Characterising scholarly identities :a citation identity analysis of the field of the scientific study of consciousness

Abstract

The professional profile of researchers is established through communication of scientific work practices, leading to the establishment of a scholarly identity.

Understanding scholarly identities is currently addressed through a conceptualisation of research narrative mechanisms. Citation and citing practices are a central component of scientific communication work practices. Therefore understanding these formal communication practices of researchers through their citing behaviours may contribute to the building of scholarly identity.

This study is undertaken to understand whether scholarly identity could be informed through the use of citation identities. Studies on the citation identities of individuals were conducted, using authors working in the area of Consciousness, which provided a diverse field of participants for the testing of citation analysis techniques. This is accomplished through methodological development and further examined using a combination of field-level and individual-level analyses.

A new methodology was developed for the generation of citing identities, based on the calculation of the Gini coefficient and the citee-citation ratio of authors' citing profiles. The resulting relationship was found to have high levels of consistency across a heterogenous set of researchers.

An exploration of identification of author characteristics was subsequently undertaken using the new methodology and existing citation analysis techniques. The techniques were successful in identifying departures from conventional citation practice, highlighting idiosyncrasies well, but otherwise understanding of scholarly identity through citation analysis was only marginally successful. A portion of the difficulty of achieving clarity was the complexity of the Consciousness author set, which was useful for establishing broad applicability of a new methodology, but poor for judging its successful application.

In summary, definition of citing identity type offers possibilities for improving the understanding of scholarly identity, but will require further methodology development to reach its full potential.