Author and Measure: some statements of the metric classification of authors.

Abstract

Objective: The research analyzes, through an epistemological-historical perspective, statements that enable the metric discourse among authors in the context of a political economy of scientific production. More specifically, that speech that allows measuring and establishing a type of ranking among the authors. To propose that the notion of bio-bibliography, more than the general notion of bibliography, is directly linked to this discursive conformation. The research is focused on scientific authorship.

Method: The methodological procedure adopted is defined by theoretical exploration applied to scientific literature. Greater relevance is given to the statements produced in the field of knowledge of Library and Information Science (LIS), although not restricted to this. The discursive unit, which allows describing, measuring and classifying scientific authors, is formed from the heterogeneous relationship between statements that deal with the notions of author and measurement. Therefore, we deal with these statements as events that build this knowledge.

Result: The exploration demonstrates that measurement and classification ideas among authors were already possible in the early 20th century. However, from a historical perspective, we can assess some epistemic changes that influenced this practice. The quantitative character is present in the two discursive models studied. However, the formation of quantified objects differs. In the first case, there is a concern to measure the superiority of one author over the other on the discursive surface about them, a singular kind of moral order (a vertical ethos for establishing behavior patterns). In a second step, which we call the epistemic turn, we have that authorial productivity is the most relevant factor to classify scientific authorship. Thus, in capitalism, the work is converted into a product and the author into a producer.

Conclusions: The notion of measure and author has long been present in the macro discourse of the bibliography, as a discourse of knowledge. However, we can say that these relationships are not static over time. Biobibliographical discourse supports the classifying practice between subjects. It went from a biographical pole to an episteme of the individual's bibliographic production, crossed by metrical issues. If bibliometric is only possible by structuring a bibliographic practice, evaluation by the production criterion for subjects, endowed with the author function, also runs through a bio-biblical logic, being able to support a “bio-bibliometric” notion.