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Parochialism or Self-Consciousness? Internationality in Medical History Journals 1997–2006

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Hubert Steinke  and
Yves Lang
Yves Lang
Affiliation:
*Hubert Steinke MD, PhD and Yves Lang, MD, Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Bern, Buehlstrasse 26, 3012 Bern, Switzerland. Email: hubert.steinke@mhi.unibe.ch
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Abstract

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Research councils, universities and funding agencies are increasingly asking for tools to measure the quality of research in the humanities. One of their preferred methods is a ranking of journals according to their supposed level of internationality. Our quantitative survey of seventeen major journals of medical history reveals the futility of such an approach. Most journals have a strong national character with a dominance of native language, authors and topics. The most common case is a paper written by a local author in his own language on a national subject regarding the nineteenth or twentieth century. American and British journals are taken notice of internationally but they only rarely mention articles from other history of medicine journals. Continental European journals show a more international review of literature, but are in their turn not noticed globally. Increasing specialisation and fragmentation has changed the role of general medical history journals. They run the risk of losing their function as international platforms of discourse on general and theoretical issues and major trends in historiography, to international collections of papers. Journal editors should therefore force their authors to write a more international report, and authors should be encouraged to submit papers of international interest and from a more general, transnational and methodological point of view.

Keywords

JournalsResearch QualityInternationalityLanguagesHistoriographyCitations
Type
Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 523 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 Peter Burke, ‘The Web and the Seams: Historiography in an Age of Specialization and Globalization’, in Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (eds), British and German Historiography, 1750–1950. Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 401–9.

2 Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Toward a Global Community of Historians: The International Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences, 1898–2000, Jürgen Kocka (ed.), (New York: Berghahn, 2005), 347.

3 Peter Lambert and Phillip R. Schofield (eds), Making History: An Introduction to the History and Practices of a Discipline (London: Routledge, 2004), 63.

4 Frank Huisman, ‘The Dialectics of Understanding: On Genres and the Use of Debate in Medical History’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 27 (2005), 13–40: 37.

5 John Burnham, What is Medical History? (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2005), 136.

6 Wolfgang U. Eckart and Robert Jütte, Medizingeschichte: Eine Einführung (Stuttgart: UTB, 2007).

7 For example, Norbert Paul and Thomas Schlich (eds), Medizingeschichte: Aufgaben, Probleme, Perspektiven, (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1998); Frank Huisman and John Harley Warner (eds), Locating Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Stefan Schulz, Klaus Steigleder, Heiner Fangerau and Norbert Paul (eds), Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin: Eine Einführung, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006).

8 For example, Roy Porter, ‘The Historiography of Medicine in the United Kingdom’, in Huisman and Warner, op. cit. (note 7), 194–208, and Martin Dinges, ‘Social History of Medicine in Germany and France in the Late Twentieth Century: From the History of Medicine Toward a History of Health’, in idem, 209–36.

9 For example, Francisca Loetz, ‘Medikalisierung in Frankreich, Grossbritannien und Deutschland, 1750–1850: Ansätze, Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der Forschung’, in Wolfgang U. Eckart and Robert Jütte (eds), Das europäische Gesundheitssystem: Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in historischer Perspektive, (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), 123–61.

10 Olga Amsterdamska and Anja Hiddinga, ‘Trading Zones or Citadels? Professionalization and Intellectual Change in the History of Medicine’, in Huisman and Warner, op. cit. (note 7), 237–61.

11 <http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities/erih-initial-lists.html>, accessed 15 April 2011.

12 See, for example, ‘Journals Under Threat: A Joint Response from History of Science, Technology and Medicine Editors’, Medical History, 53 (2009), 1–4.

13 A comprehensive – although not complete – list of medical history journals is given in Eckart and Jütte, op. cit. (note 7), 355–8.

14 Spanish National Research Council.

15 Universities of Granada, Barcelona and Elche.

16 At the time of writing, published by The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, and from 2006 as the official journal of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health.

17 Department of Experimental Medicine and Pathology, University ‘La Sapienza’, Rome.

18 Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation, Stuttgart.

19 Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature, Committee for the History of Medicine and Sciences.

20 Information based on enquiry and official statements.

21 Except Medicina nei Secoli with forty-to-fifty, mostly invited, papers.

22 Medizinhistorisches Journal, 37 (2002), 4. All other journals introduced them before 1997.

23 Amsterdamska and Hiddinga, op. cit. (note 10).

24 Institutional affiliation is rarely noted in this journal and was verified only for a selected period.

25 A tension between the society’s amateurs and the professional editorial board is observed by Bert Theunissen, ‘Journals of the History of Science in the Netherlands’, in Marco Beretta, Claudio Pogliano and Pietro Redondi (eds), Journals and History of Science (Firenze: Olschki, 1998),197–210.

26 Figures are based not on nationality but on the author’s residence.

27 If a paper deals with two countries, half of it has been ascribed to each country; if it deals with three countries it has been counted as an international article.

28 Articles on the prehistorical and classical world are generally considered international.

29 Amsterdamska and Hiddinga, op. cit. (note 10), 244–6.

30 We have not analysed the whole period of ten years but only 2000–2001.

31 ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, The American Historical Review, 111 (2006), 1441–63: 1441.

32 Beretta, op. cit. (note 25).

33 Robert Fox, ‘Sartonian Values in a Changing World: The Case of Isis’, in Beretta, ibid., 119–30: 128.

34 Amsterdamska and Hiddinga, op. cit. (note 10), 252.

35 Karl-Heinz Leven, ‘“Raising the Flag of this Science”: Journals of Medical History from “Janus” to the Twentieth Century’, in Beretta, op. cit. (note 25), 31–56: 53.

36 On cultural transfer and journals as paradigmatic models, see Matthias Middell, ‘Vom allgemeinhistorischen Journal zur spezialisierten Liste im H-Net: Gedanken zur Geschichte der Zeitschriften als Elementen der Institutionalisierung moderner Geschichtswissenschaft’, in Matthias Middell (ed.), Historische Zeitschriften im internationalen Vergleich (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1999), 7–31.

37 Amsterdamska and Hiddinga, op. cit. (note 10), 258.

38 Cf. Bernd Stiegler, ‘Diskursstile in den Geisteswissenschaften’, in Elisabeth Lack and Christoph Markschies (eds), What the Hell is Quality? Qualitätsstandards in den Geisteswissenschaften, (Frankfurt: Campus, 2008), 215–29: 223–4.

39 ‘The European Research Index for the Humanities: A Reply to the Publishers of Journals in History of Science, Technology and Medicine’, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 32 (2009), 132–4: 134.

40 José Luis Peset, ‘Dynamis en sus 25 años’, Dynamis, 25 (2005), 25–45.

41 Of the seventeen journals presented here, four are ranked ‘A’, two ‘B’ and eight ‘C’; three are not recorded in the ERIH initial list.