Pluralism in the Market of Science? A citation network analysis of economic research at universities in Vienna

Pluralism has become a central issue not only in the public discourse but also in heterodox economics, as the focus on impact factors and rankings based on citations continues to increase. This marketization of science has been an institutional vehicle for the economic mainstream to promote its ideas. Citations thus have become a central currency in economics as a discipline. At the same time they allow to investigate patterns in the discourse. Analyzing articles published by the two major economics departments and the more interdisciplinary Department for Socioeconomics in Vienna, this paper is novel in applying both bibliometric techniques and citation network analysis on the department level. We find that (1) Articles in heterodox journals strongly reference the economic mainstream, while the mainstream does not cite heterodox journals, (2) Articles written by researchers of the Department of Socioeconomics cite more heterodox journals irrespective of whether they are published in mainstream or heterodox journals, (3) The economics departments display a citation network exhibiting a clear ‘mainstream core – heterodox periphery’ structure, as Dobusch & Kapeller (2012b) suggest the overall discourse in economics to be, while the Department of Socioeconomics could be described as a plural though not pluralistic department with many distinct modules in the network , reflecting various disciplines, topics and schools of thought.