The Political Science Peer-Review Survey

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Nov 272008
 

If you edit, review or author manuscripts for political science journals, the peer-review process is at the centre of your professional life. Unfortunately, for most of us the process is largely a black box. While everyone has heard (or lived through) tales from the trenches, there is very little hard evidence on how the process actually works. This is why a number of colleagues and I started the peer-review survey project that aims at collecting information on the experience of authors, reviewers and editors of political science journals.

The Political Science Peer-Review Survey 1
If you are an active political scientist, this survey is for you: we need your expertise, and your input is greatly appreciated. Filling in the form is fun and will typically take less than ten minutes of your time. It is also a great way to release some steam 🙂
Ready? Then proceed to the Political Science Peer-Review Survey.

We also put some (very) preliminary results of the political science peer-review survey online and will release further findings and eventually the data set in the future.

If you think this is worthwhile (and who wouldn’t?), please spread the word. To make this easier, we have created short URL for the survey (http://tinyurl.com/peer-review-survey) and the results (http://tinyurl.com/peer-review-results) that you can forward to your colleagues. Thanks again for your support. It is greatly appreciated.

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Social Networks in British Political Science

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Jun 302008
 

Social Networks in British Political Science 2

More preliminary findings on Social Networks in Political Science: from our analysis of collaboration patterns in the British Journal of Political Science (BJPS) and Political Studies (PS), we conclude that co-publication is much more widespread and intense than in Germany (not a huge surprise). Yet, at least on the basis of these two journals, collaboration networks in British political science look rather fragile when compared to the sciences. Obviously, further research is needed.

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Social Networks in Political Science

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Jun 262008
 

Social Networks in Political Science 3Like most social scientists I am a little bit obsessed with social networks. I’m also interested in the sociology of knowledge, which is a little more original. So some time ago, a colleague and I embarked on a project called “Networks in Political Science”, which rather unsurprisingly tries to apply network analysis to publications in Political Science. Our basic idea is that everyone seems to take subfields, theoretical schools and even citation circles for granted, but unlike in some other disciplines, little empirical work has been done so far. More specifically, we want to identify

  • highly cited articles that form the core of subfields
  • individual influential scholars
  • sub-networks of scholars that cite each other and/or collaborate frequently, thereby forming an “invisible college” and
  • individuals that are able to bridge sub-discplinary divides by publishing in a whole host of subfields.

Ideally, we would build a huge database of articles, chapters, and monographs. However, this requires lots of research assistants, and so for the time being, we use the Social Science Citation Index, which covers at least the core journals. We are soon due to deliver a paper at a conference, so I started writing it up. I’ve already put some preliminary findings on co-publication in Politische Vierteljahresschrift (PVS), arguably the most important German political science journal, on the web. The summary is very short and perhaps not very surprising: it doesn’t happen on a large scale.

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