Paradigm and citation analysis

In Yasunori Saito's paper which appeared in this journal last year, he stated that if the co-citation relationships among articles were recognized then there was a paradigm and the formation of a specialty was then identified. In this paper, Saito's proposition was examined in terms of the use of "concept" and the use of "method", i. e. the concept being the "paradigm" and the method being the "co-citation analysis". The conclusion is: 1. the concept of the para-digm he used is so ambiguous that it can't be used as an effective device; 2. the highly co-cited articles do not necessarily hold a paradigm in common; 3. co-citation analysis is not the only method to identify a specialty.