientific literatures.
294. Modeling work-producing processes
- In scientific fields a given work is often
presented at conferences, published in journals,
presented in review articles, cited in other
papers, etc. All those activities and types of
documents may be modeled. One important example
of such a model is the UNISIST model (cf.,
UNISIST, 1971 Fjordback Søndergaard, Andersen
Hjørland, 2003).
304.
314. Modeling work-producing processes
- The UNISIST model may supplement Tilletts model
(2001) in important ways. It may illuminate how
versions of a work are disseminated and related
to activities in the research processes as well
as to division of labor. It may also be used as a
way to explore how different domains differ
(e.g., that conference proceedings tend to be
regarded as works in some domains such as
computer science, but not in other domains where
they are rather considered fragments.
325. Conclusion
- In this presentation I have tried to say
something about how to define scientific terms in
general as well as something about the specific
term a work. - The way we define terms depends on our
philosophical assumptions. I have illustrated
differences between positivist and non-positivist
ways of defining terms and advocated a pragmatic
way of understanding terms, concepts and
knowledge.
335. Conclusion
- I have also indicated that different subcultures
within LIS tend to use different terms and
concepts, but have tried to demonstrate that we
may gain a more coherent and satisfactory state
of our field if we try to overcome the barriers
between those subcultures. -
34References
- Buckland, M. (1997). What is a document? Journal
of the American Society of Information Science
48(9), 804-809. - Buckland, M. (1998). What is a digital document?
Document Numérique (Paris) 2(2), 221-230.
http//sims.berkeley.edu/buckland/digdoc.html - Capurro, R Hjørland, B. (2003). The Concept of
Information. Annual Review of Information Science
Technology, Vol. 37, Chapter 8, pp. 343-411.
35References
- Fjordback Søndergaard, T. Andersen, J.
Hjørland, B. (2003). Documents and the
communication of scientific and scholarly
information. Revising and updating the UNISIST
model. Journal of Documentation, 59(3), 278-320.
36References
- Hjørland, B. (1992). The concept of "subject" in
Information Science. Journal of Documentation,
vol. 48, no. 2, 172-200. - Hjørland, B. (1997) Information Seeking and
Subject Representation. An Activity-theoretical
approach to Information Science. Westport
London Greenwood Press. - Hjørland, B. (2001). Towards a theory of
aboutness, subject, topicality, theme, domain,
field, content. . . and relevance. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and
Technology. 52(9)774778.
37References
- Peirce, Charles Sanders (1905). What pragmaticism
is. The Monist, 15, 161-181. - Price, Derek J. de Solla (1969) Science and
Technology Distinctions and Interrelationships.
(IN Factors in the Transfer of Technology. Ed.
by W. Gruber G. Marquis. MIT Press. Reprinted
in Sociology of Science. Selected Readings. Ed.
by Barry Barnes. Middlesex Penguin pp.
166-180). - Schwartz, C. A. (1997). The rise and fall of
uncitedness. College Research Libraries,
58(1), 19-29. - Seglen, P. O. (1992). The skewness of science.
Journal of the American Society for Information
Science, 43(9), 628-638.
38References
- Small, H. G. (1978). Cited documents as concept
symbols. Social Studies of Science, 8, 327-340. - Smiraglia, R. P. (2001). The nature of A Work.
Implications for the Organization of Knowledge.
Lanham, Maryland The Scarecrow Press, Inc. - Smiraglia, R. P. (Ed.). (2002). Works as entities
for information retrieval. Binghamton, N.Y. The
Haworth Information Press. (Also published as
Cataloging classification quarterly, vol.
333/4, 2002).
39References
- Thomé, H. (2003). Werk. IN Reallexikon der
deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Hsg. Von
Jan-Dirk MĂĽller. Band I-III (Vol. 3, pp.
832-834). Berlin Walter de Gruyter. - Tillett, B. B. (2001). Bibliographic
relationships. IN Relationships in the
organization of knowledge. Ed. by Carol A. Bean
Rebecca Green. Dordrecht Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
40References
- Unisist (1971), Study Report on the feasibility
of a World Science Information System. By the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization and the International
Council of Scientific Unions. Paris, Unesco. - Wilson, P. 1987. (1989). The second objective.
IN The conceptual foundations of descriptive
cataloging. Ed. by Elaine Svenonius. San Diego
Academis Press, Inc.