Abstract
Publications in ‘high-ranked’ journals and books have become ultimate forms of scholarly communication. In this chapter, attention is first paid to the diffusion and institutionalization of the publication imperative: publish or perish. Next detailed historical analyses of the shifting patterns of scholarly collaboration and communication of sociologists in Belgium are presented. These analyses focus upon the tensions between the local or national level, on the one hand, and the increasingly global networks of scholarly communication, on the other. They also shed light on the impact of existing indicators of publication output and so-called performance-based funding systems on sociology in Belgium.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
In the original, pre-Cold War formulation, Merton spoke of the imperative of “communism”. In later versions and reprints of his article, he introduced the term “communalism”. However, he kept distinguishing this approach of knowledge from the focus on “private property” in capitalist economies. By patenting their work, scientists are also able to make their intellectual property available for public use (Mersch 2014).
- 2.
As some journals are officially related to scholarly associations, historical-sociological analyses of journals and of scholarly associations may be complementary. For detailed analyses of sociological associations, see Platt (1998, 2003). It may be added that not just journals or scholarly associations, but also entire scholarly networks or specializations sometimes cease to exist, when the communication among the specialists is discontinued. For a discussion of the “death” of some networks, see Fisher (1966) and Laudel et al. (2014).
- 3.
One of its founding editors was Gérard Deprez , who was at that time preparing a Ph.D. dissertation on the workings of the European Commission (Deprez 1974). But Deprez gave priority to a career in politics. From 1981 to 1996, he was the president of the Walloon Christian Social Party. Following a series of conflicts with his successor, he first founded a new political organization but eventually joined the liberal Mouvement Réformateur. Deprez is currently a member of the European Parliament.
- 4.
As mentioned before, this English presentation of sociology in Belgium makes it difficult to rely on approaches that require lengthy quotations of French or Dutch source materials. Quantitative material can be presented to a much broader audience. We believe, however, that the analyses of this quantitative material serve as a context for understanding the present situation and as a guide to sociology’s future prospects within Belgium.
- 5.
See http://is.ulb.ac.be/index.php?page=presentation-revueis (last accessed on May 2, 2017).
- 6.
In the early 1960s, for example, the Revue included a special annex on the communist countries in Eastern Europe. At the end of the 1960s, the sociological importance of the Cuban Revolution was discussed. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Revue featured articles on abortion and the use of contraceptives by women. Repeatedly, it also included apologetic defences of various aspects of ‘French culture’, both in Belgium and abroad.
- 7.
Sociologische Gids then joined forces with another Dutch-language journal, viz. Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, which was suffering similar problems. The new journal is simply entitled Sociologie.
- 8.
We are grateful to the late J. E. Ellemers , one of the founding editors of SG , who helped us to complete the biographical information for quite a number of Dutch authors. For SG , approximately 5% (71 out of 1395) of its authors could not be coded by gender. For a majority of the authors of the early M&M -publications, it was impossible to find additional information about their first names (gender) and institutional affiliation. Fig. 4.3 and Fig. 4.4 therefore do not cover the same time period as Fig. 4.2.
- 9.
Aristide Zolberg (1931–2013) was born in Brussels and survived Nazi persecution under an assumed Catholic identity in Belgium, but emigrated as a refugee to the United States in 1948.
- 10.
But this one-way mirror is a highly selective one. As one can learn from a review of the books reviewed in the journals M&M and SG , German, French and English sociological literature received considerable attention in the Netherlands before the Second World War. After the war, however, Dutch interest in the publication output of German and French sociology almost entirely faded away. Instead the orientation toward the English-language literature became—and hitherto remained—predominant (Heilbron 1982).
- 11.
The contributions to some expensive international research programmes, such as the programmes coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA), are still funded at the Belgian or national level. A number of museums and archival institutions continue to receive their funding from the national government, too.
- 12.
The use of the barycentre method is not unproblematic, however. The interpretation of the findings is, for example, complicated by the fact that places of publication of books may be very far apart. Adding some American publications may change the picture substantially. But the overall trends with regard to these ‘certified’ book publications in Flanders are indisputable.
- 13.
Some of the differences in publication practices between departments can also be found within single departments, such as sociology. Cluster analyses of the publication output in sociology show two distinctive clusters: some research groups have retained a relatively strong ‘national’ profile, while other groups now specialize in multiple-authored publications in WoS-included journals (Verleysen and Weeren 2016).
