Viewpoint: "Invisible colleges" and citation clusters in stocking rate research.

Abstract

Research on the response of livestock gain to stocking rate tends to cluster into 5 "invisible colleges", represented by 5 citation networks which only occasionally intersect. Each college is built around a paradigm of the stocking rate-gain response as developed in 2 key papers sharing 1 or more authors. Researchers tend to cite the paradigm developed by authors in their field of research or in their geographic area. Therefore conficting pardigms have existed side-by-side for decades, an unusual occurrence in most fields of science. Research is needed to critically evaluate the empirical and conceptual soundness of these paradigms.