Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First QROM Lustrum (2006 - 2010)

The Qualitative Report The Qualitative Report Volume 18 Number 28 Article 1 7-15-2013 Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First QROM Lustrum (2006 - 2010) QROM Lustrum (2006 - 2010) Eduardo Infante University of Seville , [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr Part of the Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, and the Social Statistics Commons Recommended APA Citation Recommended APA Citation Infante, E. (2013). Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First QROM Lustrum (2006 - 2010). The Qualitative Report , 18 (28), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2013.1492 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Qualitative Report at NSUWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Qualitative Report by an authorized administrator of NSUWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First QROM Lustrum Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First QROM Lustrum (2006 - 2010) (2006 - 2010) Abstract Abstract The first years in the life of a journal are the most difficult ones as editors need to advertise it effectively and attract worldwide researchers to safeguard its launch and maintenance. This study provides a bibliometric analysis of the first lustrum of the journal Qualitative Research in Organizational and Management (QROM) in an attempt to assess its production both in methodological and conceptual terms. The sample was made up of 66 articles by 109 (co - )authors from 66 institutions. A total of 53.2% of contributors were female and were responsible for 42.4% of the single - authored articles (compare to 34.8% of only - male articles). Eight “invisible schools , ”, 37.5% national ones, were obtained by relating authors to sharing co - authors (grade 1), institutions (grade 2) or cities (grade 3). The most productive authors were Cassell, Grandy, and McKenna, the first two being developers of invisible schools. The number of articles, theoretical perspectives, and diversity of applied techniques has increased in QRO M over the lustrum period with UK and Canada as most prolific countries followed by USA, Sweden, and Australia. Most articles dealt with organizational and managerial issues under discourses or narrative perspectives using interviews and sense - making theories. The evolution of these findings is also presented. Keywords Keywords Bibliometric Analysis, Qualitative Research in Organizational and Management (QROM), Lustrum Creative Commons License Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. This article is available in The Qualitative Report: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol18/iss28/1 The Qualitative Report 2013 Volume 18, Article 55, 1-14 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR18/infante55.pdf Toddling Towards Childhood: A Bibliometric Analysis of the First QROM Lustrum (2006-2010) Eduardo Infante University of Seville, Spain The first years in the life of a journal are the most difficult ones as editors need to advertise it effectively and attract worldwide researchers to safeguard its launch and maintenance. This study provides a bibliometric analysis of the first lustrum of the journal Qualitative Research in Organizational and Management (QROM) in an attempt to assess its production both in methodological and conceptual terms. The sample was made up of 66 articles by 109 (co-)authors from 66 institutions. A total of 53.2% of contributors were female and were responsible for 42.4% of the single-authored articles (compare to 34.8% of only-male articles). Eight “invisible schools,”, 37.5% national ones, were obtained by relating authors to sharing co-authors (grade 1), institutions (grade 2) or cities (grade 3). The most productive authors were Cassell, Grandy, and McKenna, the first two being developers of invisible schools. The number of articles, theoretical perspectives, and diversity of applied techniques has increased in QROM over the lustrum period with UK and Canada as most prolific countries followed by USA, Sweden, and Australia. Most articles dealt with organizational and managerial issues under discourses or narrative perspectives using interviews and sense-making theories. The evolution of these findings is also presented. Keywords: Bibliometric Analysis, Qualitative Research in Organizational and Management (QROM), Lustrum Introduction There comes a time when researchers participating in the development of a study field need to look back and consider what have been achieved and how. This exercise is even more necessary when the scientific production is devoted to a relatively new area of research and comes from a brand new journal. As once expressed by Kluckhohn (1949), it would hardly be the fish that discovered the existence of water in the same way that a researcher loses its own conscience while researching and publishing on his/her topics. To overcome this unawareness of identity which could endanger the coherent advance of a discipline, bibliometric analyses could provide editors and researchers with historical traces of what has been achieved so far and what still remains uncovered. Bibliometric analyses are related to a set of methods used to study and measure texts and information of a given source (Allen & Reser, 1990; Shubert & Glänzel, 1991). The term "bibliometrics" was first introduced in 1969 to describe the field of study concerned with the application of mathematical models and statistics to research, and quantify the process of written communication. It helps to take notice of what topics and what scientific terms and approaches are being used to address them. In some cases we might find ourselves devoting much of our time in the same study objects or narrowing our perspectives by just using a single limited approach. On the other hand, we may come across a huge diversity of issues, approaches, and techniques with little integration that could strengthen or enlarge our scientific field. In both cases, bibliometric analyses can provide us with suitable guidance to promote new insights in the realm of scientific production or to integrate existing ones thoughtfully (Davis & Cronin, 1993; Zubeidat, Desvarieux, Salamanca & Sierra, 2004). 