Invisible college

The Invisible College refers to both a historical institution (Invisible College (organisation)) and a sociological concept. This page focuses on the concept and its history, usage and utility. The concept is distinct from other similar concepts such as Epistemic Communities or Thought Collectives.

In her study of the terrorism research field, Edna Reid describes how terrorism research at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies developed over the years in collaboration with other right-wing research centres and think-tanks to form "an invisible college of terrorism researchers":

During the 1970s, governments, international organizations, and research centers such as the RAND Corporation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Georgetown University, and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University…sponsored numerous terrorism conferences, research projects, specialized anthologies, study groups, and official inquiries into terrorism. The efforts helped to nurture terrorism research and create numerous forums which allowed cross-fertilization of ideas, sharing of resources, and creation of an invisible college of terrorism researchers.

Contending concepts

Articles from Google Scholar on the spread of ideas
Discourse coalition	Epistemic community	Invisible college	Thought collective
742/1,750	8,040/16,100	7,250/11,100	1,340/1,690

The four concepts are all widely used in scholarly work seeking to understand how ides cohere and spread or decline. The concepts are often used in isolation from each other. It is clear that the concept of epistemic community is used more often than contending concepts - at least in relation to the overall holdings of Google Scholar.

Bibliography

A compilation of work on the concept of the invisible college.

