When over-researchedness is invisibilised in bibliographic databases: Insights from a case study about the Arctic region

• Main Author: Duc, Marine
• Other Authors: Passages, Université de Bordeaux (UB)-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC)-Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (UPPA)-Université Bordeaux Montaigne (UBM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Analyse Comparée des Pouvoirs (ACP), Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEM)
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2022
• Subjects: [SHS.GEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography; Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-04416773

International audience The Arctic has attracted Westerners since the early 1900s, including researchers. Paradoxically, despite the amount of studies accumulated (54,000 papers published between 1900 and 2018), the idea of the Arctic as uncharted endures, feeding projects inspired by the mainstream issues of the period. Since 2000, the general research agenda around global change has translated into programmes that concentrate on climate change and economic development. As a result, Arctic studies have been constantly increasing: between 1997 and 2015, Arctic-related publications indexed in the Web of Science have risen by 168%. The combination of privileged research topics, accessibility, and local networks built by generations of scholars results in some places becoming ‘hot spots’ of Arctic studies, when other areas remain outside of Western science scope, like blanks on a map. This chapter will propose a methodology to map over-researchedness building on geographic information contained in the publications’ keywords indexed in one big bibliographic database, the Web of Science Core Collection. Relying on both critical data studies and critical toponymy, I will investigate the way in which the indexing practices of big bibliographic databases can spatially structure research activities and consequently invisibilised over-researchedness.