Italian political science in international journals: An update of Plümper and Radaelli’s "Publish or Perish"
“[…] international publications typical of Italian political scientists is on Italian politics. Accordingly, special issues on Italian politics may well mobilize Italian political scientists, but otherwise Italians are rarely engaged with the European and international debate“.
This discouraging statement concludes the analysis of Plümper and Radaelli (2004, 1123; I will refer to this article as P&R from now onwards), which is devoted to the record of publications of Italian political scientists in refereed international journals over a thirteen-year time span between 1990 and 2002. The aim of this contribution is to update the cited work, analysing an analogous record in the following five years (2003-2007). Data gathering criteria have followed, as strictly as possible, those employed in the previous research, in order to get comparable results. Moreover, and again consistently with P&R, the focus is kept on institutions instead of keeping it on individuals. Data are thus grouped at university level, and can be read as an indicator of the propensity of Italian academic institutions to promote the participation of their scholars in international research networks and to contribute to the political science debate beyond the national borders.
It is obviously just one indicator, among others that are possible. It leaves aside other publications, such as monographs and chapters on edited volumes, participation in international conferences (the ECPR ones in primis), the promotion of (or participation to) research projects funded by international organisations. Thus, I lay no claim to show a comprehensive picture of the publishing activity of Italian researchers, let alone the state of the discipline as a whole. Yet, refereed international journals are a privileged observatory of the directions a discipline takes, and an active scientific community should be able to get at least some of the visibility that this kind of publication venues.
The criteria for data gathering
Three issues must be addressed when compiling a list of publications of Italian political scientists on academic journals. First, one has to set a rule about “who” is a political scientist in Italy. P&R adopt the institutional classification of the discipline of the Italian Ministry of Higher Education and identify political scientists with those lecturers and professors belonging to the SPS/04 – political science grouping. This is recognised to be a fair description of people involved in political research. However, we should bear in mind that a few scholars are framed into nearby disciplinary groupings (mostly sociology) notwithstanding the fact that they regularly work and publish on political matters and by all means are active within the political science community. The opposite holds as well; a few scholars formally included in the SPS/04 grouping are actually active in other social sciences.
Second, relevant journals must be selected. Here P&R list 89 international reviews (all publishing in English) from the ISI1 database in the following areas: Political Science, Area Studies, Industrial Relations, International Relations, Public Policy, Social Policy and Urban Studies. From the 208 total titles of these areas, some journals are excluded because they actually do not publish articles related to Political Science, while others are excluded on the basis of their low relevance, having an impact factor lower than 0.25 or summing up less than fifty total citations (see P&R, 1115-16 for details, and the appendix for a list of included journals).
Thirdly, we have to state what we mean by ‘publication’. In this case, again following the previous research of P&R, I included only those pieces of work that are labelled as articles in the ISI database. That is to say, all “minor” publications, such as review articles, editorial matters, symposia, introduction to special issues, book reviews, have been removed from the counting.
When reading the following analysis, one should keep in mind that all these three criteria are rather restrictive. As far as people are concerned, the Ministerial dataset does not include young scholars not yet holding a tenure position (doctoral students and post-doctoral research fellows), nor does it include Italians working for a foreign institution at the time of publication2. Also the choice of journals is somehow disputable. In fact, the ISI database does not include some journals devoted to the interdisciplinary study of Italy and southern Europe (Modern Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, South European Society and Politics, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans) as well as other reviews where works of Italian political scientists have been published (for instance Regional & Federal Studies, The Journal of Legislative Studies).
If it is then reasonable to follow these rules for the sake of comparability, we should nonetheless consider that different criteria would lead to somehow different results, and would certainly increase the number of international publications of Italian scholars. The results of P&R analysis show a picture where dark nuances are more evident than bright ones, and my analyses, as we will see in the following, do not offer a much more positive image. However, we have to take into account that this is due, at least in part, to the choice of restrictive criteria of data gathering.
Analysis
Table 1 presents a picture of the size of the discipline in the Italian academia, comparing 2002 figures (the ones used by P&R) to the situation on December 31, 2007. As we can see, the overall number of political scientists has considerably grown in the last few years (from 170 to 199), with an increase of about 17% on the initial figure.
