The Import and Export of Cognitive Science

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the interdisciplinary nature of Cognitive Science by examining citation patterns among related journals to understand its scholarly ecology and field composition.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of citation data to assess the interdisciplinarity and field dynamics of Cognitive Science.

Findings

Psychology dominates submissions at 51% in 2005

Citation patterns reveal the journal's position within the scholarly ecology

Clustering of related fields around cognitive science identified

Abstract

From its inception, a large part of the motivation for Cognitive Science has been the need for an interdisciplinary journal for the study of minds and intelligent systems. One threat to the interdisciplinarity of Cognitive Science, both the field and journal, is that it may become, or already be, too dominated by psychologists. In 2005, psychology was a keyword for 51% of submissions, followed distantly by linguistics (17%), artificial intelligence (13%), neuroscience (10%), computer science (9%), and philosophy (8%). The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) gathers data not only on how individual articles cite one another, but also on macroscopic citation patterns among journals. Journals or sets of journals can be considered as proxies for fields. As fields become established, they often create journals. By studying the patterns of citations among journals that cite and are cited by Cognitive Science, we can better: 1) appreciate the scholarly ecology surrounding the journal and the journals role within this ecology, 2) establish competitor and alternate journals, and 3) determine the natural clustering of fields related to cognitive science.