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Critical Studies on Terrorism

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Can terrorism become a scientific

discipline? A diagnostic study
a
Avishag Gordon
a
Information and Library Science Department , University of
Haifa , Haifa, Israel
Published online: 10 Dec 2010.

To cite this article: Avishag Gordon (2010) Can terrorism become a scientific discipline? A
diagnostic study, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 3:3, 437-458, DOI: 10.1080/17539153.2010.521644

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 Critical Studies on Terrorism
Vol. 3, No. 3, December 2010, 437458

ARTICLE
1753-9161
1753-9153
RTER
Critical Studies on Terrorism,
Terrorism Vol. 3, No. 3, Sep 2010: pp. 00

Can terrorism become a scientific discipline? A diagnostic study

Avishag Gordon*
Critical
A. GordonStudies on Terrorism

Information and Library Science Department, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

(Received 14 October 2009; final version received 21 August 2010)

This study offers a meta-information analysis of the state of the art of terrorism research
from structural disciplinary perspectives, and by comparisons with several other fields
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of study. It observes the interrelationship of disciplinary characteristics, specifically,

scientific collaboration among terrorism researchers, the growth rate in the number
of conferences in the field after 9/11 and the fragmentation of terrorism studies into
separate research specialties. These three trends coincide, indicating the growing
importance and visibility of terrorism and counter-terrorism studies for government
decision-makers and an increase in funding for this research, much of which is chan-
nelled in specific desired directions. The new research on terrorism has created disci-
plinary studies on the subject in the sciences and the life sciences, side by side with
traditional social science research. The fragmentation of the field, growing collabora-
tion and the appearance of conference proceedings on terrorism are indicative of the
beginnings of an autonomous academic research field, a distinct discipline of study.
In great part, these developments are not only due to the infiltration of new subject
areas into the network of terrorism research, but also to the expanding number of journals
devoted to different aspects of the subject. The road to recognition as an academic dis-
cipline depends on whether the various aspects of terrorism studies can be integrated into
one comprehensive branch of learning. This ability, in turn, is conditional on the fields
cognitive structure or knowledge characteristics, as well as on the shifts and changes in
the actual terrorism scene in the future that might influence the nature of research.
Keywords: terrorism; meta-information; disciplinary status; fragmentation; collaboration;
conferences; multiparadigmatic

Introduction
Terrorism constitutes a dynamic, constantly changing phenomenon. Each case of terrorism,
though, can be identified by very distinctive characteristics, just like fingerprints (Laqueur
1999, Gordon 2004). Up to now, attempts have been made to create terrorism typologies
according to terrorists methods of operation, regions of the world, organisations and ideo-
logies. It seems that the number of typologies created almost equalled the number of
researchers who wrote on the subject (Johnson 1978, Gross 1990, Jongman 2006).
In the area of psychiatry, researchers tried to describe the personality traits of terrorists,
but this description could not be conclusive because of the changing nature of terrorism.
Gibson (1994), for example, portrayed terrorists as coming from the margins of society and
as looking constantly for enemies. Researchers in the new millennium, however, showed
that this was not necessarily the case and that many terrorists were educated people from

*Email: avishag@tx.technion.ac.il

ISSN 1753-9153 print/ISSN 1753-9161 online

2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17539153.2010.521644
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 438 A. Gordon

well-to-do families (Krueger and Maleckova 2003, Weinberg et al. 2003). Several studies
tried to analyse terrorism by means of socio-demographic variables, such as age, gender,
education and socio-economic background (see Smith and Morgan 1994). The field of
women-terrorists studies emerged within this approach; although it revealed a large
number of motivations for actions, the motives kept changing with time and context.
Historical analyses of terrorism differentiated between revolutionary and state terrorism
(Crenshaw 1972, Hutchinson 1972; Wilkinson 1973, 1979, 1981), and the typologies
based on ideologies yielded countless categories of terrorist organisations. One of the
most recent detailed typologies of terrorists was constructed by Schmid and Jongman (2006)
who classified terrorism into 25 categories.
The result of such attempts to group this phenomenon into classifications that covered
all its aspects created the difficulty of moving from typology-creation to theory-formation
on terrorism. There was a multitude of research approaches to terrorism, and a real change
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in its characterisation from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, which made the task
of forming a unified research field more difficult (Schmid and Jongman 1988, Gordon
2004). It became questionable whether the field could ever become a scientific discipline
because of its changing and clandestine nature, in addition to the difficulties in attaining
primary data on terrorists (Sinai 2006).
Then, too, the periodic changes in the nature of terrorism, caused mainly by terrorists
employing technological developments, attracted researchers from various disciplines,
some of them new to the field. These new fields that infiltrated the terrorism domain in the
1990s (Gordon 1996) evolved into a large body of literature in the twenty-first century,
especially after the 9/11 events. In fact, two types of literature on terrorism were created:
one that evolved from the traditional social sciences and another that emanated from the
exact and the life sciences (Gordon 2005b). The result is that terrorism has become a
definite interdisciplinary research area (Crenshaw 1992, Viswanath 2002). The interdis-
ciplinarity of the terrorism field was portrayed in a book edited by Ranstorp (2006), in
which the terrorism research landscape and its challenges were described and the diverse
nature of this field was shown. Researchers in this field tend to collaborate more to enhance
the results of their study. This collaboration has special significance for terrorisms route
to becoming a recognised, independent academic field. One example of this collaboration
is the study by Reid and Chen (2007), in which researchers from information and library
science and from management information systems cooperated. The researchers used a
mapping program algorithm to delineate the terrorism domain.
The increased number of conferences on terrorism whose proceedings were published
in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) also has special significance for this research
field, because a conference is where invisible colleges are created, where informal scientific
communication takes place and where research networks are set up (Reid 1997, Meadows
1998). There is a link between scientific collaboration, the existence of conferences in a
field and interdisciplinarity. This link will be observed in this study. Meadows (1998)
pointed out that the basic reason for teamwork in science can be found in the growth and
specialisation of research. A similar conclusion was reached by Qin et al. (1997), who
noted that collaboration in research was a significant contributor to the degree of a fields
interdisciplinarity.

