Gatekeepers in Social Science

Barbara Hoenig, Innsbruck University, Innsbruck, Austria

2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract
A gatekeeper is an individual or collective actor who is in a position to control access to resources and rewards relevant in
a particular social system. The terms usage in the sociology of science goes back to Robert K. Merton, who denes gatekeeping
as one of the four complementary roles in the role set of scientists and scholars. Gate-keeping activities are relevant in
different arenas of scholarship such as between scientic masters and apprentices, in collective mentoring programs, in
publishing and in research funding.

A gatekeeper is an individual or collective actor who is in

a position to control access to resources and regulate the allocation of rewards relevant in a particular social system. These
resources might take the form of money or information, of
reputation or social capital. In bureaucratic institutions, both
formal and informal authorities can exercise a gate-keeping
function. In the social institution of science, the normative role
of a gatekeeper typically is twofold: providing or denying
access to opportunities (Merton, 1973: p. 522), which
includes giving advice, encouragement, and support on the one
hand, and exercising control, regulation, and sanctions on the
other. The concept of the gatekeeper has been introduced by
Lewin (1943), who has investigated the food habits of ve
groups of Americans by tracing back various channels of buying
and gardening, baking and canning food. Subsequent inquiries
of gatekeeping have been most inuential in communication
research and in science and technology studies. In a panel study
on voter decisions during a US presidential election campaign
in Erie County, Ohio, Lazarsfeld et al. (1944) have investigated
the hypothesis that mass medias inuence on potential voters
typically takes on a two-step ow of communication, insofar
ideas often ow from radio and print to opinion leaders and
from them to the less active sections of the population
(Lazarsfeld et al., 1944: p. 151). In network analysis, recent
research focuses on gatekeeping as a structural power condition in order to discover structures that favor gatekeeping (for
instance, Corra and Willer, 2002). In science, the gate-keeping
role is important for institutionalized procedures of communication and decision making. Moreover, it contributes to the
maintenance of scientic standards, evaluation, and quality
assurance. Its institutionally central role has also stimulated
research scrutinizing possible particularistic biases in decision
making within a generally universalistic peer-review system
(Zuckerman and Merton, 1971). Support and gate-keeping
activities are relevant in different arenas of scholarship, as in the
social ties between scientic masters and apprentices and in
collective mentoring programs by afrmative action. It also
bears upon the work done by journal editors in the publishing
industry, by reviewers and foundation ofcers in research
funding, and by departmental chairs and boards in career
promotion of scientists and scholars. Apart from individual
actors, institutions such as peer-review panels, funding organizations, scientic journals, and career track systems can take
on a gate-keeping function in science and scholarship.

618

The Gatekeepers Role in Science

The terms usage in the sociology of science goes back to its
founding father, Robert K. Merton, who denes gatekeeping
as one of the four complementary roles in the role set of
scientists and scholars: Apart from teaching, research, and
scientic administration, they are expected to fulll a gatekeeping function in the institutionalized peer-review system
(Zuckerman and Merton, 1972). Merton characterizes gatekeeping as basic to the system of evaluation and the allocation
of roles and resources in science (Merton, 1973: p. 521),
where gatekeepers mostly operate through panels of peers.
Becoming a member in these panels is part of the scientic
socialization, while gate-keeping activities help shape the
permanent record of scientic work within patterned
sequences of role congurations (Merton, 1973: p. 521).
According to Merton, the gate-keeping role is clearly structured
toward an older age bias, because scientists and scholars
usually act as gatekeepers in later phases of their career, when
their reputation as researcher in the eld of question is already
established or assumed. In dynamic aspects, the role of the
gatekeeper effects the sponsored mobility of scientists and
scholars (Turner, 1960; Hargens and Hagstrom, 1967): In
contrast to a mobility pattern similar to a sporting contest,
where individual achievements are solely judged according to
universal criteria, sponsored mobility involves a controlled
selection process where members of the elite call those
individuals who have the appropriate qualities (Turner, 1960:
p. 857). The fact that, irrespective of their actual achievements,
particular researchers and scientic institutions are structurally
more successful than others in the cumulative process of
accumulating reputation and reward is known as the Matthew
effect (Merton, 1968). Structurally seen, the gate-keeping role
is crucial for understanding the operation of intellectual
authority and the reproduction of social stratication and
scientic elites (Cole and Cole, 1973; Zuckerman, 1977;
Whitley et al., 2010). Gatekeepers control and regulate legitimate access to institutions as those intellectual authorities that
dene what counts as scientic excellence or not. In this sense,
gatekeeping has far reaching consequences on whether
a particular person is allowed to continue research, be it on
a particular topic or doing research at all. In the following, we
take a look on different arenas of science as a social institution,
where gate-keeping activities are involved: in the social ties of

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 9

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.03011-7

Gatekeepers in Social Science

scientic masters and apprentices, in collective mentoring by

afrmative action programs, in the publishing and research
funding industry, and in sociocognitive networks or invisible
colleges in the scientic community.

