Tools for Describing the Communicative Space of Scientific Schools

Abstract

To manage research activities, it is necessary to develop up-to-date tools that allow to quickly and efficiently assess the effectiveness of the scientific space functioning. Contradictions between the new industry of scientific communication and traditional forms of preserving and multiplying intellectual capital have become more acute, new points of interaction between the institutional structures of science (scientific schools, “invisible colleges”, expert and experimental (real and virtual) laboratories, etc.) have appeared. The concepts of the cultural codes of representation and translation of the subjects (individual and collective) of scientific communication have changed, and there is a need to update the requirements for the culture of their identification and positioning in the age of digital technologies. A scientific school is a multi-purpose collective that simultaneously implements the functions of production, dissemination, protection of scientific knowledge and reproduction of scientists. The cultural traditions of its functioning, as well as the cultural norms of institutionalization, are being transformed.On the material of bibliographic description of the genesis and development of the cultural studies school of the Southern Urals (centered in the Chelyabinsk State Institute of Culture), the article shows opportunities for scientometric and informational analyses. The author offers to discuss and use two bibliographic publications (the catalog of the scientific school and the bibliographic navigator, which include information about research topics, successful scholars, scientific leaders, postgraduate students and applicants, opponents, leading organizations of the communicative field of cultural studies of the Southern Urals), as well as cultural researchers’ landmark publications, innovatively identified by the method of introspection. The publications are reviewed as tools in the system of cultural studies of the scientific school positioning.The article draws conclusions based on the study and comparison of the configurations of connections between persons (academic advisor, postgraduate student, opponent), leading organizations and scientific leaders and their geolocation, subject headings: “applicant — academic advisor — opponent”, “subject heading/topic — leading organization — opponent, specialty number”, etc. These connections are individual for the related concepts: “management — coordination”, “interpretation of a communicative challenge — adequacy of a communicative response”, “practical meaning — purpose of communication”. These areas of analysis of the scientific school functioning provide a vision of the scientific interaction communicative fields’ intersection, the increment and examination of scientific knowledge, the basis for making managerial decisions to organize science.