Showing papers in "Scientometrics in 2009"
TL;DR: It is suggested that science is indeed becoming more interdisciplinary, but in small steps — drawing mainly from neighboring fields and only modestly increasing the connections to distant cognitive areas.
Abstract: In the last two decades there have been studies claiming that science is becoming ever more interdisciplinary. However, the evidence has been anecdotal or partial. Here we investigate how the degree of interdisciplinarity has changed between 1975 and 2005 over six research domains. To do so, we compute well-established bibliometric indicators alongside a new index of interdisciplinarity (Integration score, aka Rao-Stirling diversity) and a science mapping visualization method. The results attest to notable changes in research practices over this 30 year period, namely major increases in number of cited disciplines and references per article (both show about 50% growth), and co-authors per article (about 75% growth). However, the new index of interdisciplinarity only shows a modest increase (mostly around 5% growth). Science maps hint that this is because the distribution of citations of an article remains mainly within neighboring disciplinary areas. These findings suggest that science is indeed becoming more interdisciplinary, but in small steps — drawing mainly from neighboring fields and only modestly increasing the connections to distant cognitive areas. The combination of metrics and overlay science maps provides general benchmarks for future studies of interdisciplinary research characteristics.
664 citations
TL;DR: A detailed paper by paper study is presented of the coverage achieved by ISI Web of Science and by Scopus of the output of a typical university and the general conclusion is that about 2/3 of the documents referenced in any of the two databases may be found in both databases.
Abstract: For many years, the ISI Web of Knowledge from Thomson Reuters was the sole publication and citation database covering all areas of science thus becoming an invaluable tool in bibliometric analysis. In 2004, Elsevier introduced Scopus and this is rapidly becoming a good alternative. Several attempts have been made at comparing these two instruments from the point of view of journal coverage for research or for bibliometric assessment of research output. This paper attempts to answer the question that all researchers ask, i.e., what is to be gained by searching both databases? Or, if you are forced to opt for one of them, which should you prefer? To answer this question, a detailed paper by paper study is presented of the coverage achieved by ISI Web of Science and by Scopus of the output of a typical university. After considering the set of Portuguese universities, the detailed analysis is made for two of them for 2006, the two being chosen for their comprehensiveness typical of most European universities. The general conclusion is that about 2/3 of the documents referenced in any of the two databases may be found in both databases while a fringe of 1/3 are only referenced in one or the other. The citation impact of the documents in the core present in both databases is higher, but the impact of the fringe that are present only in one of the databases should not be disregarded as some high impact documents may be found among them.
371 citations
TL;DR: It can be concluded that application of stem cell transplantation technology to human disease therapy, especially research related on “embryonic stem cell” and “mesenchymal stemcell” is the orientation of all the stem cell research in the 21st century.
Abstract: In this study, we aim to evaluate the global scientific production of stem cell research for the past 16 years and provide insights into the characteristics of the stem cell research activities and identify patterns, tendencies, or regularities that may exist in the papers. Data are based on the online version of SCI, Web of Science from 1991 to 2006. Articles referring to stem cell were assessed by many aspects including exponential fitting the trend of publication outputs during 1991–2006, distribution of source title, author keyword, and keyword plus analysis. Based on the exponential fitting the yearly publicans of the last decade, it can also be calculated that, in 2,011, the number of scientific papers on the topic of stem-cell will be twice of the number of publications in 2006. Synthetically analyzing three kinds of keywords, it can be concluded that application of stem cell transplantation technology to human disease therapy, especially research related on “embryonic stem cell” and “mesenchymal stem cell” is the orientation of all the stem cell research in the 21st century. This new bibliometric method can help relevant researchers realize the panorama of global stem cell research, and establish the further research direction.
273 citations
TL;DR: The paper shows how the various building blocks of the dominant JIF came into being and argues that these building blocks were all constructed fairly arbitrarily or for different purposes than those that govern the contemporary use of the JIF.
Abstract: This paper examines the genesis of journal impact measures and how their evolution culminated in the journal impact factor (JIF) produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. The paper shows how the various building blocks of the dominant JIF (published in the Journal Citation Report - JCR) came into being. The paper argues that these building blocks were all constructed fairly arbitrarily or for different purposes than those that govern the contemporary use of the JIF. The results are a faulty method, widely open to manipulation by journal editors and misuse by uncritical parties. The discussion examines some solution offered to the bibliometrics and scientific communities considering the wide use of this indicator at present.
249 citations
TL;DR: Based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded web-version, the USA is still by far the strongest nation in terms of scientific performance as discussed by the authors, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the USA.
Abstract: Based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded web-version, the USA is still by far the strongest nation in terms of scientific performance. Its relative decline in percentage share of publications is largely due to the emergence of China and other Asian nations. In 2006, China has become the second largest nation in terms of the number of publications within this database. In terms of citations, the competitive advantage of the American “domestic market” is diminished, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the USA. However, the USA is still outperforming all other countries in terms of highly cited papers and citation/publication ratios, and it is more successful than the EU in coordinating its research efforts in strategic priority areas like nanotechnology. In this field, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become second largest nation in both numbers of papers published and citations behind the USA.