Previous terrorism research

This discussion of past studies concerned with terrorism as a body of knowledge is schematic
(as this is not a review article) and points out several yardsticks in the evolvement of this
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 439

research field. Reid and Chen (2007) provided a table with the most influential terrorism
publications published over time, making it possible to trace how research in this field has
evolved. It starts with Ted Gurrs (1970) book, Why Men Rebel, and continues with Schmid
and Jongmans (1988) book on political terrorism, and goes on to Hoffmans (1998) Inside
Terrorism. These are 3 of the 12 milestones in terrorism research identified by Reid and
Chen, the topics of which range from a general description of political violence to a printed
terrorism directory.
Studies in the 1970s and the 1980s, and many in the 1990s, mostly provided answers
to the whom, when and where of terrorism through a wide view of the topic (Combs 1997,
2009); few studies focused on research methodology. Crenshaw, Reid and Gordon offered
communicative and bibliometric studies on the terrorism body of knowledge (see Crenshaw
1992, Gordon 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, Reid 1997).
In the twenty-first century, Silke (2004) presented an exhaustive description of the
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difficulty in defining terrorism, because of the evasiveness and changing nature of its
heterogeneous activity. He later reviewed the state of the art of research in the field (Silke
2009). Sinai (2006), who assessed the fields chances of becoming a scientific discipline,
concluded that it could not become a hard science because of the lack of consensus as to
its definition, coding and counting rules, and because of databases limitations (2006, p. 47).
Several researchers published studies mapping the field (Ranstorp 2006, Reid and Chen 2007).
New pocket specialties were created with the entrance of counter-terrorism studies, which
evolved from the exact and the life sciences; for example, medical studies focusing on post-
traumatic effects of terrorist events. The twenty-first century was also marked by more
extensive use of digital databases in terrorism research, such as Memorial Institute for the
Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) and International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist
Events (ITERATE).

Terrorism: A mature research field?

A research field matures when it develops theories and paradigms and some scientific con-
sensus evolves among its researchers. Furthermore, a scientific society is normally formed
to guide researchers, a disciplinary journal begins to be published, annual conferences are
held, academic departments are established and students recruited and a corpus of future
researchers is built. When a discipline is formed and matures, a situation could arise in
which many research problems are not answered within the disciplinary consensus of the
field, leading to the formation of new research groups that will deal with these new prob-
lems. It is a process that constitutes the beginning of the fragmentation of a research field
(Kuhn 1970, Fuchs and Turner 1986). This division could occur when new research teams
work on new research problems that deviate from the main course of study in a specific
discipline. This description of the process is necessarily schematic, because each discipline
evolves from a specific combination of contextual circumstances, academic, socio-economic
and political.
Terrorism as a research field did not follow this developmental process; it began the
fragmentation route even before reaching maturation. A fragmentation route is created
when pocket specialties are shaped in a research field, such as terrorism and law or
terrorism and communication, and these produce a large body of literature of their own.
In consequence, stumbling blocks were created for the crystallisation of solid theories and
paradigms. For example, following the 9/11 events, the University of California at Los
Angeles (UCLA) introduced 50 new courses on terrorism, which were spread throughout
many departments. This author, who observed this pattern and discussed it with political
 440 A. Gordon

scientists at the University of Haifa, wondered why UCLA did not establish a Terrorism
Studies department, whether autonomous or within another discipline, instead of spreading
these courses among various departments. The response received was that the suggested
move would draw away the most interesting and juicy material from those academic
departments, and therefore department chairpersons would not support the creation of such a
new, independent field (Gordon 2005b).
Wilkinson (2006) expressed another opinion, noting that the long delay in the emergence
of terrorism as a viable branch of multidisciplinary research within other disciplines
reflected the hostility harboured by many established university departments to multidis-
ciplinary studies of any kind. He also observed that terrorism was seen as synonymous with
politically motivated violence in general, which also influenced universities in deciding
not to view this subject area as a distinct, autonomous research field. Wilkinson commented
that real funding for terrorism studies was provided by governments only after the 9/11
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catastrophe, because the subject of terrorism had not constituted a priority on their agenda
before then. An article in the British newspaper, The Guardian, that observed that the field
of terrorism studies was entering a golden age of research commented on the growing
number of studies published on the subject after 9/11 (Shepherd 2007).
Observing the scientific studies that had evolved since 9/11, Wilkinson mentioned
the heavy reliance of research on technological studies and the lack of understanding of
the important role of the social sciences in enhancing comprehension of the back-
ground and the circumstances for the emergence and spread of terrorism. Wilkinson
related to the phenomenon as a multidisciplinary study (2006, p. 318). Gunning (2007)
too remarked on the expanding nature of terrorism studies, pointing to the need for
critical terrorism studies that would constitute a challenge to the traditional approach to
terrorism.
Other researchers have also emphasised the special character of this field of research
that had fragmented before it became a cohesive discipline. Borgeson and Valeri (2007)
relate to terrorism studies as sprouting from a larger body of research. They discuss the
evolution of terrorism theories within criminology, political theory of anarchism, philo-
sophical theory of religion and more. Nichols (2004), along the same lines, views terrorism
as an emergent field in sociology, whereas Spariosu (2004) classifies terrorism as a sub-
area of human ecology. Other related sub-fields of study have declared their autonomous
standing: Terror Medicine (Shapira and Cole 2006); Terrorism and Behavioral Medicine
(Baum and Dougall 2002); Psychology of Terrorism (Crenshaw 2000, Borum 2004);
Terrorism and the Law (Moeckli 2008); Terrorism and Technology (Tillema 2002) and
the Sociology of Terrorism (Turk 2004). The extent of terrorism interdisciplinarity was
also demonstrated by Resnyansy (2008) who showed that the disciplines that dealt with
threats during the Cold War were mostly in the physical and computational sciences. The
new field of threat studies that began during the post-Cold War era, including global
terrorism, now involved analyses from 18 scientific fields.
Jackson (2007) observed that terrorism studies have become one of the most quickly
expanding areas of research in the Western academic world. Knowledge growth in the
field germinated from the hundreds of articles that have been appearing every year in
professional and scientific journals, from conferences, funding opportunities and study
programmes. Nevertheless, the field suffers from inherent methodological, theoretical and
epistemological problems that prevent it from becoming an autonomous discipline. One
major problem is an over-reliance on secondary source material for research: newspaper
accounts, database articles and other types of published materials. However, there are
researchers who base their terrorism analyses on primary material. A notable example is
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 441

Berkos (2007) 1-year study of jailed terrorists in Israeli prisons, which produced a first-
hand account of the motivations of would-be suicide terrorists who had failed their
mission. Berkos study emphasised the importance of the use of primary material for
terrorism research. At the same time, it showed how such data incorporate hard-to-interpret
additional material, such as facial expressions, body language and accounts of prisoners
personal problems. Such material deviates considerably from systematic data collection
and makes it difficult to isolate variables that could demonstrate a trend in terrorists moti-
vations for their actions. The issue of the extensive use of secondary (already published)
material rather than primary data in terrorism research was discussed by Crenshaw (2001,
p. 416), Silke (2006, p. 80) and Horgan (2006, p. 30).

