| START Conference Manager |
ASIST 2012 Annual Meeting
Baltimore, MD, October 26-30, 2012
Scholarly Conformity: Origins, Framework, Applications and
Implications
Guo Zhang and Ying Ding
Monday, 6:30pm
This paper examines the concept of social conformity and provides a strong theoretical framework to conceptualize and operationalize scholarly conformity, a specific type of social conformity happening in the process of scholarly communication, It proposes that scholarly conformity can be conceptualized and operationalized by citations (which constitute by the most formal and official way to show "attachment" and "conformity" to authorities and/or popularities). It suggests that one of the most important applications of scholarly conformity is to indicate the evolution of a research community as five phrases of a life cycle. Potentials and limitations of studies in this issue are also provided.