Masters and Apprentices in Science

One of the most important, albeit highly personalized social
ties in science, are those between the scientic master on the
one hand and the apprentice on the other. Alternative terms
often used to characterize this role relation are teacherpupil,
mentorstudent, or seniorjunior collaborators. In the process
of scientic socialization-by-liation, the master acts as teacher
and supervisor, supporter and mentor, and as an individual
role model for the apprentice. As Zuckerman and Merton
(1972) have observed, complementary age roles of teachers
and students that usually are members of different generations
and cohorts often become integrated in research collaborations; the relation is also characterized by a remarkable amount
of conict and sociological ambivalence for both (Zuckerman
and Merton, 1972). The mentors relevance for the career
prospect of any young scientist or scholar has also been an
object of social research. For instance, Nobel laureates in
interviews have frequently emphasized the important role of
a reputed mentor for making a career within the scientic
ultraelite (Zuckerman, 1977). In her study on Nobel laureates
in the United States, Zuckerman has characterized these
enduring, consequential social ties between scientic masters
and apprentices as much more important than ties by kinship.
More than half of the laureates in her sample have been
working as graduate students, postdoctorates, or junior
collaborators under older laureates or similar members of the
ultraelite without Nobel prize (Zuckerman, 1977). Zuckerman
has found a self-perpetuating pattern of the scientic ultraelite,
where Nobel laureates, by acquiring experience and judgment
and by acting as skillful advocates of their candidates
(Zuckerman, 1977: p. 106), produced their own heirs to the
prize in a lineage sometimes stretching over half a century. As
fundamental difference between biological and social heredity
Zuckerman emphasizes the aspect of social choice in that
relationship: At least to some extent, both masters and
apprentices can mutually choose with whom they want to
work. Moreover, it can be assumed that scientic masters
possibly tend to prefer apprentices that are perceived to be
similar to themselves at a younger age. Mostly informal,
personalized patterns of recruitment and support, in the
aggregate, then might favor structural majorities at the expense
of minority members in science.

Collective Mentoring by Affirmative Action

In the social stratication of science, the situation of women
and other minorities has always been rather peculiar. Irrespective of their actual individual achievements, they are more
frequently working in organizational contexts disadvantageously affecting the cumulative allocation of reward during
their scientic career. This bears upon appointments to institutions with low prestige, lacking eminent mentors, and access

619

to scientic networks, publishing later and less than others,

more seldom being held eligible for research funds and
fellowships (Keith et al., 2002). This is one reason why
members of these groups are much scarcer as gatekeepers of
science as well and structurally encounter fewer opportunities
to shape research policy issues. Respecting the normative ethos
of universalism (Merton, 1942), which regards the validity of
scientic knowledge claims as independent of irrelevant
personal characteristics of scientists, often leads to support
institutional measures for equal opportunities in science. In
this sense, afrmative action for disadvantaged groups can be
understood as a critique on a still lacking universalism in access
to science.
Afrmative action designates institutional measures of
support, for instance, by quotas, targets, and mentorship, in
order to counteract individuals exclusion from opportunities
based on group membership such as by race, class, and
gender. These institutionalized forms of support aim at integrating members of these groups in academic networks by
mediating knowledge about scholarly practices and by
generating opportunities for experiencing career support and
collegiality. Moreover, by afrmative action it is expected to
provide more equal access for minority members to shaping
research policy at all relevant levels. Within the last decades,
there has been done much research on afrmative action in
the educational and employment system (Harper and Reskin,
2005). However, experience shows that it very much depends
on programs actual implementation practices whether their
outcomes really benet minority members or not (Aguirre,
2000). Both social disparities and institutional programs to
combat discrimination in the academe signicantly vary
between countries; particularly Anglo-Saxon and European
Scandinavian countries are perceived as more advanced
in that regard. While in the United States, afrmative action in
higher education has responded to the Civil Rights movement
from the 1960s onward, European countries only recently
have begun to learn from these experiences (Bacchi, 1996;
Appelt and Jarosch, 2000). In 1997, the European Union has
adopted a legal guideline for actively pursuing antidiscriminiation strategies as part of the Treaty of Amsterdam,
such as by implementing gender mainstreaming and strategies
combating racism. Except for the United Kingdom (HESA,
2012), however, most European countries higher education
statistics do not provide information with respect to known
ethnicity-status, which indicates that minority issues still are
not much on the science policy agenda there.

