Title: Internationally Active, Visible, High Impact, and Eminent Romanian Psychologists. a Quantitative Analysis
Abstract: IntroductionPsychology (i.e., academic departments and/or institutes/laboratories) was founded in Romania at the beginning of the XX century, by students of Wilhelm Wundt graduated at Leipzig University (i.e., in the first psychology laboratory in the world). Eduard Gruber introduced psychology in Iasi, Constantin Radulescu-Motru in Bucharest, and Florian Stefanescu-Goanga in Cluj-Napoca (for more details see Bejat, 1972; David, 2001; 2001a; David & Miclea, 2002).From the beginning, Romanian psychology was an active national and international player, completely integrated in the international movement in psychology. However, starting with the rise of the communist regime (1945), Romanian psychology was less and less supported and eventually forbidden both in universities (from 1977 to 1991 - psychology specialization/departments) and research institutes (from 1982 to 1991 - the institute of Romanian Academy). The view of the communist party was that communist activists rather than psychologists should be those study the human mind and behavior, in order to create a new human being, the communist human being, based on communist principles about human values and behaviors.After the Anticommunist Revolution of 1989, psychology was reintroduced in Romanian academic and research settings (starting with 1991). However, these new programs were typically started by the academic staffthat was in power positions in the 1977/1982. Therefore, due to almost 25 years of isolation from international standards, these programs were generally based on outdated paradigms. Indeed, the academic output consisted mainly on main author books published in Romania, often without peer review and payable by the authors; this led to an inflation of books/chapters, often of very low quality. This inflation was encouraged by the fact that each lecturer was required to have his/her own book on the subject of his/her course, and this was the main criterion for academic promotion and grant funding. Similarly, articles were published in local/national journals, often without rigorous peer-review analyses and with a limited circulation. This is not to say that there were no at all quality publications in this period, but these were difficult to identify and masked by tones of low quality publications. In such an environment academic/professional value was often eclipsed by notoriety and self-promotion obtained through holding academic power/decision positions, personal connections/networking, and mass-media selfpromotion. The public and the students were often influenced by who shouted the loudest and who had the academic power, rather than by those performed academically/professionally.Building on the experimental tradition initiated by Florian Stefanescu- Goanga, a somehow different perspective was taken at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. Starting with 1991, professor Ioan Radu, the Head of Department of Psychology, did not entrust the reconstruction of psychology only to academic staffthat was in power positions in 1977/1982, but he brought in the Department a strong group of young psychologists (e.g., graduated in 1977). These young psychologists were sent to study abroad and when they came back they were promoted in power/decision positions, implementing modern paradigms in psychology at the Babes-Bolyai University.David, Domuta, and Moore (2002) presented the first comprehensive scientometric appraisal of Romanian psychology on the international scene after about a decade of psychology in a democratic regime (using Web of Science publications for analysis). A few years later, Iliescu, Ispas and Ilie (2007) also critically evaluated the development of Romanian psychology. In general it was clear from these analyses that a rigorous assimilation of international standards is taking place in Romanian psychology, mainly in Cluj-Napoca, at Babes-Bolyai University. In the other Romanian academic centers the development of the modern paradigm in psychology was still somehow slower. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot