Psychology in the Spanish scientific domain through categories cocitation of Journal Citation Report 1990-2005

This work aims to reveal some aspects of the scientific domain of Psychology, in the context of the internationally visible Spanish science in the databases of the Citation Index of The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), which is represented by a map. We used the methodology of cocitation of thematic categories (JCR-Thompson Scientific), with which we obtained a representation of the scientific activity. The resulting map allowed us to focus on the area of Psychology, whose representation acts as database for the analysis of this discipline in the scientific field with international visibility. This study offers an empirical view of the underlying structure of Spanish Psychology. This is important because most scientists have an intuitive idea of this structure, but this may or may not be real. This way, we present a global vision of the entire discipline that favours its objective analysis as a function of scientists' behaviour as it affects their patterns of communication through the established formal channels.