Bulletin de méthodologie sociologique
Bulletin of sociological methodology
91 | 2006
July
Editing a Normal Science Journal in Social Science
Linton C. Freeman
Electronic version
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/bms/595
ISSN: 2070-2779
Publisher
Association internationale de méthodologie sociologique
Printed version
Date of publication: 1 July 2006
Number of pages: 8-19
ISSN: 0759-1063
Electronic reference
Linton C. Freeman, « Editing a Normal Science Journal in Social Science », Bulletin de méthodologie
sociologique [Online], 91 | 2006, Online since 01 July 2009, connection on 04 May 2019. URL : http://
journals.openedition.org/bms/595
This text was automatically generated on 4 May 2019.
© BMS
Editing a Normal Science Journal in
Social Science
Linton C. Freeman
Introduction
1 In a personal communication, the eminent anthropologist, A. K. Romney, distinguished
between scientists and social scientists. “Scientists,” said Romney, “compete against
nature; social scientists compete against each other.”
2 The scientists Romney is talking about are engaged in what Thomas Kuhn (1962), called
“normal science;” the social scientists are not. Kuhn defined normal science as a
community endeavor. A collection of individual scientists come to share a common set of
beliefs both about which problems are appropriate for study and about acceptable ways
of seeking solutions to those problems. In Kuhn’s words, they share a paradigm for
research.
3 Because they share a paradigm, normal scientists, like physicists and chemists, work
together in a systematic effort to uncover nature’s secrets. But Romney suggests that
social scientists, like sociologists and anthropologists, lack a paradigm. Instead of
attempting to uncover nature’s secrets, they seem to struggle with each other in a never
ending effort to re-define what should be studied and how.
4 The lack of a paradigm in social science was brought home to me many years ago when I
served as an associate editor of a journal in social psychology. As he received
manuscripts the editor sent each of them to two associate editors for review. At the top
of each review sheet was a rating scale like the one shown in Figure 1. Each associate,
then, provided an overall numeric rating for each manuscript reviewed. And at the end
of the year the editor sent a list of all the manuscripts reviewed to each of the associate
editors. The list included the pair of ratings that had been assigned to each. I ran a
correlation between the pairs of ratings and the result was -.02 — almost exactly zero.
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This could occur only in a field where there was no paradigm to guide research and
evaluation.
Figure 1: Rating Scale from an Early Social Psychology Journal
5 Normal science fields, that are guided by a paradigm, should differ from those that lack a
paradigm in at least three important ways:
1. Since, given a paradigm, writers and reviewers should agree, a normal science journal
should accept almost all manuscripts submitted. But in a science that lacks a paradigm,
one would expect little agreement between writers and reviewers and, consequently,
acceptance rates should be much lower.
2. When a paradigm is present, the articles published in each journal should tend to
follow one or a few lines of inquiry. Thus, they should tend to cite articles previously
published in that same journal. But without a paradigm, fewer tendencies for that kind of
self-citation should be displayed.
3. When a paradigm is present, the average lengths of articles should be relatively short.
Each article in a normal science is contributing to an ongoing process of building
cumulative knowledge. Each, therefore, can be expected simply add its bit to the ongoing
process, and do so in relatively few pages. But without consensus, contributions to a non-
normal science must all go back to first principles and try to lay out the foundations for
their approach. In that case, articles should tend to be longer.
6 In the next section I will use data from normal and non-normal sciences to explore these
ideas.
Publishing Practices in Normal and Non-Normal
Sciences
7 Figure 2 shows the acceptance rates for four physics and chemistry journals and four
journals from sociology and anthropology. The differences in acceptance rates between
these two kinds of journals are dramatic. It is clear that the normal science fields do
accept almost all submissions; the non-normal fields accept practically none.
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Figure 2: Recent Acceptance Rates for Eight Journals
1
8 Figure 3 shows the self-citation patterns for five journals from physics and chemistry and
five from sociology, anthropology and political science. Again it is dramatically clear that
the normal sciences display a much larger tendency toward self-citation.
Figure 3: Recent Self-Citation Rates for Ten Journals
9 And Figure 4 shows the average number of pages per article for four physical science and
three social science journals. Here again, the two kinds of journals seem to differ
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markedly in their styles. Articles in the social science journals seem, on average, to be
considerably longer.
Figure 4: Average Article Lengths in Seven Journals
10 The expected differences between journals in physical sciences and those in social
sciences are supported by these data. They differ in acceptance rates, self-citation rates
and article lengths. It is clear, then, that in general there are important differences in
publication policies and styles between normal and non-normal sciences. In the next
section I will describe a social science journal that deviates from these generalizations.
A Deviant Social Science Journal: Social Networks
11 In 1978, I was the founding editor of a new social science journal, Social Networks.
Originally it was published by Elsevier Sequoia in Lausanne, Switzerland. But in 1982, it
was moved to the parent company, Elsevier North Holland, in Amsterdam.
12 The aim of Social Networks was to provide a forum for a then small community of
mathematicians and social scientists whose work embodied a structural perspective in
social research. The new journal had to establish an identity, so the first few submissions
represented a wide range of approaches; many were simply inappropriate for Social
Networks. But by the third year, the journal had succeeded in communicating its
perspective and almost all of the new submissions were appropriate.
13 After 15 years of publication, Hummon and Carley (1993) examined the citation patterns
in Social Networks. Citations, they found, were systematically patterned. There were
multiple citations to most authors, the same authors reappeared and the citation paths
displayed a single coherent substantive concern. They reported that, “There are no
major divisional splits, either institutional or paradigmatic, and the members of the
specialty attend to each others’ work.” They concluded that, “. . . the type of science
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