Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
The rise of disciplines is connected with the formation of groups or networks ofspecialists. It is connected with the emergence of “scientificcommunities,” theorized about since Thomas Kuhn and Robert Merton. Buthow is such a community of specialists brought together; how are commonorientations among members of a scientific community upheld? In this article itis argued that scholarly journals play a key role in the modern scientificdisciplines. Journals both secure the shared values of a scientific communityand endorse what that community takes to be certified knowledge. Publications inscholarly journals have become the basic units of scientific communication in adiscipline. Against this theoretical background, I analyze in this article theevolution of the leading scholarly journal in the field of education in theDutch-language community, Paedagogische Studiën (Studies inEducation). The analyses illuminate a number of historicalevolutions in this journal in the period 1920–75: the increase incoauthorship and the concomitant standardization of publication formats; thechanging role of the editorial board, especially in its function of gatekeeperof scientific communication; and the increase and the shifting“global” nature of cited work in the journal. Because of the closerelationship between journal and discipline, this analysis highlights basiccharacteristics of the patterns of communication and the constitution ofdisciplinary identity in Dutch-language educational science.