Obstacles preventing the terrorism field from becoming a discipline

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Terrorism characteristics are constantly changing, and so are the coverage of this subject and
the general paradigms that follow these rapid changes. Furthermore, the cognitive structure
of this field could present an obstacle, because the number of academics willing to devote
most of their research to aspects of the terrorism phenomenon is small, as is the number of
core journals in the field (see Table A1).
In the 1990s, two terrorism core journals emerged, Terrorism and Political Violence
(TPV) and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (SCT). These two journals, which published
most of the material produced on terrorism at that time, constituted a small core of terrorism
journals that usually characterise small and emerging scientific specialties. TPV, which
originated in the United Kingdom, and SCT, which started up in the United States, pub-
lished material that was mostly descriptive, qualitative and based on terrorism case studies
(Gordon 2004). In the new millennium, more journals dedicated to this topic have emerged
(see Table A1).
The lack of an accepted association that could establish scientific standards for pub-
lishing scientific material about terrorism also holds back the maturation of the research field
into an independent discipline (Gordon 2004). The existence of scientific consensus on a
research subject is as essential as cooperation among researchers. Moreover, the type of
research conducted establishes the ability to construct theories: Does most research consist
of stand-alone case studies or are there trend studies that enable pattern recognition of the
directions the field is following? Are most studies qualitative or quantitative? Silke (2004,
2006) observed that most research on terrorism is qualitative. Several studies indicated
that there was little collaborative work in this field during the 1990s, but that the situation
changed to some extent after 9/11 (Silke 2006). Nevertheless, the new collaborative terror-
ism studies indicate a further fragmentation of this field.
The direction of information flows in the field is also important. Several studies have
pointed to a reverse communication flow: instead of information flowing from scientific
journals to the popular media, it often flows upstream, as it were, and dissolves,
unchecked for quality, in an article that is supposed to be scientific (Reid 1997, Gordon
2001). Also, the many definitions of terrorism make it difficult to build theories (De La
Roche 2004).
The foregoing were the epistemological variables that characterise a research field and
indicate its developmental stage towards becoming, or failing to become, an autonomous
research field. There are, though, conditions external to the state of the art of the field that
allow or negate the possibility of its evolving into an academic discipline. The willingness
of university authorities to allocate resources to an independent field of terrorism studies is
one basic condition for the fields success in academia, whereas governmental preparedness to
 442 A. Gordon

fund research in this field in recognition of its importance is another (Zubkora 2005,
Wilkinson 2006).

The disciplinary route: a comparison with other fields

An assessment of the chances that terrorism has of becoming an independent research
field within academia could be illuminated by analyses of other research fields that arose,
survived for a time, and then either succeeded in becoming autonomous disciplines or
were assimilated into another, larger and more successful discipline. For instance, the APA
Online Monitor, observing the behaviourism school within psychology, reported both the
rise of this sub-area in the 1940s and the 1950s and then the fall of this research field
during the following decades, the fall being mainly due to the overly simplistic and inade-
quate extension of behaviour theory to issues of everyday life (APA Monitor 1999). In this
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case, the direction of the information flow, together with other reasons, prevented behav-
iourism from becoming an independent field within psychology.
Similarly, Lenoir (1997, cited in Kohler 1982) describes the rise and fall of biochemistry
as an independent research field and enumerates several conditions that could help a research
field develop into an autonomous academic field: the creation of a research niche for
unique research projects; the support of academic institutions for these projects; the support
extended by external sources and resources for unique projects. He mentions the fact that
the rise of biochemistry in the United States and Britain was due to the combined vision of
businessmen and other external supporters; that is, external market forces contributed to
the success of biochemistry. The importance of biochemistry decreased when other fields,
such as biomedicine, became more important for the external market-funding bodies. Lenoir
notes that the creation of an academic discipline involves not a monolithic structure, but a
family of heterogenic causes social, organisational, scientific and technical. Therefore, a new
academic scientific discipline does not depend solely on the creation of new knowledge. This
observation could explain to some extent why, despite the large amount of literature pro-
duced about it, terrorism has not developed into an independent terrorism studies research
field in academia in the sense that sociology, economics and mass communication has.
Lenoir (1997) discusses both Foucaults (1972) view that scientific disciplines are
crucial for organising and stabilising the heterogeneity and disunification of science, and
Bourdieus (1975) theory that scientific domains are defined by scientists who struggle to
gain recognition for their products and legitimacy for the scientific field in which they
have an interest. Lenoir concludes that a distinction must be drawn between research and
disciplinary work (1997, p. 53). Although both elements exist in the disciplinary-formation
process, research programmes are more oriented towards problem-solving that is,
research production whereas disciplinary programmes are more institutional-oriented
towards organising science in terms of the society of users, establishing techniques and dis-
ciplinary tools. Lenoir thinks, in fact, that research programmes could exist without neces-
sarily being institutionalised (1997, p. 55).
Among the many examples of the rise and fall of scientific disciplines from which one
could draw conclusions about disciplinary trends, the case of vision studies bears close rele-
vance to terrorism studies. The cognitive consensus with regard to vision studies encom-
passed 70 different research areas at the end of the nineteenth century. Psychologists,
ophthalmologists, physicists and psychologists were all contributing to this field (Lenoir
1997). Its fragmented nature did not prevent researchers from producing meaningful research,
but its level of cognitive integration or, the integration of all knowledge produced in a
scientific field was insufficient for propelling the field towards disciplinary status. Even-
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 443

