The article "Trading Cultures: Resource Mobilization and Service Rendering in the Life Sciences as Revealed in the Journal Article's Paratext" authored by SLIS Dean Blaise Cronin and MLS student Sara Franks has been published in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST).
In the introduction, Cronin and Franks write: "While the early modern conception of authorship, with its privileging of originality, expressivity, and individual genius, may still hold sway in the humanities, in many scientific and some social scientific fields the notion of sole or autonomous authorship is decidedly anachronistic. the popular stereotype of the "lone wolf" scholar is increasingly at odds with actuality."
JASIST "serves as a forum for new research in information transfer and communication processes in general, and in the context of recorded knowledge in particular. Concerns include the generation, recording, distribution, storage, representation, retrieval, and dissemination of information, as well as its social impact and management of information agencies." The journal is published on behalf of the American Society of Information Science and Technology. [Wiley InterScience website]
ABSTRACT [Wiley InterScience website]
Formal and informal modes of collaboration in life sciences research were explored paratextually. The bylines and acknowledgments of more than 1,000 research articles in the journal Cell were analyzed to reveal the strength of collegiate ties and the importance of material and ideational trading between both individuals and labs. Intense coauthorship and subauthorship collaboration were shown to be defining features of contemporary research in the life sciences.
Blaise Cronin & Sarah Franks. (2006). Trading cultures: Resource mobilization and service rendering in the life sciences as revealed in the journal article's paratext. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(14), 1909-1918.
Posted November 30, 2006