The Pillars of Unity and Disciplinary Bridges: Geographical Research between Rhetorics and Practice

• Applicants: Dr. Philipp Aufenvenne, since 7/2023; Dr. Philipp Mayr-Schlegel
• Subject Area: Human Geography ; Physical Geography
• Term: from 2013 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 249237273

The overall aim of the intended continuation of the project “The Pillars of Unity and Disciplinary Bridges” is to provide an empirical contribution to the epistemological debate about the unity of science and the practice of interdisciplinary work from a network analytical, bibliometric perspective, taking Geography as an example. During the extension phase, the overriding epistemic interest will still be focussed on the citation analytical compilation and analysis of (sub)disciplinary internal structures in Geography in the German-speaking scientific community. Whereas the project previously revolved merely around the current disciplinary structure, neglecting the temporal dimension of the structuring process, a dynamic approach will be developed in the next phase: the temporal dynamics of disciplinary development and the evolution of paradigms will therefore take center stage. The technical basis and the necessary data corpus must first be established before the research perspective can be expanded. In concrete terms, the extension phase involves the development and implementation of a scientometric monitoring tool for the longitudinal monitoring of scientific communication (“GEOcite”). The software solution GEOcite seeks to compile, collect and process extensive historical and recent citation data (from 1949 to the present). In the process, use will be made of both digital and analogue archives. Extensive digitization work will be conducted in cooperation with Göttingen State and University Library. This work will form the basis for the automated extraction of citation data, which will be undertaken in cooperation with the DFG partner project EXCITE (“Extraction of Citations from PDF Documents”, GESIS/University of Koblenz-Landau). The intention is to create and process a data corpus for analyzing current structures of disciplinary knowledge networks and their historical genesis. GEOcite will create the requirement for bibliometric network analysis, which will improve our understanding of disciplinary dynamics. The data gained will be made freely accessible, making it available long term for the empirical study of science and historical disciplinary monitoring.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Malte Steinbrink, until 7/2023 (†)