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7.5.2The communities’ perspective
On the other hand, one should not forget that this unsatisfactory situation also forced the respective communities to come up with their own initiatives. There were several reasons, such as the changing publication strategies, or moving away from their traditional communication patterns. Thus, there is an increasing share of publications in journals in humanity disciplines, where this rather untypical or at least less infrequent, and possibly even more in English. Another important reason for these initiatives was the deficiency these communities perceived because their fields have become excluded from bibliometric studies and the quantitative input for evaluation exercises, or somewhat isolated from other fields. We just mention two examples as part pro toto. As early as in 2010, a conference was organised in Bern to pave the way for possible application of scientometrics methods to the evaluation of research in Law. Scientists in the field had recognised and discussed the necessity and methods of research evaluation including appropriate metrics in their field (Lienhard & Amschwand, 2010).
Other communities have adopted and incorporated scientometrics/informetric models and method into their disciplines, of course, not always in an evaluative context but substantiating the usefulness of bibliometricians’ research and results. In this context, we would like to refer to musicology, namely the analysis of classical composers’ similarity, differentiation, and evolution (Georges, 2017; Georges & Nguyen, 2019; Georges & Seckin, 2022) or to (quantitative) linguistics (Popescu & Altmann, 2006; 2007), where the well-known h-index model has been further elaborated for the use in linguistics. We just mention in passing, that this elaboration proved useful for scientometrics as well (Glänzel & Heeffer, 2019) – a clear case of interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation.
But coming back to the above-mentioned issued in the quantification issues in humanities research. Most recently, the question of the observed or at least assumed relative isolation of research in philosophy was addressed and tackled (Chi & Conix, 2022; Conix, Lemeire & Chi, 2022). Philosophers raised long-standing questions about the isolation of philosophy, which were ultimately answered through the cooperation between philosophers and bibliometricians utilizing customized bibliometric methods. These studies empirically test whether certain parts of academic philosophy are highly isolated from other fields of academic research or even from the broader public, and more specifically, weather LEMM (Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, Mind and Metaphysics) is more isolated than Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Value Theory. The basic assumption was confirmed that LEMM or the so-called core philosophy is more isolated than other subfields with stronger relations between other science fields.
In these two studies, the database selection highlights the limitations of common bibliometric databases in terms of their coverage of philosophy papers. Furthermore, the applied bibliometric methods were developed through long and profound interactions between scholars from the two distinct fields, improving the method developments in both fields. This innovative collaboration not only demonstrates the philosophers' aspiration to integrate scientometric methods into their discipline, but also highlights the positive feedback and acceptance received from both communities through several seminars, conferences, and authorized journals. In general, the discussion surrounding the presentation of these papers is stronger and more motivating in the field of philosophy. During the seminars with philosophers, this new proposal sparked significant interest among various other philosophers. The increasing interest of bibliometrics methods is also evident in other qualitative works undertaken by philosophers (see Massey, 2014; Noichl, 2021; Bonino et al., 2022). It is obvious that scientometric methods would contribute to structure a field in humanities and provide creative solutions to long-standing questions within the field. Novel methodologies and techniques as well as broader, enriched databases will aid to this end (Kousha & Thelwall, 2023).
It is worth noting that the degree of acceptance for adopting and developing bibliometric and quantitative methods in philosophy studies is much higher than that for applying bibliometric methods in evaluations within the field. For instance, Feenstra and López-Cózar (2022) revealed negative feedback from philosophers regarding the use of bibliometric indicators as a preferred criterion of quality for researchers. These two applications of scientometrics follow distinct developmental trajectories and may receive varying levels of support and resources.
This kind of intention to apply quantitative methods could be anticipated in other fields within the humanities, given that more and more humanists are open to these methods, as evidenced by the examples mentioned above. The field, which was previously isolated from new solutions, is finding quantitative methods increasingly engrossing.