TY - JOUR
T1 - Participation in Scientific Meetings
T2 - A New Prosopographical Approach to the Disciplinary History of Science - The Case of Immunology, 1951-72
AU - Söderqvist, Thomas
AU - Silverstein, Arthur M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to Tine Vinther, Roskilde University, who coded participant data from proceedings volumes, to Lynn Gale, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, who performed the cluster analysis, to Ole Skovgaard, Roskilde University, for helping us to produce the figures, to Zdenka Joukl at the library of the Basel Institute for Immunology for bibliographical information, and to Harry Marks, The Johns Hopkins University, Helge Kragh, Roskilde University, and an anonymous referee for critical comments and suggestions on the manuscript. A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society, December 1992, in Washington, DC. The research for this project was supported by The Johns Hopkins University Institute for the History of Medicine (Silverstein), by a grant from the Swedish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Söderqvist), and by a fellowship (Söderqvist) funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation to Horace F. Judson, Stanford University.
PY - 1994/8
Y1 - 1994/8
N2 - To handle the enormous amount of sources in modern and contemporary science, the historian can use different quantitative methods, particularly varieties of citation analysis. So far, all these methods have been based on publication data. Taking as its point of departure the fact that meetings constitute a pervasive, yet neglected, aspect of science, this paper introduces analysis of participation in scientific meetings. The strength of this new prosopographical method is illustrated by an analysis of international immunological meetings in the period 1951-72. Frequency of participation in meetings seems to be correlated to professional standing in immunology. By means of cluster analysis of participation data, the subdisciplinary structure and dynamics of immunology can be reconstructed.
AB - To handle the enormous amount of sources in modern and contemporary science, the historian can use different quantitative methods, particularly varieties of citation analysis. So far, all these methods have been based on publication data. Taking as its point of departure the fact that meetings constitute a pervasive, yet neglected, aspect of science, this paper introduces analysis of participation in scientific meetings. The strength of this new prosopographical method is illustrated by an analysis of international immunological meetings in the period 1951-72. Frequency of participation in meetings seems to be correlated to professional standing in immunology. By means of cluster analysis of participation data, the subdisciplinary structure and dynamics of immunology can be reconstructed.
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U2 - 10.1177/030631279402400303
DO - 10.1177/030631279402400303
M3 - Article
C2 - 11639318
AN - SCOPUS:0028487736
SN - 0306-3127
VL - 24
SP - 513
EP - 548
JO - Social Studies of Science
JF - Social Studies of Science
IS - 3
ER -