The pattern of distribution of political scientists, on the other hand, has largely remained unchanged, with a few sites hosting a considerable share of scholars. The five universities where political science is most developed (Bologna, Firenze, Torino, Milano, Padova)3 are the home institution of about half of the Italian political scientist and about half of full professors of this discipline, and this figure barely changes from 2002 to 2007. This is not the place for further elaborations on the geographical distribution of the discipline (on this see Curini in this issue and Capano and Tronconi 2005), but it is clear that political science as an established field of study exists only in a minority of Italian universities.
Table 1 Italian Political Scientists in 2002 and in 2007
| Cat. | 2007 | 2002 |
|---|---|---|
| Full professors | 65 | 55 |
| Associate professors | 58 | 59 |
| Assistant professors | 76 | 56 |
| Total | 199 | 170 |
Table 2 moves the focus to publications. In the five years between 2003 and 2007, 26 articles were published in international political science journals according to the criteria we have set above. Bologna has the higher figure (6 publications), followed by Firenze (5), Trento (4) and Siena (3). Overall, ten universities are included in the list, out of the 40 Italian universities where the discipline is taught and the 25 where at least one full professor is present. When we look at citations4, the “ranking” does not change significantly. Bologna and Firenze again display the highest numbers, followed by Pavia (whose only article received 7 citations). On average, articles written by Italian political scientists have been cited 2.27 times, with Bologna, Firenze Milano and Pisa, beyond the aforementioned case of Pavia, exceeding this figure.
Table 2 Publications and citations of Italian political scientists on refereed international journals (2003-2007)
| University | Publications | Citations | Cit/Pub |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bologna | 6 | 18 | 3 |
| Firenze | 5 | 15 | 3 |
| Trento | 4 | 3 | 0.75 |
| Siena | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Milano | 2 | 5 | 2.5 |
| Pisa | 2 | 6 | 3 |
| Pavia | 1 | 7 | 7 |
| Salerno | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Torino | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Urbino | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Total | 26 | 59 | 2.27 |
As we have noted above, the presence of political scientists is not evenly distributed in Italian academic institutions; as a consequence, differences in the number of publications and citations must be considered in the light of the dimensions of the discipline in each university. Table 3 reports this kind of data, showing some of the smaller institutions doing fairly well if compared with the biggest ones. Of course this table, as well as the preceding ones, must be read with the caution that is necessary when dealing with such small numbers.
Table 3 Number of publications and citations, standardised by the number of chairs (2003-2007)
| University | Chairs | Pub/Chairs | Cit/Chairs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pavia | 1 | 1 | 7 |
| Pisa | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Firenze | 5 | 1 | 3 |
| Urbino | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Trento | 2 | 2 | 1.5 |
| Bologna | 16 | 0.38 | 1.13 |
| Milano | 6 | 0.33 | 0.83 |
| Siena | 4 | 0.75 | 0.75 |
| Salerno | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Torino | 6 | 0.17 | 0 |
| Total | 65* | 0.40 | 0.91 |
- * 65 is the grand total, including Universities not reported in this table.
The outlet of Italian publications is considered in table 4. Contrary to the findings of P&R, the European Journal of Political Research was no longer, in the considered period of time, the most popular journal, having been replaced by West European Politics. The relatively high number of articles in this journal is actually due to the five articles published as part of a special issue in 2007 (Bull and Rhodes 2007), where most contributors were Italian, even though not all of them are political scientists. Beyond this, what seems to emerge from the comparison with the analysis of the previous period is a wider spectrum of outlets where Italian political scientists have their works published. The number of journals in which Italian publications have appeared between 2003 and 2007 has increased (15 instead of 12) vis-à-vis the previous analysis, in spite of the shorter period and the lower number of articles considered. Moreover, some American-based journals are included in the list, that were virtually absent before (the Annual Review of Political Science, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, the Journal of Democracy, Comparative Political Studies).