Gatekeeping in the Publishing Industry

The gatekeepers role in science has mostly been investigated in
elds of publishing, such as by research on journal or book
editors or reviewers evaluating manuscripts submitted for
publication. In science and technology studies, Price (1963) has
coined the term invisible colleges for informal groups of
scientists and scholars that, by communicating, reading, and
citing each others work, contribute to scientic growth. While
Price has estimated the size of such a scientic network as a few
hundred colleagues for every worker (Price, 1963: p. 72), he has
not explicitly addressed possible disciplinary differences in that

620

Gatekeepers in Social Science

regard. Crane (1972) has built upon Price in her research on the
role of invisible colleges in the diffusion of scientic knowledge
and ideas. By bibliometrics and survey research, she investigated
the social organization of informal collaboration networks
among mathematicians and rural sociologists. In addition, she
provided a dynamic model of scientic growth, both of scientic
communities and their knowledge production. In an earlier
study of comparing 50 journals from two disciplines, sociology
and economics, Crane (1967) has scrutinized factors of the
academic stratication system that highly affect editorial decisions in the selection of journal articles. She has found empirical
evidence that an authors academic afliation, doctoral origin,
and professional age happened to be rather similar to the
distribution of those characteristics among journal editors.
Moreover, she suggested that these effects might be specic for
each discipline. The publishing industry in an American context
has been described by Coser, Kadushin, and Powell (Coser,
1965, 1975; Coser et al., 1982) as by three structural characteristics: its decentralization; its operating in a highly uncertain,
unpredictable market; and its internal organization characterized by a predominance of craft over bureaucracy. According to
the authors, decisions of publishers and editors are based on
multiple factors such as estimations of prospective sales, but also
on the tradition of a particular publishing house, the size of
a rm, editors previous education, career aspirations, and selfimages. Moreover, they indicated that these points of reference
at least partially depend on an editors structural characteristics,
to a less extent they are chosen at will. Since the turnover rate
among editors is rather high, structurally induced uncertainty
and ambiguity of that role are even enforced so that the
complicated network of particularistic relations between authors
and editors runs counter to the universalistic contractual relations between the rm and its authors (Coser, 1975: p. 19). As
Price and others have shown, the scholarly communication
between scientists through scientic papers goes back to the
seventeenth century. However, despite their central role for
scientic communication, social research on journals editorial
boards is still rather scarce. Recently, the role of gatekeepers in
scholarly communication has been measured as interlocking
editorial board membership, taking the number of editorial
board members that two journals share as an indicator for
the journals proximity (Ni et al., 2013). For 58 journals from
the disciplinary eld of Library and Information Science, the
authors could show that about 10% of editorial board members
served on more than one journal. Their ndings demonstrated
a rather high concentration for this variable when compared
with journal proximity in term of producers, scientic papers,
and papers topics (Ni et al., 2013). The approach of editorial
board member coupling can generate interesting insights in
networks of journal clusters within a given eld or research area
and in the structure of editorial gatekeeping as well.

research funding have frequently emphasized that it is extremely

hard to nd any statistically signicant evidence for particularistic effects. In addition, there might be no way of objectively
evaluating new scientic work neither. Cole (1992) reported
several empirical studies on peer review in the US National
Science Foundation where the authors could not nd statistically signicant correlations of grant approval rates neither with
individual characteristics of researchers nor with their institutional afliations. Cole hinted to the fact that these ndings not
only contrast much theorizing in the eld, but also those of
qualitative studies and academic insiders everyday-knowledge
of what affects working at universities. Rather, he assumed
that informal network ties can produce signicant outcomes
interpretable as Matthew effect, and he suggested to investigate
them by applying social network analysis or qualitative
research techniques. Lamonts (2009) qualitative study on
scientic decision making has shown that external peer
reviewers of funding programs in the United States practically
apply some rules of thumb when talking about what
constitutes a proposals potential scientic excellence.
Moreover, she unearthed signicant variation in these
customary rules of deliberation (Lamont, 2009) across
disciplinary cultures and corresponding epistemological styles
in the social sciences and humanities.
Not only scientic actors, but also funding institutions and
their representatives administering the granting process play an
important gate-keeping role. Decisions consequential for grant
approvals can be taken by individual philantrophs, science
policy advisors, members of the scientic administrative elite, or
by the program ofcer appointed to a research foundation.
Although not acting as scientist, these actors often received
academic training, which also equipped them with an insiderknowledge of the research eld and with access to scientic
networks. In the history of social scientic research funding,
such as by the Rockefeller or by the Ford Foundation,
professional foundation ofcers were often trained social
scientists using their institutional position to promote social
scientic research (Platt, 1996: pp. 164ff.). Therefore, a sharp
distinction between foundation ofcers and researchers might
be misleading, both because of the ofcers scientic
education and the multifold trajectory of their professional
careers, occasionally moving back and forth between the
administrative, the advisory, and the research sector (Platt,
1996: pp. 164ff.). At meso- and macrolevel, research
foundations, state ministries, administrative elites, and
employers organizations can be conceived as gate-keeping
agencies shaping the research policy of a country, for instance,
by setting up academic evaluation systems or funding
regulations operative in a national research landscape (Whitley
et al., 2010). As Whitley and others have shown, different
types of change in governance and state steering might then
affect the reorganization of authority relations and innovation
in public science systems as well.

