Contemporary developments in Baha'i studies:
an examination using citation analysis
Seena Fazel[1]
First published as
"Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and Baha'i Studies"
vol. 7, no. 1 (January, 2003)
at www.h-net.org/~bahai/bhpapers/vol7/trends.htm
Abstract
The last decade has been an eventful time
in Baha'i studies. This paper will investigate contemporary developments using
the technique of citation analysis, a widely used method to report trends in
academia. Citations in academic literature on the Babi-Baha'i religions in
1997-2001 are compared with ten and twenty years previously. Over the last
decade, the number of articles being published in non-Baha'i periodicals has
halved. The proportion of women writers is 27% - a similar finding to 10 years
previously. The most cited journal, using impact factor and uncitedness data,
is the Baha'i Studies Review. The most cited
books are those published by university presses or in Kalimat Press' Studies
in the Babi and Baha'i Religion series. These
findings are discussed in relation to some of the other developments in Baha'i
studies.
Introduction
The last ten
years has been an eventful time in Baha'i studies. Positive developments
include the wider availability of Baha'i primary and secondary sources on the
internet,[2] the development of a bibliographic
guide to academic Baha'i studies,[3] and the publication of a number of
academic monographs on the Babi-Baha'i religions by leading university presses.[4]
On the other hand, there have been some notable setbacks. These include the
delay in publishing any of the Baha'i encyclopedia project,[5] the
occasional use of scholarly internet discussion lists for non-scholarly
purposes, and a handful of Baha'i researchers who had 'public' disagreements
with Baha'i institutional representatives over the nature of their internet
postings. With all this activity, what has happened to the actual work in
Baha'i studies? This paper reports on trends in Baha'i studies using the method
of citation analysis.
Citation analysis is a widely used tool in academia to assess the impact
of scholarly output and trends in scholarship in a particular field by tracking
references in the footnotes and bibliography of academic articles. Citation
analysis is considered to be more objective than qualitative judgments, which
are prone to bias and favoritism. It is therefore widely used to rate academic
journals, departments, and individual researchers for external assessments,
including grant proposals.[6]
This paper reports a citation analysis on articles in
English about the Bahá'í Faith published in major Bahá'í and other
journals during 1997-2001, and compares them with similar citation analyses ten
and twenty years ago. I aimed to identify: i) the most cited journals, books,
and authors; ii) any changes in such citation patterns between the three time
periods; iii) the contribution of female authors to Bahá'í studies; iv) any
emerging trends in the content of Bahá'í studies.
Methods
Sources
Citations were
manually searched in articles on the Bábí-Bahá'í religions published during the
years 1997-2001 in two sources: i) non-Bahá'í journals listed in
multi-disciplinary bibliographic indexes using the keywords 'Babi*' and
'Bahai*' (e.g. Religion Index, Index
Islamicus, Econlit, Philosopher's Index, ATLA Religion Database); ii) the following Bahá'í journals: World Order (WO) [Wilmette, USA], The Journal of Bahá'í Studies (JBS) [Ottawa, Canada], Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and
Baha'i Studies (H-Net Academic Consortium, Michigan
State University) and The Bahá'í Studies Review
(BSR) [London, UK]; iii) and correspondence with Baha'i librarians and
bibliophiles.[7]
Criteria for citations
References and footnotes
in articles were inspected and citations counted to secondary Bahá'í
literature. References to an author's non-Baha'i work did not count, so that,
for example, Moojan Momen's An Introduction to Shi'i Islam was not included. As per standard methods, only original papers and
research notes were included in the analyses, and therefore books, chapters in
books, monographs, book reviews, commentaries, editorials, and essays in
journals were omitted. Joint authorship yielded one citation to each author.
Translators and editors only received citations if their work was part of a
wider analytic study, which may have included, for instance, a commentary and
translation of primary Baha'i text. Full details of these methods are found in
a previous paper.[8]
Journals
Two measures of journal citation were used. First, the 'impact
factor' adjusts for bias arising from the unequal number of articles published
in different journals. It is derived by dividing the number of times a journal
was cited by the number of articles it has published.[9] It excludes any self-citations from its analysis. In this study,
the five-year journal impact factor[10] was used, which was calculated for Journal X by:
A = citations in 2000 and 2001
to articles published in Journal X during 1996-2000
B = number of articles published in Journal X during 1996-2000
C = A/B = five-year impact factor
In addition, the 'uncitedness index' was calculated which determines
how many articles published in a particular journal did not receive a single
citation during 2000-2001.[11] For this measure, self-citations are not excluded. It was worked out for Journal X in the following way:
A = total number
of articles of Journal X cited at least once in 2000-2001
B = total number of articles of Journal X since it began publication[12]
C = 100 - (A/B*100) = uncitedness
index
Statistical methods
All proportions were tested using standard chi-squared tests, and p
values cited.
