ABSTRACT
A reevaluation of classic papers in geographical information (GI) Science allows us to reflect on the impact that individuals and their scientific contributions have had on the discipline. In doing so, we are able to consider in greater depth, the nature of the discipline, the way in which it has evolved, and the impact it has had on the wider scientific community. Yet GI Science includes complex, changing, and vaguely defined research domains (see Goodchild, Chapter 9 in this volume) with contributions from individuals, many of whom may not choose to place themselves within an agreed domain boundary of GI Science. In this chapter, we offer an insight into the structure of GI Science by considering how those who have published in
IJGIS
have collaborated, or indeed, have chosen not to. We borrow some of the techniques from bibliometrics (Broadus, 1987) and social network theory (Newman, 2004) to consider whether the structure of co-authorship in
IJGIS
can tell us something about the nature of GI Science and the role
IJGIS
has played in it. A definition of GI Science that avoids having to draw boundaries around a
number of allied disciplines is to consider it as
work carried out by those who publish it in
IJGIS
(21.1)
Clearly there is some circularity in this definition which is only resolved by passing the responsibility of domain definition to the editors and reviewers of the journal (work considered out of scope by reviewers will not be published in that journal). It does, however, provide us with a measurable quantity with which we can define the core of the discipline. We can further quantify distance from that core in relation to the amount of work published in
IJGIS
(someone who has published more than 10 papers in IJGIS could be regarded as more centrally involved in GI Science than someone who has published 1 paper in
IJGIS
and 9 elsewhere). We might enlarge our definition by considering GI science also to include
work carried out in collaboration with those involved in (21.1) defined above (21.2)
And to some extent, there may be an involvement in GI Science by those who collaborate in work defined in (21.2) above, and so on. Thus we can conceive of a network of collaborations among researchers with a core somewhere firmly in the GI Science domain and a periphery based on collaborative research with those nearer the core.