tually, several aspects of vision studies were assimilated by physiology and psychology.
Vision studies thus provides scientific contributions to several research fields without
itself being a research wing of any single discipline (Lenoir 1997).
The lesson of the evolution of vision studies drawn by Lenoir is that the boundaries of
a research field need not follow the boundaries of a discipline (Lenoir 1997, p. 36). He also
concludes that theoretical consensus is not sufficient for creating an independent academic
field. In his opinion, more components are needed to build a scientific discipline, such as a
broad theoretical vision and an inventory of techniques and instruments capable of sustain-
ing research on a wide range of problems. Lenoir, therefore, sees the formation of a scientific
discipline as resulting from the combination of political power (forces external to the
cognitive structure of the field) and knowledge production.
When this view is applied to terrorism studies, it is evident that a high rate of know-
ledge is produced about this subject area every year. However, as Wilkinson (2006) notes,
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the political power that could push this field into institutionalisation in academia was
provided in sufficient amounts only after the events of 9/11. Since then, many academic
programmes have been offered on terrorism, but until now there has been no autonomous
terrorism studies department in a higher education institution, even if the institution has an
academic research institute devoted to the subject. Terrorism studies are assimilated in
larger disciplines, such as government or international relations. The ICT Institute within
the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, is an example. This young Israeli academic institute
developed a terrorism studies specialisation within an MA degree programme in govern-
ment. Similarly, the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare at the Naval Post Graduate
School included MA and PhD programmes within security studies; and the Study of Ter-
rorism and Response to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland offers terror-
ism as a minor programme within the DHS Center for Excellence at that university.
The growing amount of terrorism, its diversity, severity and changing nature, has
brought about more support for terrorism studies, but the external supporting forces have
not helped to integrate the various aspects of terrorism into a cohesive disciplinary study
programme. It seems reasonable, then, to observe the changes that this research field has
undergone following 9/11, after which time political and governmental decision-makers
recognised it as an important research field.

Terrorism as an academic subject

Meadows (1998) suggested that specialism on the intellectual scene could be identified
from the date when the subject became academically grounded. The establishment of a
separate department for a particular subject indicates the time at which individual sub-
jects became recognised as a coherent whole (1998, p. 46). In this sense, terrorism studies
still lags behind other evolving research fields, because the former, even if represented by
numerous courses, as mentioned, are usually incorporated into another, grand subject and
do not constitute an autonomous study field institutionalised in the academy, with its own
department, students, lecturers, research funds and so forth. On the face of it, the reason
for this lag is the mushrooming of the terrorism phenomenon, its changing nature and the
diversity of research approaches to its study. Terrorism belongs to a group of subjects that
from a classification viewpoint, hover vaguely around one of the science-social science-
humanities borderlines (Meadows 1998, p. 46). This indeterminate classification status has
had the effect of making terrorism one of the most interesting subjects for coverage and
explains, to some extent, the vast literature produced on the subject in the 1990s and in the
twenty-first century.
 444 A. Gordon

Terrorism is not the sole subject area that has been characterised by a hovering classi-
fication. Psychology too evolved with uncertain affiliations. The teaching of psychology
in the United States was begun by William James, who in fact was a physiologist, at Harvard
University in 1875. As a research field, psychology went through many modifications, and
another branch of this subject reigned during each variation: behaviourism, clinical psycho-
logy and psychology as part of the natural sciences. In 1963, Nevitt Stanford of Stanford
University commented on the fact that the field has burst apart and become autonomous
areas of specialization (Hunt 1993, p. 310). During the 1960s, the American Psychological
Association (APA) included 45 divisions (membership subgroups). Today, this number has
grown to 56 subject divisions.
The multidisciplinary nature of psychology is similar to terrorism studies, the differ-
ence being that terrorism did not establish a disciplinary core before spreading out towards
peripheral sub-areas. Moreover, no one division of terrorism studies can stand apart with
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its special research methodologies, distinct theories and a group of subject-area journals.
The growth of all types of terrorism studies, books, articles, reports and conference pro-
ceedings did not much change the status of terrorism in academia, and it is still considered
a specialty within a larger discipline in most institutions that have terrorism studies. A study
comparing terrorism to other small specialties, such as urban studies, ergonomics and family
studies, found that the life expectancy of journals in these fields is low compared with
more established disciplines, such as economics, sociology or psychology (Gordon 2004).
Around 35% of the terrorism journals that started in the 1980s and the 1990s stopped pub-
lication within a relatively short time. This trend demonstrates a discontinuity of research
in the field and demonstrates its instability. This study observed the rate of discontinued
journals in the twenty-first century.
Another study of the number of collaborative studies on terrorism in the 1990s based
on an analysis of two core terrorism journals, TPV and SCT, found that only 8% of the
studies published in the two journals were the result of cooperative work. By comparison,
2864% of the studies in major communication journals, Journal of Communication,
Communication Monographs and Journalism and Mass Media Quarterly, were collabora-
tive efforts (Gordon 2004). These results with regard to terrorism studies were confirmed
by Silke (2008) who found that whereas collaboration in terrorism studies characterised
9.4% of the articles before the events of 9/11, the percentage of collaborative studies in the
field rose to 21% post-9/11.
What does collaborative work in a scientific field indicate? Mullins (1973), Reid
(1983) and Stein (1995) observed that a research area that used a great amount of
teamwork stood at a higher disciplinary developmental stage than did fields that published
relatively few collaborative works. This author sees this assertion as only partly true: it
defines emerging specialties and relatively young research fields, but not old, more
established disciplines, such as sociology or political science, that evolved from a solid
theoretical foundation.

Purpose of this study

This study covers three related disciplinary aspects of terrorism: the multidisciplinarity of
the field, the amount of collaborative research and the growth in the number of conferences
on terrorism. The growing fragmentation of terrorism studies in the twenty-first century is
a trend that has significance for the development of this field into an autonomous research
subject. Research collaboration in this field is reflected in the number of articles and other
types of material, such as conference papers, reviews and reports that are produced by
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 445

more than one author. Collaboration in the field is also shown by the number of conference
papers or proceedings produced on this subject area. The proceedings are another word
denoting group activity (Meadows 1998, p. 7).
The reason for examining these research characteristics in relation to terrorism studies
is their evident interrelationship: the growth of teamwork in the sciences and the social
sciences is the product of the growth and specialisation of research. This is true for both
formal (journal article) and informal (conferences) scientific communication. Some studies
have in fact emphasised that collaborative research material is more visible to other research-
ers in the field because it is cited more, thereby suggesting a generally positive relationship
between collaboration and quality (Smart and Bayer 1986, Schmoch and Schubert 2008).
Interdisciplinarity and collaboration are important elements in the growth of a research
field. As Ranstorp commented (2006, p. 12), In essence interdisciplinary focus and inno-
vation will remain absolutely vital in efforts to develop a critical knowledge base in future
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terrorism research. The growth of interdisciplinary knowledge in a research field is, to a

large extent, the function of increasing team work in that field. Has the rate changed for
terrorism studies in the twenty-first century if the peripheral literature is measured, too?
The status of a scientific specialty, in this case, terrorism studies, is examined, as are
the growth of scientific collaboration in this field, the growth in the number of conferences
and the increase in the fields interdisciplinarity. This study observes the interrelationship
of these three variables, which could indicate the developmental stage of the terrorism
research area. The structure of terrorism as a research field is examined using bibliometric
research methods. The chances that this field will become a mature research specialty are
also assessed.