Results
Bahá'í journals
Table 1 summarises the output of Bahá'í journals by the sex of the
articles' authors for the periods 1996-2001. Table 1 also contains information
on the number of articles in each of the periodicals covered. 12 articles were
included from non-Baha'i periodicals compared with 25 in 1988-93. Of the Baha'i
journals, WO published the most articles, and 46 (35%) of all journal articles
on the Baha'i Faith appeared there. 46% (16/35) of JBS articles were written by
women compared with 28% (13/46) female authorship for WO and 13% (3/23) female
authorship in BSR, differences that were not significant on statistical
testing.[13] Female authorship was 31% in 1978-83 and 21% in 1988-93.[14] Changes in female authorship
over these three time periods were not significant (c22=2.0,
p=0.4).
Table 2 reports
the impact factors (the number of times a journal was cited per article it
published x 100%) of three Bahá'í journals during 1996-2000.[15] These differences were
significant, and the BSR had the highest impact factor. Table 3 reports the
uncitedness index the proportion of articles in a journal that have never been
cited. These results were very significant on statistical testing
(p<0.0001), and the BSR was the least uncited journal.
Bahá'í books and writers
Table 4 lists the most cited books in
Bahá'í and other journals during 1997-2001, and compares them to their 1988-93
ranking. Only Modernity and Millennium was
published after 1997 and, therefore, may have been disadvantaged by a shorter
duration of potential citation than the other leading books. Major non-Bahá'í
academic publishing houses published four of the top books. The most cited
article or short publication in the period was Stephen Lambden's 'Sinaitic
Mysteries' published in Studies in Honor of the Late Hasan M. Balyuzi with 5 citations. Table 5 lists the ten most cited writers during 1997-2001, and
provides a comparison with their relative positions during 1988-93 and 1978-83.
Eight of the authors were based in the British Isles when they produced their
works. The most cited women are Susan Stiles Maneck and Margit Warburg each with
8 citations.
TABLE 1
Female authorship of Baha'i journals
|
1996-2001
|
JBS
|
WO
|
BSR
|
H-Baha'i
|
Other[16]
|
Total
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No. female authors
|
16 (46%)
|
13 (28%)
|
3 (13%)
|
1 (7%)
|
2 (17%)
|
35 (27%)
|
|
Total no. articles
|
35 (100%)
|
46 (100%)
|
23 (100%)
|
15 (100%)
|
12 (100%)
|
131 (100%)
|
c23=6.9;
0.05<p<0.10
TABLE 2
Impact Factors for Baha'i Journals, 1996-2000
|
|
JBS
|
WO
|
BSR
|
|
2000/01 citations
|
5
|
1
|
5
|
|
No. articles 1996-2000
|
31
|
37
|
16
|
|
Impact Factor
|
22%
|
3%
|
32%
|
c22=6.2;
p=0.04
TABLE 3
Uncitedness index for Baha'i journals
|
|
JBS
|
WO
|
BSR
|
|
No. articles cited 2000-01
|
12
|
7
|
10
|
|
Total no. articles
|
140
|
340
|
46
|
|
Uncitedness index
|
91%
|
98%
|
78%
|
c22=27.4;
p<0.0001
TABLE 4
Most cited Baha'i publications
|
Total no. citations (less self-citations)
1988-93
ranking
|
|
1
|
Amanat, Abbas. Resurrection and
Renewal. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1989.
|
14
|
10
|
|
2=
|
Balyuzi, Hasan. Bahá'u'lláh: The King
of Glory. Oxford: George
Ronald, 1980.
|
11
|
2
|
|
2=
|
Smith, Peter. The Babi and Baha'i
Religions: From Messianic Shi'ism to a World Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge UniverÀsity Press,
1987.
|
11
|
1
|
|
4
|
From Iran East and West: Studies in
Bábí and Bahá'í History, volume
2. Eds. J Cole and M Momen. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1986.
|
10
|
-
|
|
5=
|
Cole, Juan. Modernity and Millennium. New York: Columbia University Press,
1998.
|
7
|
-
|
|
5=
|
Studies in Honor of the Late Hasan M.
Balyuzi. Studies in the Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, volume 5. Ed. M Momen. Los Angeles:
Kalimat Press, 1988.
|
7
|
4
|
|
7=
|
Buck, Christopher. Symbol and Secret. Studies in Bábí and Bahá'í History, volume 6. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press,
1995.
|
6
|
-
|
|
7=
|
Momen, Moojan, ed. The Bábí and Bahá'í
Religions, 1844-À1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts. Oxford: George Ronald, 1981.
|
6
|
7
|
|
7=
|
In Iran: Studies in Bábí and Bahá'í
History, volume 3. Ed. P
Smith. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1986.
|
6
|
10
|
|
10=
|
Browne, Edward Granville, comp. Materials
for the Study of the Babi Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1918.
|
5
|
6
|
|
10=
|
Taherzadeh, Adib. The Revelation of
Bahá'u'lláh. Vol. 2.