2 The Qualitative Report 2013 In the present study, the use of basic bibliometric indicators stems from the sake of institutional assessment related to the selected journal -QROM- in absolute terms that is, without research production comparisons between similar journals. Using basic indicators, comparisons between journals becomes rather useless if not impossible because research production in each case will depend upon many external criteria connected to the institution such as research policies, institutional resources and allocation, distribution techniques, journal scope and nature, etc. However, bibliometrics often forms part of an institution’s assessment strategy, looking at the impact of its research at inner levels in order to make for better-informed expert decisions with respect to budget allocations and to contribute to the definition of future research agendas and strategic goals (Adams, 2009). QROM is an international journal encouraging researchers and practitioners to publish qualitative work in the field of management and organization. Each QROM issue, published quarterly, is made up of 4 or 5 articles. It covers a wide range of qualitative methods and techniques which are discussed under critical and reflexive scopes or which are being used in daily organizational or managerial contexts or experiences. In its short history, QROM has managed to attract attention worldwide thus clustering a wealth of research and studies from many countries and professionals from various different backgrounds and academic fields. In order to resume and organize this plethora of contributions, bibliometric analysis is applied to QROM contents in its first five-year period of existence. This longitudinal quantitative analysis will be necessarily complemented with an abstract content analysis as they have been proved to be somehow inter-related. Procedure To undertake the bibliometric study, a complete list of article abstracts published in QROM from 2006 to 2010 was compiled in a single Word file. A first careful reading helped to search for useful words to build up a categorical template considering the following aspects of each article: (a) author´s sex, (b) total number of authors, (c) authorship position in the article, (d) study issue, (e) general approach, (f) specific qualitative technique applied, and (g) specific theory used. These selected indicators are basic ones in the field of bibliometrics (Archambault & Gagne, 2004; Lundberg, 2006). A first categorical template was made with the aid of the article title and using the common descriptive abstracts in each case if more information was needed. The initial categorical list was then checked and redefined following Cassell and Symon´s book of 2004 (Essential Guide to Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research). Once the list was elaborated, each article was registered using the categorical template in a coded file. As many articles were unclear as to how their research topic was being treated, the codings were made twice by a single researcher obtaining a coincidence index of 77.3%. The final coded sample of articles was analysed using statistical tables and qualitative relationships in SPSS 1 version 18, and Excel, respectively. Results Overall production From its beginnings in 2006, the QROM comprises a total of 66 articles coming from 109 authors (46.8% males, 53.2% females) which means a production rate of 13.2 articles and 21.8 participant authors per year (see Table 1). Although the most prolific years were the last two in a clear progressive line, if we consider the production-author rate then 2008 (1.15) and 1 Due to the low number of cases per cell no statistical contrast was able so far. Eduardo Infante 3 2006 (1.42) are the most productive years, with the highest number of single-author articles (11 and 7, respectively). This fact underscores the idea that with the advance of the journal more researchers have got in contact to co-author articles on the issues, which is something favourable for networking. While single-author articles accounted for 51.5% of the journal, 38% were signed by two, 15% by three, and 9% by four authors. During the second (2007) and last year (2010), QROM managed to cluster more than 25 authors doubling or nearly doubling the number of published articles (13 and 14, respectively). The average authorship rate within the lustrum in QROM was 1.64 (i.e., being the twosome plausible enough to produce a decent outcome not considering deep of analysis or complexity of the topic. Table 1. QROM general production per year. Year Num. Art Num authors Rate Single-author articles 2 3 4 2006 12 17 1.42 7 5 0 0 2007 13 26 2.00 4 6 2 1 2008 13 15 1.15 11 2 0 0 2009 14 24 1.71 7 5 1 1 2010 14 27 1.93 5 5 4 0 Sums 66 109 8.21 34 25 10 6 Means 13.2 21.8 1.64 6.8 4.6 1.4 0.4 In any given field of research, a small number of high producers will be responsible for a significant percentage of all publications in the field. This type of distribution was first examined by Lotka whose power law is one of the major regularities studied in bibliometrics (Lotka, 1989). If we consider Lotka´s bibliometric law (Lotka, 1989; Price, 1972) – which is based on Pareto´s in economy (Pareto, 1935) - , it appears that a group of seven authors encompass most QROM production at