Methodology
This study traces knowledge growth in the field of terrorism studies in terms of publica-
tions and citations. The main database for the analysis is the Web of Science Citation Index
Expanded (SCIE 2008 version, including 2010 material) for all sciences (the sciences,
social sciences and humanities). The type of material for the analysis (or units of measure-
ment) will consist either of all types of publications, such as articles, reviews, conference
papers and editorials, or of just one of these types.
This study examines the extent of interdisciplinarity in terrorism studies and the changes
in the contributing fields. Are disciplines that contributed most of the material on terrorism
in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s maintaining their hegemony in this field in the twenty-first
century? What new material types are presently covering terrorism? Are these additions
significant? Has the amount of cooperation in terrorism studies grown in recent years?
If so, what are the reasons for this? (Cooperation in this study will be described as collab-
orative work and ascribed to published material that is co-authored.)
The time span of this research basically covers the years from 1965 to 2010. This duration
will be used to examine the publication of terrorism sub-areas over time, but shorter time
spans will be used for comparison purposes or for observing changes in collaboration
patterns. The Pearson r and Spearman rank-order correlations will be used to establish the
relationship between citations and publications of terrorism sub-fields.
The coding employed for terrorism sub-areas was the SCIE database classification.
Although this type of disciplinary coding is adhered to in the analyses, its fragmentation of
disciplines is admittedly excessive. It is not necessary, for instance, to divide computer
science into sub-areas, such as methods and theory, artificial intelligence and informa-
tion systems, for the purpose of the analyses here. Using the Ulrichs Web Global Serial
 446 A. Gordon

Directory database as a material source, this study will also examine the group of journals that
could be called terrorism journals (see Table A1). The definition of terrorism journal
used follows that of the database; it usually refers to journals that carry the word terrorism
in its title. They are often considered to be the core journals of the field that is, the journals
that publish most of the material on terrorism as opposed to peripheral journals, which
publish only occasionally on the subject. Ulrichs Web is a non-selective database that
records every journal published on any subject area, along with its meta-information details.
The nature of terrorism studies citations will also be examined and their characteristics
probed. The relationship between citations and publications in this subject area will be ana-
lysed by means of the Pearson and Spearman correlation tests. The findings will demonstrate
the relationship between knowledge growth and visibility. The citation relations among
terrorism journals will be observed as possible indicator of future enlarged terrorism jour-
nals core.
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Main findings
The SCIE 2008 database enumerated more than 100 fields and sub-fields of study that
published material on terrorism. Of those, this study chose 23 top fields (the ones that cov-
ered terrorism most extensively) for the analysis of the years 19652010 and 20 top fields
for the analysis of studies in the new millennium.
Table 1 shows that on a cumulative basis, the traditional sub-areas of terrorism
research (in the social sciences) from 1965 to 2010 are still top producers of material on
this subject. General medicine, whose presence was negligible in the 1990s, rose to the top

Table 1. Division of terrorism studies into sub-areas: publications and citations, 19652010.
Number of Number
Discipline publications Ranking of citations Ranking
Political science 944 1 2277 1
International relations 795 2 1999 7
Sociology 477 4 477 8
Environmental, occupational, public health 209 5 1194 4
Law 262 3 831 7
Social sciences (multidisciplinary) 192 6 281 10
Economics 157 7 852 6
Criminology 145 8 184 13
Psychiatry 137 9 942 5
General medicine 108 10 2166 2
History 94 11 51 20
Clinical psychology 87 12 267 11
Literary research 86 13 16 22
Planning and development 83 14 138 17
Psychology (interdisciplinary) 80 15 394 9
Humanities 80 15 28 21
Communication 72 16 225 12
Social issues 71 17 110 19
Public administration 68 18 133 18
Environmental science 60 19 182 15
Information and library science 48 20 138 17
Computer science 37 21 183 14
Electrical engineering 17 22 166 16
Note: r = 0.731 (p < 0.01); rs = 0.685 (p < 0.01).
Source: SCIE (2008).
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 447

of the cited material on terrorism in the new millennium; computer science and electrical
engineering are at the bottom of the list. This picture changes considerably when only the
years after 9/11 are considered. The test of correlation between the number of publications
and the citation count shows a substantial relationship; that is, it is safe to conclude that
more material in this field will produce more citations to these studies.
Table 2 shows that the traditional disciplines that produced material on terrorism in the
1990s are still at the top of the list in the 2000s. However, computer science rose from
22nd to 3rd place on the list. Table 3 presents the growth of collaborative work on terror-
ism from 1980 to 1995 and from 1996 to 2010. A sample, selected randomly of 100 publi-
cations for each group of years observed, reveals a considerable growth in the number of
collaborative papers between the two periods. In the 1980s and the 1990s, the table shows
more citations to collaborative papers than to single-author papers, and, therefore, these
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Table 2. Division of terrorism studies into sub-areas: publications and citations, 20022010 (N = 20).
Number of
records (all types Citations
Discipline of material) Ranking to records Ranking
International relations 984 1 1895 1
Political science 919 2 1541 3
Computer science 433 3 406 10
Law 311 4 988 6
Public, environmental, occupational health 299 5 1210 5
Social sciences (interdisciplinary) 183 6 197 13
Economics 182 7 747 8
Sociology 181 8 389 11
Psychiatry 180 9 1219 4
General medicine 144 10 1755 2
Multidisciplinary sciences 144 10 972 7
Criminology 137 11 187 14
Area studies 130 12 100 19
Social issues 116 13 115 18
Environmental sciences 115 14 312 12
Electrical engineering and electronics 108 15 170 15
Psychology (multidisciplinary) 103 16 427 9
Information and library science 100 17 153 17
Public administration 98 18 154 16
Humanities 96 19 25 20
Note: r = 0.668 (p < 0.01); rs = 0.721 (p < 0.01).
Source: SCIE (2008).