Oxford: George Ronald, 1977.
|
5
|
-
|
TABLE 5
Most cited authors
|
|
Author
|
No. citations
(less self-citations)
|
1988-93 ranking
|
1978-83 ranking
|
|
1
|
M. Momen
|
35
|
1
|
5
|
|
2=
|
J. Cole
|
26
|
7
|
-
|
|
2=
|
P. Smith
|
26
|
4
|
10
|
|
4
|
H. Balyuzi
|
22
|
2
|
2
|
|
5
|
E. Browne
|
16
|
3
|
1
|
|
6=
|
A. Amanat
|
14
|
-
|
-
|
|
6=
|
S. Lambden
|
14
|
10
|
-
|
|
6=
|
R. Stockman
|
14
|
-
|
-
|
|
9
|
D. MacEoin
|
13
|
5
|
6
|
|
10
|
A. Taherzadeh
|
10
|
6
|
-
|
Conclusions
Citation analysis is just one way of
examining trends in Baha'i studies. It does not reflect what material is most
useful for teaching and training purposes, nor does it assume that the most
cited work is that of superior intellectual merit. It quantifies what has been
found to be useful by those writing on the Baha'i Faith for academic audiences,
and does so in a relatively objective way.
Journals
There has been a halving of articles on the
Baha'i Faith in non-Baha'i periodicals since 1988-93. Part of this may be
secondary to the success of the Baha'i journals, and one Baha'i academic has
suggested that potentially interesting articles may have been drawn out of
mainstream or core journals in various fields as a consequence.[17] There has also been a
reduction of articles since the 1980s on the
persecution of the Baha'is in Iran and the house of worship in New
Dehli.[18] The real reasons may well be more complex. Whatever they may be, it
is important that Baha'i academics continue to publish in non-Baha'i settings.
Compared to
1988-93, the number of papers per year published by each of the Baha'i journals
has changed. In 1988-1993, JBS published 14 articles per year. In the period
1997-2001, this had reduced to 5. WO doubled its output from 4 to 8 articles
per year.[19] The BSR remained at 3-4 papers per year. The citation analyses
demonstrate that the BSR remains the most cited journal, a similar finding to
1988-93. These differences are also borne out by looking at the bibliography to
standard reference works such as A Concise
Encyclopedia of the Baha'i Faith[20] and A Resource Guide to the Scholarly Study of the Baha'i Faith.[21] It would not appear to be a resource issue, in that both JBS and WO
have full-time paid editors, while the BSR has been edited on a voluntary
basis. The long delays between WO issues in the late 1980s and early 1990s may
have undermined its credibility. JBS's reputation may have suffered from
reprinting articles from elsewhere. Van den Hoonaard has noted the different
orientations of these journals, and that the BSR is the most accommodating to
current academic methodologies may be relevant.[22] The difference in impact factors between these journals is not
explained by number of subscribers – JBS has the largest subscription
base. This paper also shows that, over the last decade, JBS and WO have become
increasingly uncited, although their impact factors have not changed much since
1998-93.[23] In terms of citations to Baha'i periodicals in non-Baha'i journals,
unlike 1988-93 where there were very few,[24] the situation has changed, and JBS and BSR both received citations
in religious studies, sociology, and Middle East studies journals.
Women
The relative contribution of women to Baha'i studies has not
changed notably. In 1997-2001, 27% of the articles on the Babi-Baha'i religions
in Baha'i and non-Baha'i academic periodicals were written by women. In
1988-93, it was 21% and in 1978-83 it was 31%. This is similar to the
proportion of women who have written those articles 'likely to find their way'
in the Baha'i Encyclopedia project that was 27%.[25] How
does this compare to the non-Baha'i situation? Information is available on the
proportion of women in the academic workforce in different fields – for
example, in the US in 1995, women formed 40% of the workforce in anthropology,
39% in psychology, 36% in sociology, 21% in science and engineering, and 15% in
economics.[26]
Books
A striking finding is the success of Kalimat Press' series, Studies
in the Babi and Baha'i Religions. Four of
the nine most cited books are published by Kalimat. Frank Lewis' view that
Kalimat 'has proven itself the most important and long-standing forum for the
academic study of the Baha'i faith'[27] is endorsed by this
study.
Academic presses disproportionately
feature. Abbas Amanat's Resurrection and Renewal is the most cited book. Part of its success may be in that it is the
only academically informed introduction to the Babi movement, and provides an
overview of the social history of Qajar Iran.[28] The
enduring value of Peter Smith's introduction is significant, and this may
partly be due to sociological analysis of the worldwide growth and development
of Baha'i communities that is included there.[29] Balyuzi's book on
Baha'u'llah remains the only comprehensive biography of the founder of the
Baha'i Faith.
