engleski

Beyond the Myths about the Natural and Social Sciences: A Sociological View

The hypothetical starting point of the book was the concept of the complex socio-cognitive structure of science, with a common (relatively loose) nucleus of the basic characteristics of its social and intellectual system, the interdependence of these two systems, and a high level of cognitive and social peculiarity of individual scientific fields. Our goal was to gain as complete an insight into the socio-cognitive specificities of the natural and social sciences as possible, on the basis of comprehensive empirical research - an insight into the differences and similarities between natural scientists and social scientists in their career paths and patterns, professional performances and achievements, and scientific productivity, as well as in their perceptions of scientific objectivity and quality. To achieve this goal, a more complex quantitative and qualitative methodological approach with several research methods had to be applied. The first ever web survey among Croatian scientists was conducted in 2004, covering 480 or 24.7% of natural scientists and social scientists, from whom both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered. In 2007, the first comprehensive bibliometric study of the productivity of all 1, 938 doctors of natural and social sciences was carried out. The data on publications and citations over the period of the last ten years was collected from the WoS (Web of Science) and Scopus bibliographic and citation database for every PhD holder. Basic quantitative (including bibliometric) and qualitative analyses were conducted, in line with the goal and the concept of the book. Sociological papers, which form the backbone of the book, are enriched by an information-science approach to the analysis of the scientific output, the socio-psychological view of scientific quality, and an epistemological overview of objectivity in the social sciences. Besides a complex theoretical and methodological approach, interdisciplinarity was also necessary if any relevant contribution was to be made to understand the presumed gap between the natural and social sciences.

natural sciences; social sciences; socio-cognitive similarities and differences; researchers' social and professional profile; knowledge production; self-reported and indexed productivity; scientific quality; scientific objectivity

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