In order to benchmark national performances and identify Canada’s strengths in SSH, it is possible to use research articles published in journals representing disciplines where this medium of communication is popular, such as economics. For other disciplines, journal-based bibliometric analysis may be used with due caution and databases can be built in order to factor in other knowledge dissemination media. However, one must be wary of conducting comparative analyses of SSH disciplines without taking into account the effects of the knowledge dissemination media of each discipline on the bibliometric tools being used.

The results were less clear, however, concerning the relative importance in writingof fact and interpretation. By this point in the course both ‘arts’ and ‘science’ studentsseemed to be aware that essays in the history of science involved the evaluation ofdifferent views. ‘Arts’ students, however, more often indicated that they had expecteda more factual course, preferred writing about facts than opinions and considered‘getting the facts down’ as the most important criterion. This orientation towardsfacts in the ‘arts’ students’ questionnaire responses appears surprising, given that intheir writing they were more likely than ‘science’ students to represent ideas as provi-sional and mediated rather than factual.This apparent discrepancy may perhaps be resolved by distinguishing betweenstudents’ perception of an issue as problematic and their actual performance withrespect to that issue. ‘Arts’ students’ views of the role of fact and interpretation mayindicate an awareness that the representation of reality is not straightforward and thatessays require a sophisticated discussion and evaluation of different points of view.They may deal more effectively with these issues precisely because they realise thatthey are problematic. Interviews with ‘science’ students suggested that they were notalways conscious of the significance of this type of discussion and might perceive it as‘waffle’ or ‘padding’.

Kuhn (1970, p. 167) commented that science education tends to elide the processthrough which knowledge has been constructed, whereas students of other subjectsare exposed to varying interpretations over time. As a result, he suggested, sciencestudents are blind to the history of their subject, seeing it only as unproblematicprogress. The interview data suggest that this is indeed a point of difference betweenthe ‘arts’ and ‘science’ students in this sample. While both of them tend to have adualistic view of science itself, the ‘arts’ students seem to be more at ease with arelativistic view of knowledge in history.

Seven of the ‘arts’ students described a process of this sort, compared with only twoof the ‘science’ students. There was, however, another approach to revision, involvingonly one revision cycle. This was mentioned by five interviewees, four of whom werefrom ‘science’ backgrounds. Um ... rewriting? No. I can probably, once I’ve got the, I’ve got the feel of it, it probablytakes me a couple of hours to write, and then, shuffling stuff around, ... it’ll probably takeme, I don’t know, a morning or something to do a fair draft of it. (Ewan, 2002, science)Only one ‘arts’ student mentioned using a single revision cycle, and he had originallygraduated in science before starting his OU arts study

Although some ‘science’ students reported similar problems, it was only ‘science’students who talked in terms of ‘padding out’ their answers in order to reach therequired length: I’m more this, get all the facts down, yes it’s only three hundred words, but that’s it in anutshell. And it’s a lot harder then to flower it up to say either five hundred words or athousand words. (Larry, 2002, science)I’m not used to waffling I think that’s the problem. A lot of the art students say oh I’vewritten too much, ... and I have the opposite problem I kind of write down what Ithink the answer’s and I’ve only got like 200 words and I have to pad it out. (Ruth,2003, science)The tendency for some ‘science’ students to write relatively short essays may berelated to their conceptions of knowledge. If it is seen as factual, then once the factshave been stated, the student might see the task as complete; as Larry said, ‘that’s itin a nutshell’. If knowledge is relativistic, however, then competing views are equallyworthy of consideration and greater elaboration is needed to make a case

While the ‘arts’ students frequently described a strug-gle to make their essay ‘flow’, the ‘science’ students did not talk about textual struc-ture as problematic

Geisler (1994) and Russell and Yañez (2002) discuss a comparable situation in theUSA, where to fulfil general education requirements, undergraduates take a numberof disciplinary courses in fields which are not their major. They note the contradic-tions involved in conflating the aims of general education and disciplinary encultura-tion, with lecturers using a disciplinary discourse that is not only unfamiliar tostudents, but also seen as irrelevant to their individual aims and aspirations. Similarly,Moore (2000) discusses the tension between integration and disciplinarity in an inter-disciplinary foundation course in South Africa, voicing concerns that the attempt topromote generic competences risks undermining the disciplinary basis of academicperformance (p. 192).