Table 3. Collaboration and citations to terrorism studies, 19801995 and 19962010.

(N = 100) 19801995
Type of papers Number of articles Citations Citations per paper
Single-author 68 587 8.632
Collaborative 32 488 15.250
(N = 100) 19962010
Single-author 32 1361 42.531
Collaborative 68 2801 41.191
Source: SCIE (2008).
 448 A. Gordon

papers were more visible to the scientific community, but from 1996 to 2010 their effective-
ness as citation attractors decreased as shown in the citations-per-paper rates, although the
number of collaborative papers increased considerably and also the total number of citations
to single-author papers, and collaborative papers as well.
At the same time, however, the total citation rate to terrorism papers, single and
collaborative, decreased over this period. This situation could be due to the increase in the
number of conference papers on terrorism (as shown in Table 4), because such papers are
usually cited less than journal articles are; or the extensive use of book reviews in journals
that publish on terrorism, as this type of material is also seldom cited. Perhaps, though, the
drop is due to the general decrease in citation rates to traditionally published material that
is noted in the 2000s with the entrance of electronic journals (Tenopir 2008). Table 3a, an
extension of Table 3, shows in detail the growth rate of collaborative work on terrorism
studies from 1965 to 2010.
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Table 4 shows the accelerated growth rate of conference papers on terrorism, and
Table 5 that most of the increase in the number of conferences occurred from 2006 to 2010.
An examination of the subjects covered by these conferences, retrieved from the SCIE data-
base, demonstrated that until 2007, subjects included material from political science and
technological issues, combined with or originating from either, on the one hand, societies/
lecture series (such as the Society of Photo Optics Instrumentation, the NATO Science for
Peace and Society series and Lecture Notes in Computer Science) that dealt with science and
technology issues related to terrorism, or, on the other hand, societies that discussed the
political science aspects of terrorism (such as the RAND Corporation, the Cornwallis Group

Table 3a. Collaboration on terrorism studies, by number of authors

per article, 19652010 (N = 200).
Authors/Years 19651990 19912000 20012010
1 Author 188 160 108
2 Authors 10 18 40
3 Authors 1 8 17
3+ Authors 1 14 35

Table 4. Growth rate of conference papers on terrorism, 1999, 20022010.

Total number of Number of Percentage
Year studies on terrorism conference papers (rounded off)
1999 107 None
2002 633 45 7%
2003 617 113 18%
2004 688 124 18%
2005 926 260 28%
2006 893 213 24%
2007 851 201 24%
2008 843 179 21%
Source: SCIE (2008).

Table 5. Cumulative growth rate of conference papers on terrorism, 20022008 and 20062010.
Years Total number of studies Conference papers Percentage (rounded off)
20022008 5451 1135 21%
20062008 2587 593 23%
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 449

Table 6. Terrorism journals, 19752009 (N = 34).

Start of Number Still active Open Included in Science
publication of journals today Refereed Electronic access Citation Index
19751980 4 1
19801990 7 3 2
19902000 8 8 3 5
20002009 7 7* 4 7 1
(Terrorism and
political violence)
Total** 26 19 9 12 1
Note: **Several journals did not provide enough information or had ceased to exist, and therefore they were not
included in the statistics.
*Two of these journals were forthcoming in 2009.
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Source: Ulrichs Periodical Guide (2009).

Table 7. Citations to terrorism studies, by type of material (N = 8637).

Type of material Citations per item Number of items retrieved
Review article 10.42 343
Article 3.84 4139
News item 1.93 122
Conference proceedings 1.70 1369
Editorial material 1.24 655
Letter 0.24 203
Abstract 0.04 91
Book review 0.03 1495
Note: Only the top eight types of material used were entered into this table.
Source: SCIE (2008).

Table 8. Journals related to TPV and SCT by references and citations ranked by descending order
of strength of relations.
SCT TPV
Terrorism and Political Violence (TPV) Security Dialog
Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (SCT) Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (SCT)
International Security International Security
International Organization Political Psychology
Journal of Strategic Studies Journal of Conflict Resolution
Political Science Quarterly Annual Review of Political Science
Security Studies The Middle East Journal
Political Psychology Journal of Peace Research
British Political Science
Annual Review of Political Science
Criminology
Source: JCR (2009).

and several NATO conferences). This state of affairs changed during 20082010, when most
conferences on terrorism were the product of various computer science societies.
Table 6 shows the growth in the number of terrorism journals from the 1970s to the
twenty-first century and the decrease in the rate of journals that ceased to exist after several
years of publication. It also demonstrates the growth in the number of electronic and refereed
 450 A. Gordon

journals in this subject area, especially during the 1990s and the 2000s. Table 7 presents the
citation rates to terrorism publications by type of material. The table reveals the excessive
use of book reviews in terrorism publications. This may explain why terrorism receives fewer
citations than it should, because book reviews are rarely cited in academic publications.
Table 8 presents the journals related to TPV and SCT, the two core terrorism journals. The
list ranks the journals by descending order of strength of relationship.

Summary of the tables

The most notable change from Table 1 (19652010 time range) to Table 2 (20022010
time range), besides the growth in the number of publications on terrorism, is the place
occupied by computer science-published material, which moved from 22nd place of the
23 disciplines included in the analysis to 3rd place. This change signifies the entrance of a
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new type of literature, which deals mostly with counter-terrorism measures from the pers-
pectives of the exact and life sciences. Table 3 shows the general growth rate of collaborative
studies on terrorism, but it also points out that citations to these studies somewhat decreased.
The proportion of single-authored papers to collaborative articles differs here from the results
of Gordons (2004) and Silkes studies (2008), because the data in this analysis are based
on a combination of core and peripheral articles, whereas the Gordon and Silke results are
based on analyses of the core literature on terrorism.
Tables 4 and 5 present the growth and cumulative growth of conference proceedings
on terrorism. Table 6 displays the evolvement of core terrorism journals to recent days and
their status, including the number that started and ceased over time; the number that is
refereed, electronic or open access and the number that is included in the SCIE citation
database. Table 7 classifies terrorism publications by type of material. This table demon-
strates that there is an excessive use of book reviews in terrorism journals, a fact that could
affect the rate of citations to terrorism journals, because book reviews are rarely cited.
Table 8 presents the journals related by citations to two core terrorism journals, TPV and SCT.
The two journals are related to other journals differently: TPV is related to other journals
mostly by citations (other journals cite it) and SCT is related mostly by references. This state
of affairs could change for SCT with time.