Table 4 Refereed international journals publishing Italian political scientists research
| Journal | N. of articles |
|---|---|
| West European Politics | 7 |
| Comparative Political Studies | 3 |
| Party Politics | 3 |
| European Journal of Political Research | 2 |
| Annual Review of Political Science | 1 |
| British Journal of Political Science | 1 |
| Electoral Studies | 1 |
| Journal of Democracy | 1 |
| Journal of European Public Policy | 1 |
| Journal of Theoretical Politics | 1 |
| Parliamentary Affairs | 1 |
| Policy Review | 1 |
| Public Administration | 1 |
| Public Choice | 1 |
| Public Opinion Quarterly | 1 |
| Total | 26 |
Finally, a look at the distribution of publications over time is possible. As figure 1 shows, the trend remains as erratic as it was in the nineties, with the highest columns normally corresponding to the publishing of a special issue focused on Italian politics. 2007 is in fact the year of the special issue of West European Politics mentioned before. On the contrary, 2004 is a truly exceptional year, with the nine corresponding articles published in nine different journals.
Publications per year (1990-2007)
Concluding remarks
Italian political science today is not, on average, much more internationalised than it was five years ago. While in the 13 years covered by P&R Italian political scientists published 4.8 articles per year on international journals and were cited 12.1 times per year, in 2003-2007 these figures have changed to 5.2 and 11.8 respectively. A hardly visible step forward in terms of publications, a stable figure in terms of citation, if we consider that articles are obviously less likely to be cited in a shorter period of time. And the lack of a positive trend through time does not allow for much optimism for the immediate future. Actually, the lack of a positive trend of internationalisation of research outlets is even more disappointing if we consider the substantial increase of the discipline in numerical terms (tab. 1). Some reasons for optimism come from the widening number of outlets in which Italian political scientists have recently published, even though the Italian community is still absent from what is considered to be the most prestigious of the American journals, the American Political Science Review.
As far as institutions are concerned, Bologna and Firenze are confirmed to be the two most active sites of the discipline, also as a consequence of their numerical dimensions. A few smaller centres have been active as well (Pisa, Siena, Trento), but in these cases international visibility seems to be linked to individuals more than relying on the institution per se. Most important, only ten universities show a record of international visibility, one out of four if we consider that political science is active in forty universities.
Political science shows a good record when we consider its growth within the Italian academia, and this trend is constant over time. On the other hand, in terms of research outputs it remains weak on the international stage. P&R suggested that this may depend on the structure of incentives Italian academia provides for scholars recruitment and career advancements, incentives that rarely include the achievement of some international visibility. This conclusion seems to be as valid now as it was five years ago.
Bibliography
- Bull, Martin and Martin Rhodes (eds.) (2007) Italy, a Contested Polity, special issue of «West European Politics», vol. 30, n. 4.
- Capano, Giliberto and Filippo Tronconi (2005) Political Science in Italian universities. Peaceful survival?, in «European Political Science», vol. 4, n. 2.
- Curini, Luigi (2008) Eight years of development: the Italian academic community of Political Scientists within University and Departments, «Italian Political Science», n. 2. Internet: http://www.italianpoliticalscience.org.
- Plümper, Thomas and Claudio Radaelli (2004) Publish or perish? Publications and citations of Italian political scientists in international political science journals, 1990-2002, «Journal of European Public Policy», vol. 11, n. 6.
Footnotes
1 ISI is the acronym for Institute for Scientific Information. It is a US-based company, now part of the Thomson Corporation, which develops services for bibliographic and citation indexing. Its database includes thousands of scientific and academic journals and is available online through the ISI Web of Knowledge website (http://www.webofknowledge.com/). Among other things, ISI Thomson publishes an annual Journal Citation Report, with the calculation of the Impact Factor of scientific journals.
2 The European University Institute is correctly classified as an extraterritorial institution notwithstanding the fact that it is based in Florence.
3 Bologna has the biggest political science department and is the home institution of 33 political scientists (of which 16 are full professors), Milano and Torino follow (with 19 political scientists and 6 full professors each). Firenze, the original cradle of Italian political science, has now 15 political scientists, of which 5 are full professors; Padova has 12 political scientists, of which 3 are full professors. All the data refer to December 31, 2007 and are extracted from the online database of the Ministry of Higher Education
4 Also for citations I have used the ISI Thompson website. This means that citations must be intended as citations in journals included in the ISI database, updated at the time of writing this pages (July 2008).