- 14.
An English-language Bachelor in the Social Sciences has in 2016 also been established in Brussels (building upon the ‘anti-clerical’ collaboration between the Flemish Free University of Brussels and Ghent University). For the recruitment of students, this new programme first of all looks at the rapidly expanding population of foreign origin in Brussels, now approximately one-third of the total population, for whom none of Belgium’s languages is their mother tongue. But most lecturers in this programme have hitherto been recruited within Flanders.
References
Abbott, A. (1999). Department & discipline: Chicago sociology at one hundred. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Arts, W. (2000). Trends en lotgevallen: Mens en Maatschappij in de afgelopen 25 jaar. Mens & Maatschappij, 75(2), 151–162.
Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Brunt, L. (1994). De leidsman ingehaald. Opmerkingen over de veertigjarige Sociologische Gids. Sociologische Gids, 41, 7–24.
Clark, R. (1999). Diversity in sociology: Problem or solution? The American Sociologist, 30(3), 22–41.
Crawford, E., Shinn, T., & Sörlin, S. (1993). Denationalizing science. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Debackere, K., & Glänzel, W. (2004). Using a bibliometric approach to support research policy making: The case of the Flemish BOF-key. Scientometrics, 59(2), 253–276.
Debackere, K., & Veugelers, R. (2015). Het Vlaamse landschap wetenschap, technologie en innovatie. In ECOOM (Ed.), Vlaams Indicatorenboek 2015 Wetenschap Technologie Innovatie (pp. 6–11). Brussels: Vlaamse Overheid.
de Haan, J. (1997). Authorship patterns in Dutch sociology. Scientometrics, 39(2), 197–208.
de Haan, J., & Leeuw, F. L. (1997). Sociology in the Netherlands. The American Sociologist, 26(4), 70–87.
Deprez, G. (1974). La Commission des Communautés Européennes: Essai sociologique sur une organisation captive. Ph.D. dissertation, UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve.
Drori, G. S., Meyer, J. W., Ramirez, F. O., & Schofer, E. (2003). Science in the modern world polity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Engels, T. C., Ossenblok, T. L., & Spruyt, E. H. (2012). Changing publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities, 2000–2009. Scientometrics, 93(2), 373–390.
Fisher, C. S. (1966). The death of a mathematical theory: A study in the sociology of knowledge. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 3(2), 137–159.
Foucault, M. (1995). Dits et écrits I. Paris: Gallimard.
Fusulier, B. (2006). Recherches sociologiques et anthropologiques: un changement dans la continuité. Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques, 37(1), 1–2.
Garfield, E. (1985). The awards of science and other essays. Philadelphia: ISI Press.
Gross, A. G., Harmon, J. E., & Reidy, M. (2002). Communicating science: The scientific article from the 17th century to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Halsey, A. H. (2004). A history of sociology in Britain. New York: Oxford University Press.
Heilbron, J. (1982). Franse sociologie in Nederland: Receptiepatronen in de Nederlandse sociologie. Sociodrome, 7(4), 8–12.
Heilbron, J. (1988). Particularités et particularismes de la sociologie aux Pays-Bas. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 14(3), 76–81.
Heilbron, J. (2015). French sociology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hilgers, M., & Dassetto, F. (2012). Appréhender les transformations d’une discipline à travers la trajectoire d’une revue. Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques, 43(1), 19–39.
Hirschauer, S. (2004). Peer Review Verfahren auf dem Prüfstand. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 33(1), 62–83.
Jacobs, A., & De Wit, K. (2004). Verzilvering van een collectieve inspanning. Context, ontstaan en evolutie van het Tijdschrift voor Sociologie (1980–2004). Tijdschrift voor Sociologie, 25(1), 37–70.
Jacobs, J. A. (2013). In defense of disciplines: Interdisciplinarity and specialization in the research university. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jacquart, C. (1900–1901). Rapport sur les travaux de la Société Belge de Sociologie. Annales de Sociologie et Mouvement Sociologique, 1(1), 1–27.
Kropp, K. (2016). A historical account of Danish sociology: A troubled sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Laudel, G., Benninghoff, M., Lettkemann, E., & Håkansson, E. (2014). Highly adaptable but not invulnerable: Necessary and facilitating conditions for research in evolutionary developmental biology. In R. Whitley & J. Glaser (Eds.), Organizational transformation and scientific change: The impact of institutional restructuring on universities and intellectual innovation (pp. 235–265). Bingley: Emerald.