181 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a bibliometric examination of the entire population of research personnel working in the scientific-technological disciplines of Italian university system, confirms the presence of significant differences in productivity between men and women.
Abstract: The literature dedicated to the analysis of the difference in research productivity between the sexes tends to agree in indicating better performance for men. Through bibliometric examination of the entire population of research personnel working in the scientific-technological disciplines of Italian university system, this study confirms the presence of significant differences in productivity between men and women. The differences are, however, smaller than reported in a large part of the literature, confirming an ongoing tendency towards decline, and are also seen as more noticeable for quantitative performance indicators than other indicators. The gap between the sexes shows significant sectorial differences. In spite of the generally better performance of men, there are scientific sectors in which the performance of women does not prove to be inferior.
174 citations
TL;DR: The study reveals that the number of citations received by a publication varies not only according to the collaboration but also to the types of collaboration of the authors who are involved in its production.
Abstract: Bibliographic records are extensively used in the study of citations Based on ISI data, this paper examines citation patterns of the publications of South African scientists in recent years In particular, the focus of this paper is on citations as to the collaborative dimensions of South African scientists in their publications The study reveals that the number of citations received by a publication varies not only according to the collaboration but also to the types of collaboration of the authors who are involved in its production Furthermore, it emerges that the impact of citations on publications differs from discipline to discipline, and affiliating sector to sector, regardless of collaboration
147 citations
TL;DR: This analysis identifies policy-relevant trends in the field of ecology, a discipline that helps to identify and frame many contemporary policy problems, and provides a new foundation for exploring the relations among public policies, technological change, and the evolution of science priorities.
Abstract: We utilize the bibliometric tool of co-word analysis to identify trends in the methods and subjects of ecology during the period 1970-2005. Few previous co-word analyses have attempted to analyze fields as large as ecology. We utilize a method of isolating concepts and methods in large datasets that undergo the most significant upward and downward trends. Our analysis identifies policy-relevant trends in the field of ecology, a discipline that helps to identify and frame many contemporary policy problems. The results provide a new foundation for exploring the relations among public policies, technological change, and the evolution of science priorities.
138 citations
TL;DR: The analysis revealed that 80% of Central Africa’s research papers are produced in collaboration with a partner from outside the region, while the practice of neo-colonial science, on the other hand, features in a survey of reprint authors of Cameroonian papers.
Abstract: The study examines aspects of both neo-colonial ties and neo-colonial science in research papers produced by Central African countries. The primary focus is on the extent and pattern of neo-colonial ties and other foreign participation in the co-authorship of Central African research papers. The analysis revealed that 80% of Central Africa’s research papers are produced in collaboration with a partner from outside the region. Moreover, 46% of papers are produced in collaboration with European countries as the only partner, and 35% in collaboration with past colonial rulers. The top collaborating countries are France (32%), the USA (14%), and the UK and Germany (both 12%). Foreign powers also facilitate the production of regionally and continentally co-authored papers in Central Africa, where European countries participate in 77% of regionally co-authored papers. The practice of neo-colonial science, on the other hand, features in a survey of reprint authors of Cameroonian papers. The survey investigated specific contributions made by Cameroon coauthors to the research processes underlying a paper. Cameroonian researchers contribute intellectually and conceptually to the production of research papers, irrespective of whether the collaboration involves partners from past colonial or non-colonial countries. Their most frequent role in collaborative research with foreign researchers remains the conduct of fieldwork.
134 citations
TL;DR: This paper represents the results of a prototype study that aims to map the structure and evolution of chemistry research over a 30 year time frame and concludes with suggestions for future work.
Abstract: How does our collective scholarly knowledge grow over time? What major areas of science exist and how are they interlinked? Which areas are major knowledge producers; which ones are consumers? Computational scientometrics – the application of bibliometric/scientometric methods to large-scale scholarly datasets – and the communication of results via maps of science might help us answer these questions. This paper represents the results of a prototype study that aims to map the structure and evolution of chemistry research over a 30 year time frame. Information from the combined Science (SCIE) and Social Science (SSCI) Citations Indexes from 2002 was used to generate a disciplinary map of 7,227 journals and 671 journal clusters. Clusters relevant to study the structure and evolution of chemistry were identified using JCR categories and were further clustered into 14 disciplines. The changing scientific composition of these 14 disciplines and their knowledge exchange via citation linkages was computed. Major changes on the dominance, influence, and role of Chemistry, Biology, Biochemistry, and Bioengineering over these 30 years are discussed. The paper concludes with suggestions for future work.
132 citations
TL;DR: Two new indices for measuring research quality and quantity are introduced, and their performance for the 100 most prolific economists is tested.
Abstract: The h-index is a recent but already quite popular way of measuring research quality and quantity. However, it discounts highly-cited papers. The g-index corrects for this, but it is sensitivity to the number of never-cited papers. Besides, h- or g-index-based rankings have a large number of ties. Therefore, this paper introduces two new indices, and tests their performance for the 100 most prolific economists. A researcher has a t-number (f-number) of t (f) if t (f) is the largest number for which it holds that she has t (f) publications for which the geometric (harmonic) average number of citations is at least t (f). The new indices overcome the shortcomings of the old indices.