Gatekeeping in Research Funding

Since the norm of universalism requires that the evaluation of
scientic achievements is independent of individual attributes
of any scientist (Merton, 1942), it is reasonable to ask whether
the actual evaluation practice of peer reviewers reects this
norm. However, researchers studying the role of peer review in

Historical and Cultural Variation

of the Gatekeepers Role
Probably it is most hard to investigate the role of gatekeepers
in career track decisions and scientic promotion, for instance

Gatekeepers in Social Science

in the decision whether a scientist shall get tenure or not or

whether a scholar shall be appointed for a prestigious
professorship. Moreover, the gate-keeping role apparently is
subject to historical change and cultural variation. For
instance, concerning the historical chains between masters
and apprentices in sociology, Merton and Riley (1980) have
edited a small book in which eminent sociologists report
about their teachers and their relation to them. When, as
readers of today, we contrast their experiences with current
conditions of doing research, we might recognize that paternalistic hierarchies of highly personalized, gendered, agestructured, and elitist roles at least partially have changed
toward more entrepreneurial forms of science and
scholarship. Structural transformations of public science
have given rise to new actors and institutional forms of
knowledge production, such as by industrial enterprises or
science policy advisors. By extending beyond traditional
boundaries of academic scholarship, the future role of
gatekeepers might become more diverse and diffuse,
possibly
enforcing
structural
contradictions
and
ambivalences for scientists and scholars depending on these
contexts of utilization. The cultural variance of the scientic
role in different social contexts has been investigated by
Ben-David (1971) who, inspired by Webers and Mertons
historical studies, observed successive shifts of scientic
centers from England to France, then to Germany, and
nally to the United States. While Ben-David has
characterized the specic strength of French universities in
their strongly centralized, elite-oriented system, this has
been partially replaced by the Humboldt tradition of
autonomous, hierarchical universities in Germany.
Particularly after World War II, a steadily increasing number
of independent universities in the United States with more
democratically structured departments has established itself
as a globally dominant academic system till today. Although
Ben-David has not explicitly studied social variation in the
gate-keeping role, his early studies demonstrated the
context-dependent nature of knowledge production in
different academic systems. Despite an increasingly
globalized higher education system, the historical variance
of academic institutions and national traditions of
scholarship can be regarded as still of importance. The fact
that the gatekeepers role is subject to remarkable historical
change and cultural diversity reminds us of the need to
apply context-sensitive research techniques in empirically
studying it.
Seen from the perspective of the sociology of science, the
gatekeepers role is of relevance for maintaining what is
constitutive for scientic knowledge production: an institutionalized procedure of organized skepticism (Merton,
1942) for assuring scientic quality standards, shaping the
growing stock of knowledge, and contributing to scientic
advance. Although by current science studies it is widely
acknowledged that subjective judgments are an indispensable
part of any evaluative activity in science (Polanyi, 1958), it
remains an open question how and to which extent this is the
case. The gatekeepers role seems to be more important in
counter-balancing subjective effects of scientic evaluations
by implementing the norm of universalism in academic
judgments. Even though the most universal evaluation

621

systems in science might not always be the most efcient

ones for advancing scientic knowledge, it can be assumed
that Universalism and Fairness are good ways to
distribute rewards because they t our general value system
(Cole, 1992: p. 203). The continuing relevance of the
gatekeepers role lies in the fact that it fundamentally forms
both the procedures and outcomes of scientic knowledge
production. In this sense, it contributes to what is
constitutive for science as a social institution.