Discussion
The scene is changing for terrorism research, and several indicators of this change were
demonstrated in this study. For one thing, the growth of collaboration shown in research
production on terrorism attests to the increasing number of interdisciplinary studies and
indicates a rise in resource allocation for terrorism research. This growth is related to inten-
sification in the number of conference papers on terrorism, which is also indicative of
teamwork on the subject. It also signifies a general growth of collaborative work in the
social sciences in the 1990s (see Table A2) and the twenty-first century, mainly because of
the influence of the new communication technologies (Philson 1999).
Another development is the infiltration of terrorism studies into fields that, before 9/11,
had dealt very little with this subject or not at all, such as computer science, health sciences
and medicine. This shift in terrorism research can be explained by the entrance, after 9/11,
of counter-terrorism studies, which emphasises the fact that countering terrorism depends
on technology for both deterrence and defence (Tillema 2002). The entrance of science,
technology and medical literature (STM) into the terrorism domain influenced the increase
in the number of collaborative studies in this field, because these disciplines usually produce
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 451

a high rate of collaborative publications. In fact, this process of STM publication on terror-
ism created two distinct types of literatures on the subject, one that evolved from traditional
social science research on terrorism and a more recent one that evolved from the STM
disciplines (Gordon 2005b).
Tables 1 and 2 show the fragmentation of terrorism studies into various research fields
and sub-fields. A comparison of these two tables with Table 6 reveals that much of the
material on terrorism is published outside the core of this fields journals. Published items
on post-traumatic stress disorder after a terrorist attack, for instance, will usually be pub-
lished in a medical journal rather than in a core terrorism journal.
Normally, peripheral journals in a research field are cited less than are core journals.
In the case of terrorism, however, the journals peripheral to terrorism are among the most
highly rated in their main field. This causes a unique coreperiphery relationship in terror-
ism studies, whereby the periphery has a much higher citation rate because its journals are
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mostly from the life sciences and the sciences, which are usually cited more than the social
science journals. The main problem with the publication of STM literature on terrorism is
the lack of contact between the core and the peripheral literature; that is, the authors of the
two literatures do not cite each other (Gordon 2005b).
The events of 9/11 brought terrorism to the attention of both the public and the govern-
ments, and the subsequent growth of collaborative research work on the subject signified
increases in government allocations to terrorism research, as well as new disciplinary
directions for this field. Newly financed studies were channelled into desired routes, some
of them new. The research setting on terrorism was altered through the addition of three
disciplines to the scene: science, technology and medicine. Among the results were increased
collaboration, interdisciplinarity and fragmentation of the subject of terrorism as a research
field.

Additional disciplinary indicators and recent developments in the terrorism field

The three main disciplinary indicators examined in this study, research collaboration, the
increase in the number of conferences and the field interdiscipinarity are interrelated, and
the simultaneous growth of these indicators was observed. Nevertheless, there are more
disciplinary indicators developing in the research scene of terrorism that deserve attention.
Recently, the number of terrorism journals indexed in SCIE rose to two core journals, and
this enabled analysing them with the database tools. The journals, TPV and SCT, the former
was added to this database already in 2004 and the latter was added recently. The Journal
Citation Report (JCR) provides information as to the disciplinary affiliation and standing of
these journals, and the journals they are related to by references and citations. This
information is shown on Table 8.
The two journals belong to the international relations and political science categorisation
of the JCR database. TPV stands in the second quartile among the 59 international relations
journals and also in the second quartile among the 112 political science journals, ranked
by an impact factor, whereas SCT is still occupying the third quartile among these disciplines
journals. The second and third quartiles are usually where journals of emerging research
areas stand (Dalfsma and Leydersdorff 2010). These indicators display an existing terrorism
research field with the characteristics of an emerging scientific specialty.
As to terrorism academic studies, several diploma programmes were observed, such as
the one at St. Andrews University in the United Kingdom and the START program at the
University of Maryland in the United States, and several Master programmes within security
studies at Coventry and Nottingham Universities in the United Kingdom, but no independent
 452 A. Gordon

academic terrorism department as such. Also, many universities included terrorism courses
in their curricula that could be accessed through the Demoz Directory on the Web (Demoz
2009). Nevertheless, the state of academic terrorism studies indicates an emerging research
area but not an institutionalised one.
Another disciplinary indicator is the existence of the field as a scientific society that
could establish research norms and provide guidance and directions to the fields research
through its annual meetings and its society journal. The Society for Terrorism Research was
founded in 2006 by Dr. Samuel Justin Sinclair with its flagship journal Behavioral Sci-
ences of Terrorism and Political Aggression that started on January 2009. This society
emanated from the social sciences disciplines. Another scientific society originated from
the exact sciences in the Intelligence and Society Informatics. It focuses mainly on counter-
terrorism measures and terrorism forecasting and publishes its conference proceedings in
Lecture Notes in Computer Science. These two societies, in fact, represent the two sides of
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the terrorism literature, the social sciences side and the exact sciences literature, since the
appearance of the STM studies on terrorism in the 1990s.