The distinction between hard and soft fieldsrelates to the extent to which knowledge is constructed on the basis of a frameworkof shared assumptions. The pure sciences (hard) typically maintain a degree ofinternal unity over aims, methods of investigation and evaluation criteria, which maycome to be seen as derived from reality itself, rather than constructed by disciplinaryconvention. The humanities and social sciences (soft), in contrast, tend to becharacterized by internal discord, encouraging a view of knowledge as a matter ofinterpretation.

‘However’ is a textual theme with the function of indicating the relationship of theclause to the preceding text; ‘it is apparent’ is an interpersonal theme with the func-tion of indicating the writer’s stance towards the proposition that follows; ‘during thesecond half of the sixteenth century’ is an experiential theme providing informationabout circumstances surrounding the event or situation. In the discussion that followsI refer to these three types of non-subject theme as orienting themes. Unlike thesubject, none of them is grammatically compulsory and their use reflects a choicemade by the writer about how to frame the proposition presented within the clausecomplex.These orienting themes were consistently more common in the ‘arts’ students’essays, and the difference between the two groups was highly significant (t= 2.865,p < 0.006). ‘Arts’ students used on average 31.50 textual and 15.14 interpersonalelements in every 100 clause complexes, compared to 24.28 textual and 9.75 inter-personal elements for the ‘science’ group. They also tended to use more clausecomplexes containing an experiential orienting theme, although this difference wasnot significant. Since essays which used more orienting themes were also significantlymore likely to receive a higher mark (t= 2.336, p< 0.023), it is clearly worth investi-gating further the differing ways in which these were deployed by ‘arts’ and ‘science’students.

Research suggests that students majoring in hard fields with a high degree ofdisciplinary consensus are more likely to subscribe to beliefs in absolute knowledgethan those majoring in soft fields, and that these beliefs may be encouraged byaspects of the disciplinary context in which they work (Paulsen & Wells, 1998;Schommer-Aikins et al., 2003). Neumann (2001) reviews evidence of disciplinarydifferences in a number of aspects of teaching and learning, noting that soft disci-plines tend to emphasize critical thinking, oral and written expression, and analysisand synthesis of course content, while hard disciplines tend to emphasize skills indealing with facts and figures, with little writing required beyond the exposition ofexperimental results. In a large-scale undergraduate survey Entwistle and Tait(1995) found that students’ learning styles varied between different disciplines in linewith the demands of their course. Students of science and economics, for example,were more likely to use surface strategies, perhaps encouraged by assessmentpatterns that emphasized the reproduction of facts. In contrast, markers in historyand English were likely to penalize a reproducing orientation and a serialist (listing)style (Entwistle & Tait, 1995, p. 96).

Such tutor comments suggest that ‘science’ students are less ready to criticallyevaluate source material, a feature that can be related to the tendency already notedin their writing to downplay the role of human interpretation in the construction ofknowledge

T he Future of Publications in the Humanities

The Hardy-Littlewood Rule

No Bias, No Merit: The Case against Blind Submission

. It follows then that the machinery of the institution does not grow up to accommodate needs that are independently perceived but that, rather, the institutional machinery comes first and the needs then follow, as do the ways of meeting them. In short, the work to be done is not what the institution responds to but what it create

t "[ilf Northrop Frye should write an essay attacking archetypal criticism, the article would by definition be of much greater significance than an article by another scholar attack- ing the same approach" (Schaefer 5). The reason, of course, is that the approach is not something in- dependent of what Northrop Frye has previously said about it; indeed, in large part archetypal criticism is what Northrop Frye has said about it, and therefore anything he now says about it is not so much to be measured against an independent truth as it is to be regarded, at least potentially, as a new pronouncement of what the truth will hereafter be said to be

