Versioning boundary objects: the citation profile of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM)
| Date | 23 November 2021 |
| Pages | 871-889 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-06-2021-0117 |
| Published date | 23 November 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Kai Li,Chenyue Jiao,Cassidy R. Sugimoto,Vincent Larivière |
Versioning boundary objects:
the citation profile of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
for Mental Disorders (DSM)
Kai Li
School of Information Resource Management, Renmin University of China,
Beijing, China
Chenyue Jiao
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Champaign, Illinois, USA
Cassidy R. Sugimoto
School of Public Policy,
Georgia Institute of Technology Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts,
Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and
Vincent Larivi
ere
Ecole de biblioth
economie et des sciences de l’information, Universit
e de Montr
eal,
Montreal, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –Research objects, such as datasets and classification standards, are difficult to be incorporated into
a document-centric framework of citations,which relies on unique citable works. The Diagnosticand Statistical
Manual for Mental Disorder (DSM)—a dominant classification scheme used for mental disorder diagnosis—
however provides a unique lens on examining citations to a research object, given that it straddles the
boundaries as a single research object with changing manifestations.
Design/methodology/approach –Using over 180,000 citations received by the DSM, this paper analyzes
how the citation history of DSM is represented by its various versions, and how it is cited in different
knowledge domains as an important boundary object.
Findings –It shows that all recent DSM versions exhibit a similar citation cascading pattern, which is
characterized by a strong replacement effect between two successive versions. Moreover, the shift of the
disciplinary contexts of DSM citations can be largely explained by different DSM versions as distinct epistemic
objects.
Practicalimplications –Based on these results, the authorsargue that all DSM versions should be treated as
a series of connected but distinct citable objects. The work closes with a discussion of the ways in which the
existing scholarly infrastructure can be reconfigured to acknowledge and trace a broader array of research
objects.
Originality/value –This paper connects quantitative methods and an important sociological concept, i.e.
boundary object, to offer deeper insights into the scholarly communication system. Moreover, this work also
evaluates how versioning, as a significant yet overlooked attribute of information resources, influenced the
citation patterns of citable objects, which will contribute to more material-oriented scientific infrastructures.
Keywords Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Scientific standards, Citation, Scholarly
infrastructure
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Research objects, defined as material objects used in scientific research in any manner, play
significant roles in the production of scientific knowledge. In this definition, materialness
specifically refers to whether an object has a real physical presence, one that is independent of
DSM as
versioned
boundary
objects
871
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 17 June 2021
Revised 4 November 2021
Accepted 4 November 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 4, 2022
pp. 871-889
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-06-2021-0117
human mind and consciousness. These objects cover such categories ranging from research
data, software objects to scientific standards; the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for
Mental Disorder (DSM) is included in the latest category. All these research objects are
essential to the research process, and in many cases, they are the embodiment of standardized
and validated procedures, which fundamentally shapes how research is conducted (Clarke
and Fujimura, 1992). Despite their importance for scientific research, research objects have
received scant attention from the quantitative science studies community, with the exception
of data and software citation (Silvello, 2018;Smith et al., 2016). Part of the reason is that the
quantitative science studies community has adopted a document-centric rather than
infrastructure-centric view of the scholarly communication system (Mayernik et al., 2017).
This contributes to an important epistemological gap between the quantitative and
qualitative science studies communities (Leydesdorff et al., 2020).
Despite the few studies on material research objects in quantitative science studies, their
importance can be observed through the citation patterns of representative publications.
Several studies have shown that publications representing standardized research objects,
such as methods and software, are among the most frequently cited documents (Garfield,
1991;Ryan and Woodall, 2005;Small and Griffith, 1974). However, the representation of these
material objects is embedded in the document-centric assumption, instead of being treated as
unique and multiple citable agents that better reflect the identity and lifecycle of these objects
(Li et al., 2019). Moreover, the usage of these citations is greatly varied by the epistemic
culture in specific research fields and communities (Howison and Bullard, 2015;Li et al., 2017).
Given this, the measurable traces are diffused, which limits our capacity to understand their
role in scholarly communication.
To address this gap, we analyze the citation pattern of the DSM, a central research
instrument focusing on mental disorders, which is heavily used in psychiatry, psychology
and medical sciences. Even though the DSM was published as physical books and
represented in the Web of Science (WoS) database as an nonsource object, it is nevertheless a
good example of material-oriented research object as it has been frequently cited as a research
instrument (Li, 2021) and that it has many versions, which distinguish it from regular cited
publications. The first version of DSM was published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric
Association (APA) as a comprehensive classification scheme and diagnostic manual for
mental disorders. Over the next few decades, this instrument was actively revised to include
the latest scientific developments and to acknowledge contemporary scientific findings on
mental health. The latest version of DSM, DSM Version 5 (DSM-V), was published in 2013.
Basic information of all the major DSM versions is summarized in Table 1.
Revisions to the DSM are generally performed over the course of several years. For
example, the work to prepare the DSM-V began in 1999 (Regier et al., 2009), even though this
version was not published until 2013. The goals of revisions are to (1) represent the latest and
commonly agreed upon scientific findings and knowledge on the topic and (2) make sure that
DSM will be accepted as a useable research instrument after publication by a broad array of
Version Abbreviation Publication year
Version 1 V1 1952
Version 2 V2 1968
Version 3 V3 1980
Version 3 (text revision) V3-TR 1987
Version 4 V4 1994
Version 4 (text revision) V4-TR 2000
Version 5 V5 2013
Table 1.
Major versions of
the DSM
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