See also: Academic Careers in Comparative Perspective;

Discrimination and the Law; Funding of Social Science, History
of; Network Analysis; Peer Review: Organized Skepticism;
Science and Technology Studies, History of.

Bibliography
Aguirre, A., 2000. Academic storytelling: a critical race theory story of afrmative action.
Sociological Perspectives 43 (2), 319339.
Appelt, E., Jarosch, M. (Eds.), 2000. Combating Racial Discrimination: Afrmative Action
as a Model for Europe. Berg, Oxford and New York.
Bacchi, C.L., 1996. The Politics of Afrmative Action: Women, Equality and Category
Politics. Sage, London.
Ben-David, J., 1971. The Scientists Role in Society: A Comparative Study. Prentice-Hall,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Cole, J.R., Cole, S., 1973. Social Stratication in Science. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.
Cole, S., 1992. Making Science: Between Nature and Society. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge.
Corra, M., Willer, D., 2002. The gatekeeper. Sociological Theory 20 (2),
180207.
Coser, L.A., 1965. Men of Ideas: A Sociologists View. Free Press, New York.
Coser, L.A., 1975. Publishers as gatekeepers of ideas. Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Sciences 421, 1422.
Coser, L.A., Kadushin, C., Powell, W.W., 1982. Books: The Culture and Commerce of
Publishing. Basic Books, New York.
Crane, D., 1967. The gatekeepers of science: some factors affecting the selection of
articles for scientic journals. The American Sociologist 2, 195201.
Crane, D., 1972. Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientic Communities.
University of Chicago Press, New York and Chicago.
de Solla Price, D., 1963. Little Science, Big Science. Columbia University Press,
New York.
Hargens, L.L., Hagstrom, W.A., 1967. Sponsored and contest mobility of American
academic scientists. Sociology of Education 40, 2438.
Harper, S., Reskin, B., 2005. Afrmative action at school and on the job. Annual Review
of Sociology 31, 357379.
HESA Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2012. Staff in Higher Education Institutions
2010/11 in the United Kingdom. www.hesa.ac.uk.
Keith, B., Layne, J., Babchuk, N., Johnson, K., 2002. The context of scientic
achievement: sex status, organizational environments, and the timing of publication
on scholarship outcomes. Social Forces 80 (4), 12531281.
Lamont, M., 2009. How Professors Think. Inside the Curious World of Academic
Judgment. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berelson, B., Gaudet, H., 1944. The Peoples Choice: How the Voter
Makes up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. Columbia University Press, New York
and London.
Lewin, K., 1943. Forces behind food habits and methods of change. Bulletin of the
National Research Council 108, 3565.
Merton, R.K., 1942. A note on science and democracy. Journal of Legal and Political
Sociology 1, 115126.
Merton, R.K., 5 January 1968. The Matthew effect in science. Science 199 (3810),
5563.
Merton, R.K., 1973. The Sociology of Science. Theoretical and Empirical Investigations.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Merton, R.K., Riley, M.W. (Eds.), 1980. Sociological Traditions from Generation to
Generation: Glimpses of the American Experience. Ablex Publishing Corporation,
Norwood, NJ.

622

Gatekeepers in Social Science

Ni, C., Sugimoto, C.R., Cronin, B., 2013. Visualizing and comparing four facets of
scholarly communication: producers, artifacts, concepts, and gatekeepers. Scientometrics 94, 11611173.
Platt, J., 1996. A History of Sociological Research Methods in America 19201960.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Polanyi, M., 1958. Personal Knowledge. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, UK.
Turner, R., 1960. Sponsored and contest mobility and the school system. American
Sociological Review 25, 855867.
Whitley, R., Glaser, J., Engwall, L. (Eds.), 2010. Reconguring Knowledge
Production: Changing Authority Relationships in the Sciences and Their

Consequences for Intellectual Innovation. Oxford University Press,

Oxford, UK.
Zuckerman, H., 1977. Scientic Elite: Studies of Nobel Laureates in the United
States. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ and London, UK.
Zuckerman, H., Merton, R.K., 1971. Patterns of evaluation in science: institutionalization,
structure and functions of the referee system. Minerva 9 (1), 66100.
Zuckerman, H., Merton, R.K., 1972. Age, aging, and age structure in science.
In: Riley, M.W., Johnson, M., Foner, A. (Eds.), A Sociology of Age Stratication, Aging and Society, vol. 3. Russell Sage Foundation, New York,
pp. 292356.