a Lotkian formula of An= 83 / n3.3 as is shown in Graphic 1. Although prolific authors (7.3% of total sample) only account for 28.7% of total articles, the tendency is clearly towards the bibliometric rate of 20-80 (i.e. 20% of authors producing 80% of production). Graphic 1. Lotka´s bibliometric law aplplied to QROM production from 2006 to 2010. y = 83.58x-3.323 R² = 0.9441 1 10 100 1000 110 Authors Articles Lotka´s law 4 The Qualitative Report 2013 Following a Lotka distribution may indicate the existence of an identified group of researchers or practitioners with a growing concern on qualitative approaches who would be potentially considering QROM journal as a suitable channel of communication of their work throughout the professional community and also a place to cluster and forecast research efforts. Contributing countries Table 2 (also pictured in Graphic 2) shows the contributing countries in the scientific QROM production within the lustrum considering the author’s position (first to forth position). Nearly one out of two articles came from the UK (45%), Canada being the second most productive country with 15.6% of total QROM production. Far behind are contributions from USA (8.26%), Australia (7.34%), and Sweden (6.42%). The remaining countries account for than 5 articles per case (less than 4%). Table 2. Country production and authorship position in QROM lustrum. 1st author 2nd author 3rd autho r 4th author Sums % UK 29 14 5 1 49 44.95 Canada 10 4 2 1 17 15.60 USA 6 1 2 9 8.26 Australia 5 3 8 7.34 Sweden 7 7 6.42 The Netherland 2 2 4 3.67 New Zealand 1 3 4 3.67 Norway 2 1 3 2.75 Italy 1 1 2 1.83 Ireland 1 1 2 1.83 Switzerland 1 1 0.92 Czech Rep 1 1 0.92 Denmark 0 1 1 0.92 Egypt 0 1 1 0.92 66 32 9 2 109 100 The most frequent single-authors are from the UK and Sweden while “secondary” authors appear to signed articles from New Zealand, Denmark, and Egypt. As fourteen countries have participated so far at QROM, the country-production rate is that of 4.71 articles per country. The data is indicating that QROM contributors are mainly from the editorial team and homeland researchers which should be the common thing that happens when starting a journal although there is more than a third of QROM entries (37.6%) coming from other continents. Apart from Sweden, whose contribution is sound, no other European country outstands in QROM and there are no signs of European networks in these issues. In this sense, frequencies and descriptive data were carefully requested to search for invisible schools among QROM participating countries and institutions in a wish to encourage possible networks among them. Invisible schools Bibliometrics is also focused on the identification of research groups by coauthor analysis and its corroboration is often termed a "unit" – hereby labelled as invisible schools- Eduardo Infante 5 which can be taken to spot agreed worldwide research interests that may foster journal productions. As there was no repeated authorship pattern along QROM production, invisible schools were spotted from articles by virtually connecting authors from the same country and institutions that had a common grading feature. Therefore, an invisible school was used in this case as the potential network made of two or more independent QROM (co)authors´ groups by means of a common author (grade 1), institution (grade 2), or city (grade 3). It is believed that the lower the grade, the greater the potential to create a network on QROM issues or interests. According to these relationship analyses, eight invisible schools were identified from the total sample of 109 authors isolated from the 66 articles and within 66 different institutions, being 3 mainly homeland schools and 5 international ones (two Canadian groups, and one each from Australia, New Zealand, and Norway). Graphic 2. Country contributions to QROM production considering authorship position. The largest potential network comes from the homeland invisible school that connects cities of Manchester, Sheffield, and Leicester by the Manchester Business School (MBS) throughout Cassell’s contributions. It is made up of a total of 15 authors and 7 locations in 4 subgroups from the following institutions (see Graphic 3): The University of Leicester (Llewellyn, Bryman), Birkbeck College at University of London, London (Symon), the MBS (Cassell, Hyde), The Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester (Xian, Buehring), and from the University of Sheffield (Johnson, Lee, Cullen, Rose-Anderssen, Baldwin, Ridgway). Two other Oceanian authors complete this school referring to the Auckland University of Technology, in Auckland, New Zealand (Northcott), and to Monash University, Clayton, in Australia (Collier). Another UK invisible school could be placed at Nottingham, mostly converging at the Nottingham University Business School (NUBS) at the University of Nottingham (Learmonth, Humphreys, Coupland) both linked with Nottingham Trent University (Bargiela-Chiappini) and with colleagues in Glasgow (Hibbert, McIntosh). Final UK main invisible school was located at Hull with two colleagues from Hull University Business School (Orr, Swailes), clustering people from Northampton Business School (Langley, Kakabadse) and one from SOLACE in London (Bennet). 