Sociological Innovation through Subfield Integration
Speaker
Abstract
| The goal of scientific work is to create new knowledge and innovations, but quantifying innovation has been viewed as impossible (Dogan and Pahre 1990). I argue that one way to generate original, innovative research is to span specialty areas within a field - i.e., to integrate insights from two subfields. I develop two measures of what I call "subfield integration" and use them to test theoretical ideas about the risks and benefits inherent in integrative work, focusing my analysis on the discipline of sociology. I find that with the exception of the American Sociological Review, integrative papers are no less likely to appear in prestigious journals, suggesting that the review process for this kind of work may not be as challenging as previous research suggests. And the benefits, at least in terms of visibility and impact, are quite large: integrative papers, once published, garner a significantly greater number of citations from subsequent scholars. The results suggest that integration has the potential to be healthy antidote to undue specialization and fragmentation in the field. |
| Contact information: |
| Will Felps |
