Invisible College
"The term invisible college was first used in seventeenth century Europe when
the Royal
Society of London was founded. Members of this early Royal Society of Scientists
(many of whom were mathematicians) did not belong to a formal institution; but
referred to themselves as an invisible college due to their geographic closeness
and regular meetings based on shared scientific interests (Bartle, 1995;
Lievrouw, 1990; Lingwood, 1969; Price 1963).
Later, Price's (1963; 1986) bibliometric research led to the modern
identification of
invisible colleges as groups of elite, mutually interacting and productive
scientists from
geographically distant affiliates who exchange information to monitor progress
in their field." (Zuccala, 2005, in press).
Literature:
Crane, D. (1972). Invisible Colleges. Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific
Communities. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Price, D. J. S. (1963). Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia
University Press.
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 Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
Zuccala, A. (2005, in press). Modeling the invisible college. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Available at: http://individual.utoronto.ca/azuccala_web/InvisibleCollege.pdf
See also: Gatekeeper;
Information sociology;
Scientific communication.
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 05-02-2006