General disciplinary considerations for the terrorism field

This study of the terrorism specialty offers a structural analysis of several disciplinary ele-
ments describing the field, based on data collected from published material on the subject.
This study does not present judgemental evaluations of previous studies as being of better
or worse quality or of quantitative studies as being more valuable than qualitative ones or
of studies based on primary sources as being more reliable than those based on secondary
material (see Horgan 2006, p. 30, Silke 2006, p. 80). Such criticism is subjective and
judgemental, and the criteria for what constitutes good terrorism research have not yet
been established.
This study aimed at probing several disciplinary attributes that could indicate where the
field of terrorism is heading, from a disciplinary point of view. Most material on terrorism
is published in English and the material is indexed in this language in most databases. This
situation creates an incomplete retrieval set of terrorism studies because material indexed
in databases becomes more visible to users than does that which does not reach indexing
and because there are studies written in non-English languages and, therefore, are hidden
from the scientific community. In recent years, however, this limitation has been corrected
at least to some extent, because such databases as SCIE have begun adding regional publi-
cations to their indexed data.
As to the context from which terrorism evolves, it is an important aspect to consider, but
like terrorism events themselves, it is diversified and changing. For example, researchers used
to think that terrorism evolved from deprivation and poverty, but recent studies have shown
that terrorists also come from the educated and well-to-do sectors of the population (Krueger
and Maleckova 2003, Krueger 2007, Post et al. 2003). It is important, therefore, to rely on
previous studies and the information they provide to observe the contextual changes of this
phenomenon. Citations to previous terrorism studies help build the body of knowledge for
this research field.
Considering the value of research methods in this field, it is worth noting that although
most qualitative studies concentrate on general views, factual material and specific case
studies, quantitative studies enable researchers to examine trends in terrorism and make some
generalisations about the phenomena. It seems, though, that each method is losing an
important aspect in the process of analysis, and the best way to create a meaningful study
is to use the two methods, the quantitative and the qualitative, as complementary to each
 Critical Studies on Terrorism 453

other. This approach could bring the field closer to creating theories and paradigms and
to becoming an autonomous specialty or even an independent academic discipline.
Becoming a discipline of its own means that some scientific consensus can be reached
more easily in the field, and research standards created and agreed upon, and some limits
placed on the excessive plurality of voices published on the subject. Many voices can
foster debate in established discipline; in younger and evolving disciplines, however, it
can slow down the creation of disciplinary tools in the field, such as core researchers and
journals, accepted societies and associations, and university departments with teaching and
research faculty, students and a regular flow of research grants.
One of the disciplinary characteristics of terrorism observed in this study is the increase
in the number of conferences in the field. Analysis of the SCIE database shows that this
increase is due generally to the entrance of the STM literature, which deals mostly with the
counter-terrorism aspect of this field. The rise in the number of conferences indicates more
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collaboration in terrorism studies and also signifies the existence of the invisible college
in terrorism research; as Meadows puts it, Conferences are the epitome of informal inter-
action (1998, p. 137).
This study describes several structural elements of the terrorism research field, but it
should be mentioned that structural and quantitative material sometimes also indicates the
quality of research. The citations to a publication, for instance, represent a quantitative
aspect of referencing a study, but it is indicative of quality, too, because a cited study
appoints to its visibility: it is a study that draws the attention of other researchers. The fact
that citations can be employed negatively is a matter of judgement. Research on the
subject of motivations for citations has shown that most citations perform their original
function: relating rationally to previous studies and adding results to a body of knowledge
(Bormann and Hans-Dieter 2006).
The multitude of studies on terrorism, whether from the social sciences or from STM
studies, has the effect of creating a group of researchers in the field, some of them belong-
ing to the fields core and devoting most of their scientific production to terrorism, others
to the peripheral writing in this field and visiting this subject occasionally. Both kinds of
literature, the relatively small core and the larger periphery, are important contributors to
the field of terrorism; it is essential to bring them closer together so that core and periphery
will relate to each other and help create a meaningful body of knowledge on this subject
(Gordon 2005b).

Conclusion
The state of the art of terrorism research presents a field with growing interdisciplinarity
and sub-groups of research: the traditional social science fields, on the one hand, and the
new STM studies on terrorism, on the other hand. There are studies that combine both
research trajectories, but the overall picture is of a field that is dichotomous and fragmented
and whose distance from becoming institutionalised as an autonomous academic research
field is actually becoming larger.
Knowledge growth in the field and the increasing amount of collaborative work on
terrorism point in the right direction towards terrorism becoming a mature scientific dis-
cipline. However, these developments have been mainly due to the entrance of STM studies
into the network of terrorism research. What is needed now is more integration between the
social science and the STM aspects of terrorism research.
Another way of looking at the desired state of the art of terrorism research is by
accepting it as is; that is, recognising that the field is fragmented, but that this state of
 454 A. Gordon

affairs should not deter from its making a contribution to research. Older, more institution-
alised disciplines, such as sociology, have accepted the fact that diverse scientific schools
have generated meta-theoretical paradigms and alternative ways of doing sociology (Turner
1991). As a result, sociology is seen as multiparadigmatic, because no single scientific
area controls its standards of epistemic legitimacy. As for terrorism research, it seems that
it is also a multiparadigmatic research field, at least for the time being. Although there are
several disciplinary developments in this field, such as more refereed journals, more
collaborative work and studies that use inferential statistics (Silke 2008), it is still not a
mature discipline. There are lacunae in the body of terrorism research, such as the dimin-
ishing place of historical studies, the lack of comprehensiveness of trend studies and the
heavy focus on one type of studies, Chemical, Biological, Radiolgical and Nuclear
(CBRN) research.
It is still uncertain where terrorism studies are heading, but one encouraging fact about
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the future of terrorism as a research field is the growing attention being paid to its disci-
plinary difficulties, along with the attempts to establish some boundaries to the mass of
material published on this subject. This final note of time will tell should be understood
in the light of the close relationship between the direction that terrorism studies will take and
the evolving of actual events of terrorism on the changing international scene.

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 458 A. Gordon

APPENDIX

Table A1. Refereed and electronic journals on terrorism.

Refereed journals
Annual Editions: Violence
and Terrorism (USA)
International Studies on
Terrorism (the Netherlands)
Terrorism: Documents of
International and Local
Control (USA)
World Journal of Terrorism
and Nations (South Africa)
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Electronic journals
Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism
and Political Aggression (UK)
International Journal of Terrorism
and Political Hot Spots (USA)
Janes Terrorism Security
Monitor (USA)
Janes Terrorism Watch
Report (USA)
Refereed and
electronic journals
Critical Studies on
Terrorism (UK)
Dynamics of Asymmetric
Conflicts (UK)
Journal of Applied
Security Research (USA)
Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism (USA)

Janes World Insurgency Terrorism and Political

and Terrorism (USA) Violence (UK)
Patterns of Global Terrorism
(USA)
Terrorism in the United States
(USA)
Terrorism Research (USA)
(forthcoming)
Source: Ulrichs Web Global Serial Directory (2008).

Table A2. Collaboration in the sciences and social sciences, 20012007.

Years/Disciplines Psychology Economics Physics Biology
2001 27 35 87 76
2002 59 67 57 68
2007 65 49 83 88
Source: SCIE (2008).