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1ST 2ND 3RD 4TH 6 The Qualitative Report 2013 Graphic 3. Three homeland invisible schools retrieved from QROM journal (2006-2010). Five potential invisible schools can also be drawn from QROM most of them in grade 2 at the best. Graphic 4 depicts a first Canadian school which is composed of 6 authors from 2 cities and 4 institutions, and is fostered by Gina Grandy at the Department of Commerce, Faculty of Social Sciences, of the Mount Allison University in Sackville who connects in grade 1, colleagues from various institutions of Halifax, Canada (Wicks, Parker, J. H. Mills, A. J. Mills, and Thurlow). The second Canadian school is clustered in grade 2 by members of Department of Management and Human Resources, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Montreal (Morin, Holford) and from the Department of Management, HEC Montréal at Montreal (St Onge, Bellehumeur, Dupuis). Another international school was spotted in Australia with 4 colleagues coming from the Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) at Hawthorn (Jones, Bryant, Lasky), and from the University of Wollongong at Wollongong (Noble). There is a fourth invisible school placed at Dunedin, New Zealand with three authors from the University of Otago (Everett, Ruwhiu, Cone) connected in grade 2 with the Institute of Management and Marketing, in the Škoda Auto University at Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic (Strach). The final international school is based at Norway and it is composed of only 3 members from the Harstad University College, in Harstad (Solstad), and other two colleagues from Trondheim (Munkejord, Pettersen). Graphic 4. Biggest International Invisible School from QROM (2006-2010) Eduardo Infante 7 Study Issues: What is being study at QROM? Graphic 5 depicts the general topics being discussed at QROM along the first 5 years of its life. The most prolific area of publication deals with applied organizational research with 31% of the total sum of contributions where readers can find applied studies of diverse issues related to specific organizational factors. Among these issues we can mention discussions about leisure and culture, team meetings, complex relationships, organizational strategies, small firm competitiveness, organizational identities, power and influence, cultural change, decision makers, identity construction, participation, work performance, bullying, managerial identity, health care, hospital merger, or expatriate adjustment. Quite close to this set of contributions, we read articles providing knowledge or advice on how to deal with qualitative research or with the role and enquire of (qualitative) researchers accounted for 29% of the total in a production group that could be called meta-research. Examples of these meta-research articles are those who discussed about general introductions to or revisions of qualitative research, post-modern research, ethnography, researchers, role of teaching, grounded theory, methodology, qualitative production, research data, personal roles, researchers´ dilemma and emotions, data translation, self-disclosure, or researchers´ accountability. A third set of study issues are related to organizational research or studies (7.6%), management research or studies (6.1%), or both of them (4.5%), such as articles stating about total organizations, organizational research, lesbians, human resources management, interview, management field, qualitative management research, organization and management, use of CAQDAS, etc. All of these contributions were aimed at stressing the understanding of the life and functioning of organizational phenomena and managerial procedures. Graphic 5. Content analysis of study issues in QROM (2006-2010) Meta-research; 29% Metaknowledge; 11% Research tecnique; 10% Org. & Manag Studies; 19% Organisational issues; 31% 14 The Qualitative Report 2013 Mahadevan, J. (2011). Reflexive guidelines for writing organizational culture. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 6(2), 150-170. Pareto, V. (1935). The mind and society [Trattato Di Sociologia Generale]. Boston, MA: Harcourt, Brace. Price, J. D. S. (1973). Hacia una ciencia de la ciencia. Barcelona: Ariel. Smith, L.C. (2001). Selection and evaluation of reference sources. In R. E. Bopp & L. C. Smith (Eds.), Reference and information services: An introduction (pp. 309–330). Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. Shubert, A., & Glänzel, W. (1991). Publication dynamics: models and indicators. Scientometrics, 20(1), 317-331. Weick, K. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Zubeidat, I., Desvarieux, A. R., Salamanca, Y., & Sierra, J. C. (2004). Análisis bibliométrico de la revista Journal of Sex Research (1980-2003). Universitas Psychologica, 3(1), 47- 54. Author Note Eduardo Infante is a full-time teacher at University of Seville, Spain. He graduated in Psychology and completed a Master Degree in HR Management, both at his current University, where he started his academic career in 1996. He has also taught and/or worked in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, UK, Italy, and Poland. His research shifted from a quantitative perspective of the study of various issues towards a qualitative approach to the comprehension of work and family aspects since his PhD thesis presentation in 2001. To strengthen this new insight, he obtained a degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology in 2006 and also completed an MPhil programme in Organisational Psychology at Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, UK, in 2009. Since then, he is deep involved in English tuition at the Faculty of Psychology and so concluded an expert course in Bilingual Education in 2011. Besides his teaching profile, he founded a charity organisation of mental health 18 years ago which still endures. He may be contacted at Cardenal Ilundain, 24, 41013 Sevilla, Spain; Phone: +34-955420076; Mv: 636099740; Fax: 954557711; Email: [email protected]s Copyright 2013: Eduardo Infante and Nova Southeastern University. Article Citation Infante, E. (2013). Toddling towards childhood: A bibliometric analysis of the first QROM lustrum (2006-2010). The Qualitative Report, 18(55), 1-14. Retrieved from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR18/infante55.pdf