Overall, however, the level of
citations that these works are attracting is not particularly high, and
therefore attention should not be paid to the relative differences in ranking.
Of note is that anti-Baha'i polemical works do not feature among the most cited
works, and the English-speaking academic community, at least, does not appear
to take these works seriously.
The overall low level of citations
is indicative of ongoing challenges that the Baha'i scholarly community faces.
Many academically inclined works make no mention of relevant background
literature, let alone build on them. This approach is unscholarly, and may
reflect an arrogance and anti-intellectualism that requires addressing.[30]
Citation
analysis does not necessarily identify material that has been useful for
teaching or external affairs purposes. An alternative approach is to list the
most downloaded articles from the internet. Information is not widely
available, most papers can be downloaded from multiple sites, but the Baha'i
Library website periodically publishes statistics. In the months of July 2001
and September 2002, most of the top five downloaded articles were on Baha'i
theology, with articles by Chris Buck on native messengers of God and Moojan
Momen on fundamentalism featuring prominently.[31] However, the most
downloaded piece is an unpublished article by Robert Stockman on Islam that is
part of the curriculum of a distance learning course, the Wilmette Institute. A
couple of years earlier in May and December 1999, the most downloaded articles
were a critical look at Baha'i perspectives on Christianity, one by Susan
Maneck on women, and a philological and theological analysis by Stephen
Lambden.[32] It is interesting to compare this
with online journals where, for example, in medicine, the most downloaded
articles are educational overviews, editorials, and current reviews of
treatment literature.[33] Baha'i articles linked to the
world's most visited websites will most probably have been downloaded more
often.
Authors
Van den Hoonaard has proposed the presence of several
distinctive scholarly clusters in Baha'i studies, characterized
by a preference of methods, choice of subject matter, discourse, and,
sometimes, geography. These include British, American, mainland
European, Canadian and formally-established Baha'i agencies (such as the Baha'i
Chairs at Maryland and Jerusalem). [34] The ascendancy of
those individuals who are part of the British Newcastle-upon-Tyne/Lancaster
cluster appears to have been confirmed over the last twenty years. Compared to a
decade ago, William Hatcher and Douglas Martin have fallen off the list of most
cited authors, mainly due to their introductory book on the Baha'i Faith not
sustaining its initial impact. The new entrants are Stockman and Amanat,
historians trained at Harvard and Oxford respectively.
Themes
The impression from this citation analysis is that Middle
East studies and history are the most prominent subjects in academic Baha'i
studies. As van den Hoonaard notes, the long-lasting impact of Nabil Zarandi's The
Dawn Breakers and the historical work of
Shoghi Effendi is significant: 'It is not so much the standard, but the very
presence of their works that has given a preeminent place to history and Middle
Eastern Studies as touchstones of serious Baha'i Studies.'[35]
In a previous paper, a prediction was made that applying the Baha'i teachings
and correlating to the needs of current society would start to feature more
prominently in Baha'i studies.[36] This paper has demonstrated that
material on these themes has not made any impact in the academic literature on
the Baha'i Faith, and no works in the field of peace studies, socio-economic
development, or women's studies have featured in this citation analysis. The
anticipated 'new turn in Baha'i studies'[37] does not appear to
have materialized.
Future directions
What direction might this new turn take? Two areas of Baha'i
scholarship appear to offer promising possibilities. The first is empirical
studies of contemporary challenges to the Baha'i community. The Baha'i community
has gathered a vast experience in certain matters, and scholarship is one way
to systematize and disseminate this accumulated knowledge. The nature of
pioneering, growth trends, interracial marriage, the integration of Persian
refugees, the Baha'i education of children, social and economic development,
and the participation of women in Baha'i community life are potentially
interesting areas of enquiry. The second area that Baha'i studies may turn to
is the Baha'i response to contemporary problems. What are the problems with
globalization? What are the limits to freedom? What does the economic and
political integration of Europe imply for the concept of the unity of
humankind? Why is it reasonable in the 21st century to believe in
religion? What makes people happy? What is the Baha'i response to the New Age
movement? Many more subjects await further work.
Notes
[9] E. Garfield, Citation Indexing: Its
theory and application in science, technolÀogy, and humanities (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979)
149.
[10] E. Garfield, 'The Impact Factor,' Current Contents 13 (20 June 1994): 3-7.
[11] D. Pendelbury, Science 251 (1991): 1410-11.
[12] Excluding book reviews, essays,
commentaries, reports (including US Senate/Congress submissions and
resolutions), corrections, editorials, and poems.
