Modeling the invisible college

  • Authors:

  • Alesia Zuccala

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies, 140 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 3G6, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This article 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 work (1963, 1986) 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 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). © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.