Communicating science and publication cultures in the humanities
Communicating science involves complex procedures even when such knowledge is presented to specialized publics and scientists. This complexity has been barely studied in communication sciences and is the main interest of this project. Humanities seem to be at a crossroads comparable to the crisis of neo-positivism in the early 20th century and their future will depend upon strategy and decisions regarding internal communication that are now taking form and should prevail in the future.While it’s true that the Science Citation Index, created by Eugene Garfield, has made possible an objective classification of knowledge from its internal relations structure, there’s no denying it also disregards the social constraints of scientific production. This project aims to 1) discuss and create awareness on the questions concerning how science communicates itself to specialized audiences and scientists and, assuming it does so mainly by publishing results, 2) discuss “publication cultures” in the humanities and social sciences, something that can only be done by contrasting those publication cultures with the procedures used in other scientific areas. We also aim to 3) encourage the scientific community to take responsibility on future publication trends in Social Sciences and humanities and 4) discuss emergent modalities of publication, namely in languages other than English, the role of archive and indexing, and the social and political aspects of knowledge classification and ranking, namely its impact on the configuration of scientific knowledge.
Project coordinator: Anabela Gradim
Research Team: Anabela Alves; André Barata; António Fidalgo; Catarina Rodrigues; Eduardo Camilo; Isabel Pechincha; Joana Dias; João Canavilhas; Paulo Serra; José Maria Rosa; José Carvalheiro; Maria Clara Faria; Maria da Graça Castelo Branco; Rosália Rodrigues; Victor dos Santos Amaral
Starting Date: 01.03.2012
Duration: 36 months
Funding: FCT
