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“Reading a River” Through Google Scholar Hyperlinks: Comparing Four Major International River Systems

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Handbook of the Changing World Language Map

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Abstract

Distinct approaches to knowledge are employed in geography, a discipline which incorporates both social and physical sciences. These approaches include the idiographic (the tendency to specify, typical of the humanities), the nomothetic (the tendency to generalize, typical of the natural sciences), and the cartographic (spatial analysis). As natural systems that both affect and are affected by human society in myriad ways, rivers are of major interest to geographers and scholars in related fields. Here, an assessment of idiographic, nomothetic, and cartographic knowledge of river systems is presented. The state of idiographic knowledge, or knowledge of individual river systems, is examined through an analysis of publications in the Google Scholar database relating to four major global rivers (the Mississippi, Amazon, Congo, and Yangtze), including their major tributaries. Idiographic knowledge of river systems in economically developed parts of the world appears to be greater than for river systems that are more difficult for international researchers to access, and knowledge is positively correlated with drainage area within river systems. The nature of the knowledge is assessed by analyzing the journals or publication types of the highest-ranked publications in the Google Scholar database and by creating “word clouds” of the most common terms in the titles of these publications. Finally, it is argued that the heterogeneous nature of watersheds has limited the production of nomothetic knowledge of river systems, and some approaches to produce more generalized knowledge of rivers are suggested, including the use of hydrologic scaling, process-based modeling, and watershed classification.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Sarah Praskievicz

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  1. Sarah Praskievicz
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Correspondence to Sarah Praskievicz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of Kentucky Department of Geography, Lexington, KY, USA

    Stanley D Brunn

  2. Deutscher Sprachatlas, Marburg University, Marburg, Hessen, Germany

    Roland Kehrein

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Praskievicz, S. (2019). “Reading a River” Through Google Scholar Hyperlinks: Comparing Four Major International River Systems. In: Brunn, S., Kehrein, R. (eds) Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_153-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_153-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73400-2

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