The Invisible College Reconsidered

Abstract

In this article, the relationship of bibliometric techniques (especially citation analysis) to communication theory and research is examined, using the invisible college as the principal example. The invisible college is used because it is the best-known model of scientific communication, and because it is based in bibliometric studies of science. As such, the invisible college is typical of constructs that describe processes yet are founded on the study of structures; the ambiguity surrounding the use of the term is symptomatic of the confounding of structure and process in the study of scholarly communication. A revised definition of the invisible college is proposed that reemphasizes its fundamentally communicative nature, and issues for future theory building in scientific communication are suggested.

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