Lenoir, T. (1997). Instituting science: The cultural production of scientific disciplines. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mersch, C. (2014). Die Welt der Patente: Soziologische Perspektiven auf eine zentrale Institution der globalen Wissensgesellschaft. Bielefeld: transcript.
Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moed, H. F. (2005). Citation analysis in research evaluation. New York: Springer.
Ossenblok, T. L. B., Engels, T. C. E., & Sivertsen, G. (2012). The representation of the social sciences and humanities in the web of science. A comparison of publications patterns and incentive structures in Flanders and Norway (2005–2009). Research Evaluation, 21(4), 280–290.
Platt, J. (1998). A brief history of the ISA: 1948–1997. Québec City: ISA.
Platt, J. (2003). The British Sociological Association: A sociological history. Durham: Sociology Press.
Platt, J. (2004). Women’s and men’s careers in British sociology. British Journal of Sociology, 55(2), 187–210.
Platt, J. (2007). The women’s movement and British journal articles, 1950–2004. Sociology, 41(5), 961–975.
Pontille, D. (2003). Authorship practices and institutional contexts in sociology: Elements for a comparison of the United States and France. Science, Technology and Human Values, 28(2), 217–243.
Pontille, D. (2006). Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur scientifique? Sciences de la Société, 67, 77–93.
Power, M. (1997). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raynaud, D. (2017). Signature scientifique et collaborations internationales: l’inflation du nombre de coauteurs en physique des particules. Social Science Information, 56(1), 142–167.
Seeber, M., Debacker, N., & Vandevelde, K. (2016). Mobility and inbreeding in the heart of Europe. What factors predict academic career in Dutch-speaking Belgian universities? Ghent University, Ghent (unpublished manuscript).
Spencer, H. (1897). The principles of sociology (Vol. III). London: Williams and Norgate.
Stichweh, R. (1984). Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen. Physik in Deutschland 1740–1890. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
Stichweh, R. (1994). Wissenschaft, Universität, Professionen. Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp.
Turner, S. P. (2014). American sociology: From pre-disciplinary to post-normal. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vanderstraeten, R. (2010a). Scientific communication: Sociology journals and publication practices. Sociology, 44(3), 559–576.
Vanderstraeten, R. (2010b). Disziplinbildung – Zum Wandel wissenschaftlicher Kommunikation in der Soziologie. Soziale Systeme, 16(2), 297–312.
Vanderstraeten, R., Vandermoere, F., & Hermans, M. (2016). Scholarly communication in AERA journals, 1931 to 2014. Review of Research in Education, 40, 38–61.
Vanholsbeeck, M. (2012). Entre qualité prescrite et qualité souhaitable. L’ambivalence des chercheurs en communication face à l’évaluation de leurs publications. Quaderni. Communication, Technologies, Pouvoir, 77, 71–84.
Vanholsbeeck, M. (2016). La notion de ‘qualité’ des publications dans l’évaluation de la recherche et des chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales. Ph.D. dissertation, ULB, Brussels.
Verleysen, F. T., & Engels, T. C. (2014a). Barycenter representation of book publishing internationalization in the social sciences and humanities. Journal of Informetrics, 8(1), 234–240.
Verleysen, F. T., & Engels, T. C. (2014b). Internationalization of peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed book publications in the social sciences and humanities. Scientometrics, 101(2), 1431–1444.
Verleysen, F. T., Ghesquière, P., & Engels, T. C. E. (2014). The objectives, design and selection process of the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the social sciences and humanities (VABB-SHW). In W. Blockmans et al. (Eds.), The use and abuse of bibliometrics (pp. 115–125). London: Portland Press & Academiae Europaea.
Verleysen, F. T., & Weeren, A. (2016). Clustering by publication patterns of senior authors in the social sciences and humanities. Journal of Informetrics, 10(1), 254–272.
Wilterdink, N., & van Heerikhuizen, B. (2004). Dertig jaar AST. Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 31(4), 423–430.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vanderstraeten, R., Louckx, K. (2018). Publications. In: Sociology in Belgium. Sociology Transformed. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55663-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55663-9_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55662-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55663-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)