Modeling the strongInvisiblestrong College - UTORweb.pdf

Modeling the Invisible College Alesia Zuccala Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, 140 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G6 Email: a.zuccala@utoronto.ca This paper addresses the invisible college concept with the intent of developing a consensus regarding its definition. Emphasis is placed on the term as it was defined and used in Derek de Solla Price’s (1963; 1986) work and reviewed on the basis of its thematic progress in past research over the years. Special attention is given to Lievrouw’s (1990) article concerning the structure versus social process problem to show that both conditions are essential to the invisible college and both may be reconciled. A new definition of the invisible college is also introduced, including a proposed research model. With this model, researchers are encouraged to study the invisible college by focusing on three critical components – the subject specialty, the scientists as social actors, and the Information Use Environment (IUE). Introduction Research models are important to the field of Library and Information Science because they provide a set of themes to observe when collecting data for analysis and interpretation. Such models require testing with different populations, in different types of environments. With frequent testing the model should provide evidence over time that it has reached the status of a theory, or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain a phenomenon. One of the most noticeable gaps in the Information Science literature is that there has not been any development or use of a research model for the term invisible college. This finding is curious, particularly because it has appeared so frequently in various studies. A search for the phrase “invisible (W) college? /AB” (Abstract) in the Dialog™ Information Science and Technology Abstracts database and the database of Library Literatur