How to define a scientific term such as A Work American Society for Information Science and Technolo

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How 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
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Overview of Presentation

• Defining terms developing theories
• Works as entities in LIS
• Bibliometrics
• Modeling work-producing processes
• 5. Conclusion
• References

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1. 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).

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1. 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).

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1. 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.

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1. 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).

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1. 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.

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1. 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!).

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1. 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.

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1. 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.

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1. 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).

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1. 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?

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1. 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

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1. 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.

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1. 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.

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1. 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?

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1. 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?

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1. 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).

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1. 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.

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2. 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

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2. 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.

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2. 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

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3. 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).

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3. 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

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3. 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.

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3. 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.

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3. 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.

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3. 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.

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4. 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).

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4.
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4. 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.

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5. 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.

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5. 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.

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References

• 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.

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References

• 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.

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References

• 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.

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References

• 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.

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References

• 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).

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References

• Thomé, H. (2003). Werk. IN Reallexikon der
  deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Hsg. Von
  Jan-Dirk Müller. 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.

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References

• 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.