. Predict- ably, Schaefer's statement provoked a lively exchange in which the lines of battle were firmly, and, as I will argue, narrowly, drawn. On the one hand those who agreed with Schaefer feared that a policy of anonymous review would involve a surrender "to the spurious notions about objectivity and absolute value that . . . scientists and social scientists banter about"; on the other hand those whose primary concern was with the fairness of the procedure believed that "[jiustice should be blind" ("Correspon- dence" 4). Each side concedes the force of the opposing argument-the proponents of anonymous re- view admit that impersonality brings its dangers, and the defenders of the status quo acknowledge that it is important to prevent "extraneous considerations" from interfering with the identification of true merit (5)

A study of Galileo's works could alter our knowledge ofthe history, but not the science, of mechanics; whereas, a re-examination of the books of Freud or Marx can transform ourunderstanding of psychoanalysis or Marxism

In keeping with this distinction, we can understand why it isinevitable that practitioners of such discourses must 'return to theorigin*.

ficially,then, the initiation of discursive practices appears similar to thefounding of any scientific endeavour, but I believe there is a funda-/ mental difference

We can conclude that, unlike a proper name, which moves fromthe interior of a discourse to the real person outside who producedit, the name of the author remains at the contours of texts -separating one from the other, defining their form, and character-izing their mode of existence. It points to the existence of certaingroups of discourse and refers to the status of this discourse withina society and culture. The author's name is not a function of aman's civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach,among the discontinuities, which gives rise to new groups of dis-course and their singular mode of existence. C

he case for more collaborative work can be made. Indeed, most of us do it already, to some degree. We tend to discuss our ideas with colleagues and seek trusted opinions. We present talks at conferences and seminars, and use the feedback to develop ideas before publication. We solicit comments on drafts. Colleagues share a research environment that, if it is effective, contributes to the quality of all output. Yet when the work appears, the standard model is still sole ownership. A colleague could have given a lot of input, discussing ideas or providing comments on early drafts, yet their accepted reward is only to appear in the list of acknowledgements. This seems a paltry return on what can be a considerable amount of effort, an effort that is obviously a degree of collaboration. Perhaps one tries to mitigate the paltry reward by extracting a reciprocal amount of uncredited assistance in return.

Combination acts

However, a diverse body of work on thesocially situated nature of scientific communication alreadyexists which points the way. This ranges from Crane’s(1969) pioneering analyses of invisible colleges throughLatour and Woolgar’s (1979) classic study of laboratory lifeat the Salk Institute to Traweek’s (1992) richly texturedethnography of the HEP community. In addition, the workof Schatz and colleagues on the Worm Community Systemproject, which was designed to capture the full range ofknowledge, formal and informal, of the community of mo-lecular biologists who study the nematode worm C. elegans(see: http://www.canis.uiuc.edu/projects/wcs/index.html)can provide useful insights; so, too, research into the mate-rial practices and social interactions of scientists working incollaboratories, such as the Upper Atmospheric ResearchCollaboratory (see: http://intel.si.umich.edu/crew/Research/resrch08.htm) or the Space, Physics & Aeronomy ResearchCollaboratory (see: http://intel.si.umich.edu/sparc/) at theUniversity of Michigan

is wiseto avoid generalizations and to concentrate instead on show-ing how interactions between coworkers, specifically theorchestration of information exchange and coauthorship, aregrounded in local culture.

iomedical collaborations are moreheterogeneous and socially diffuse in character and do notappear to have the same degree of multilayered, internalreview as HEP research collaborations. T

TheHEP research community is thus characterized by highlevels of internal scrutiny, mutual trust—witness, for in-stance, the institutionalized practice of relying upon, andciting, preprints—and peer tracking, such that it is notsusceptible to systematic fraud. Contrary

The answer probably has to do with the relative intensityof socialization and oral communication (Traweek, 1992,pp. 120 –123), along with the character of the organizationalstructures and value systems, which define collaborations inlarge-scale, high-energy physics and biomedical research.

s Rennie and Flanagin(1994) remind us, there is no standard method for determin-ing order, nor any universalistic criteria for conferring au-thorship status:

But while the traditional model of authorship persists, mostnoticeably in the humanities, it is no longer the sole ordominant model in certain scientific specialties.

lphabetization through weightedlisting to reverse seniority (e.g., Spiegel & Keith-Spiegel,1970; Riesenberg & Lundberg, 1990).