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• Bartle, R. G. (1995). A brief history of the mathematical literature. Publishing Research Quarterly, 11, 3-9.
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• Beaver, D. de B., & Rosen, R. (1978). Studies in scientific collaboration. Part I: The professional origins of scientific co-authorship. Scientometrics, 1, 65-84.
• Beaver, D. de B., & Rosen, R. (1979a). Studies in scientific collaboration. Part II. Scientific co- authorship, research productivity and visibility in the French scientific elite, 1799-1830. Scientometrics, 1, 133-149.
• Beaver, D. de B., & Rosen, R. (1979b). Studies in scientific collaboration. Part III. Professionalization and the natural history of modern scientific co-authorship. Scientometrics, 1, 231-245.
• Brunn, S. D. & O'Lear, S. R. (1999). Research and communication in the "invisible college" of the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Global Environmental Change, 9, 285-301.
• Braham, S. (1995). Advanced collaboration via the web. Retrieved September 23, 1999 from: http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/vault/net/node5.html.
• Brunn, S. D. & O'Lear, S. R. (1999). Research and communication in the "invisible college" of the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Global Environmental Change, 9, 285-301.
• Chubin, D. (1976). The conceptualization of scientific specialties. The Sociological Quarterly, 17, 448-476.
• Chubin, D. E. (1985). Beyond invisible colleges: inspirations and aspirations of post-1972 social studies of science. Scientometrics, 7(3-6), 221-254.
• Crane, D. (1969). Social structure in a group of scientists: a test of the "invisible college" hypothesis. American Sociological Review, 34, 335-352.
• Crane, D. (1972). Invisible colleges: diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Crane, D. (1980). Social structure in a group of scientists: a test of the "invisible college" hypothesis. In B. C. Griffith (Ed.), Key Papers in Information Science (pp. 10-27). White Plains, NY: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc.
• Crawford, S. (1971). Informal communication among scientists in sleep research. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 22, 301-310.
• Cronin, B. (1982). Invisible colleges and information transfer: a review and commentary with particular reference to the social sciences. Journal of Documentation, 38, 212-236.
• Cronin, B. (1995). The scholar’s courtesy: The role of acknowledgements in the primary communication process. Los Angeles, CA: Taylor Graham Publishing.
• Ding, Y., Chowdhury, G., & Foo, S. (1999). Mapping the intellectual structure of information retrieval studies: an author cocitation analysis, 1987-1997. Journal of Information Science, 25, 67-78.
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• Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Annual Report 2000-2001. (2001). Cambridge, U. K.: Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
• Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. (2003). Retrieved July 5, 2003 from: http://www.newton.cam.ac.uk.
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• Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360-1380.
• Granovetter, M. (1983). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. Sociological Theory, 1, 201-233.
• Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Chicago, IL: Polity Press.
• Griffith, B. C., & Mullins, N. C. (1980). Coherent social groups in scientific change. In B. C. Griffith (Ed.), Key papers in information science (pp. 52-57). White Plains, New York: Knowledge Industry Publications.
• Hagstrom, W. O. (1970). Factors related to the use of different modes of publishing research in four scientific fields. In C. E. Nelson & D. K. Pollock (Eds.), Communication among scientists and engineers. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
• Kadushin, C. (1966). The friends and supporters of psychotherapy: on social circles in urban life. American Sociological Review, 31, 786-802.
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• Kinsella, W. J. (1998). Communication and the construction of knowledge in a scientific community: an interpretive study of the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ.
• Knorr-Cetina, K. D. (1981). The manufacture of knowledge: an essay on the constructivist and contextual nature of science. Oxford: Pergamon.
• Knorr-Cetina, K. D. (1983). The ethnographic study of scientific work: towards a constructivist interpretation of science. In K. D. Knorr-Cetina & M. Mulkay (Eds.), Science observed: perspectives on the social study of science (pp. 115-140). London: Sage.
• Koku, E., Nazer, N., & Wellman, B. (2001). Netting scholars: online and offline. American Behavioral Scientist, 44, 1752-1774.
• Krackhardt, D., Blythe, J., & McGrath, C. (1995). Krackplot 3.0 User's Manual. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University.
• Kraut, R., Galegher, J., & Egido, C. (1988). Relationships and tasks in scientific research collaborations. In I. Greif (Ed.), Computer supported co-operative work: a book of readings (pp. 741-769). San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.
• Kretschmer, H. (1997). Patterns of behaviour in co-authorship networks of invisible colleges. Scientometrics, 40, 579-591.
• Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: the construction of scientific facts (Revised ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Laudel, G. (2001). What do we measure by co-authorships? In M. Davis & C. S. Wilson (Eds.) Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics (pp. 369-384). Sydney, Australia: Bibliometrics & Informetrics Research Group.
• Lievrouw, L. A. (1990). Reconciling structure and process in the study of scholarly communication. In C. L. Borgman (Ed.), Scholarly communication and bibliometrics (pp. 59-69). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Lievrouw, L. A., & Carley, K. (1990). Changing patterns of communication among scientists in an era of ‘telescience.’ Technology in Society, 12, 457-477.
• Lievrouw, L. A., Rogers, E. M., Lowe, C. U., & Nadel, E. (1987). Triangulation as a research strategy for identifying invisible colleges among biomedical scientists. Social Networks, 9, 217-248.
• Lingwood, D. A. (1969). Interpersonal communication, research productivity and invisible colleges. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, California.
• Matzat, U. (2004). Academic Communication and Internet Discussion Groups: transfer of Information or Creation of Social Contacts? Social Networks, 26 (3), 221-255.
• McCain, K. W. (1990). Mapping authors in intellectual space: a technical overview. Journal of the American society for information science, 41, 433-443.
• Merton, R. (1957). Priorities in scientific discovery: a chapter in the sociology of science. American Sociological Review, 22, 635-659.
• Merz, M. (1998). 'Nobody can force you when you are across the ocean' - Face to face and e-mail exchanges between theoretical physicists. In C. Smith & J. Agar (Eds.), Making space for science. Territorial themes in the shaping of knowledge (pp. 313-329). London: Macmillan.
• Mulkay, M. J., Gilbert, G. N., & Woolgar, S. (1975). Problem areas and research networks in science. Sociology, 9, 187-203.
• Paisley, W. J. (Ed.). (1968). Information needs and uses. (Vol. 3). Chicago: American Society for Information Science and Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Perry, C. A., & Rice, R. E. (1998). Scholarly communication in developmental dyslexia: influence of network structure on change in a hybrid problem area. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49, 151-168.
• Perry, C. A., & Rice, R. E. (1999). Network influences on involvement in the hybrid problem area of developmental dyslexia. Science Communication, 21(1), 38-74.
• Price, D. J. de Solla. (1963). Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Price, D. J. de Solla. (1971). Some remarks on elitism in information and the invisible college phenomenon in science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 22, 74-75.
• Price, D. J. de Solla. (1986). Little science, big science ... and beyond. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Rousseau, R. & Zuccala, A. (2004). A classification of author cocitations: Definitions and search strategies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55, 513-529.
• Sandstrom, P. E. (1998). Information foraging among anthropologists in the invisible college of human behavioral ecology: an author cocitation analysis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
• Taylor, R. S. (1991). Information use environments. In B. Dervin & M. J. Voigt (Eds.), Progress in communication sciences, vol.10 (pp. 217-255). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.
• Tuire, P. & Erno, P. (2001). Exploring invisible scientific communities: studying networking relations within an educational research community. A Finnish case. Higher Education, 42, 493-513.
• Van Rossum, W. (1973). Informal communication and the development of scientific fields. Social Science Information,12, 63-75.
• White, H. D. (2003). Author cocitation analysis and Pearson’s r. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54, 1250-1259.
• White, H. D., & McCain, K. W. (1998). Visualizing a discipline: an author cocitation analysis of information science, 1972-1995. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49, 327-55.
• White, H. D., Wellman, B. & Nazer, N. (2004). Does citation reflect social structure? Longitudinal evidence from the "Globenet" interdisciplinary research group. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55, 111-126.
• Zuccala, A. (2004). Revisiting the invisible college: a case study of the intellectual structure and social process of Singularity Theory research in mathematics. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.