TL;DR: Using bibliometric method, the results indicate that international collaboration publication output between China and the G7 countries has shown exponential growth aroused by the growth of science in China.
Abstract: Collaboration is one of the remarkable characteristics of contemporary basic research Using bibliometric method, we quantitatively analyze international collaboration publication output between China and the G7 countries based on Science Citation Index The results indicate that international collaboration publication output between China and the G7 countries has shown exponential growth aroused by the growth of science in China USA is the most important collaboration country and the international collaboration between China and the G7 countries display differences at each research field
TL;DR: In this paper, a comprehensive and critical review of the h-index and its most important modifications proposed in the literature, as well as of other similar indicators measuring research output and impact are presented and illustrated.
Abstract: We provide a comprehensive and critical review of the h-index and its most important modifications proposed in the literature, as well as of other similar indicators measuring research output and impact. Extensions of some of these indices are presented and illustrated.
TL;DR: This paper investigates the utility of the Inclusion Index, the Jaccard Index and the Cosine Index for calculating similarities of documents, as used for mapping science and technology and finds that the two former ones tend to describe rather semantic similarities that differ from knowledge flows as expressed by the citation-based methodologies.
Abstract: This paper investigates the utility of the Inclusion Index, the Jaccard Index and the Cosine Index for calculating similarities of documents, as used for mapping science and technology. It is shown that, provided that the same content is searched across various documents, the Inclusion Index generally delivers more exact results, in particular when computing the degree of similarity based on citation data. In addition, various methodologies such as co-word analysis, Subject-Action-Object (SAO) structures, bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis, and self-citation links are compared. We find that the two former ones tend to describe rather semantic similarities that differ from knowledge flows as expressed by the citation-based methodologies.
TL;DR: A formal framework in which rankings can be axiomatically characterized is proposed and it is argued that such analyses can help the user of a ranking to choose one that is adequate in the context where she/he is working.
Abstract: In the last few years, many new bibliometric rankings or indices have been proposed for comparing the output of scientific researchers. We propose a formal framework in which rankings can be axiomatically characterized. We then present a characterization of some popular rankings. We argue that such analyses can help the user of a ranking to choose one that is adequate in the context where she/he is working.
TL;DR: Analysis of the state of science and technology in the African Continent on the basis of two scientometric indicators — number of research publications and number of patents awarded indicates that Africa produces less than one thousand of the world's inventions.
Abstract: This article reports for first time the state of science and technology in the African Continent on the basis of two scientometric indicators — number of research publications and number of patents awarded. Our analysis shows that Africa produced 68,945 publications over the 2000–2004 period or 1.8% of the World’s publications. In comparison India produced 2.4% and Latin America 3.5% of the World’s research. More detailed analysis reveals that research in Africa is concentrated in just two countries — South Africa and Egypt. These two counties produce just above 50% of the Continent’s publications and the top eight countries produce above 80% of the Continent’s research. Disciplinary analysis reveals that few African countries have the minimum number of scientists required for the functioning of a scientific discipline. Examination of the Continent’s inventive profile, as manifested in patents, indicates that Africa produces less than one thousand of the world’s inventions. Furthermore 88% of the Continent’s inventive activity is concentrated in South Africa. The article recommends that the African Governments should pay particular attention in developing their national research systems.
TL;DR: This study investigates the 82 most highly cited Information Science and Library Science’ (IS&LS) articles from the perspectives of disciplinarity, annual citation patterns, and first author citation profiles to indicate that high quality ideas and methods in IS&LS often are deployed many years after being published.
Abstract: Highly cited articles are interesting because of the potential association between high citation counts and high quality research. This study investigates the 82 most highly cited Information Science and Library Science’ (IS&LS) articles (the top 0.1%) in the Web of Science from the perspectives of disciplinarity, annual citation patterns, and first author citation profiles. First, the relative frequency of these 82 articles was much lower for articles solely in IS&LS than for those in IS&LS and at least one other subject, suggesting that that the promotion of interdisciplinary research in IS&LS may be conducive to improving research quality. Second, two thirds of the first authors had an h-index in IS&LS of less than eight, show that much significant research is produced by researchers without a high overall IS&LS research productivity. Third, there is a moderate correlation (0.46) between citation ranking and the number of years between peak year and year of publication. This indicates that high quality ideas and methods in IS&LS often are deployed many years after being published.
TL;DR: I review and discuss instances in which 19 future Nobel Laureates encountered resistance on the part of the scientific community towards their discoveries, and instances that dealt with discoveries that later would earn them the Nobel Prize.
Abstract: I review and discuss instances in which 19 future Nobel Laureates encountered resistance on the part of the scientific community towards their discoveries, and instances in which 24 future Nobel Laureates encountered resistance on the part of scientific journal editors or referees to manuscripts that dealt with discoveries that later would earn them the Nobel Prize.
TL;DR: It is shown that a set of properly normalised indicators can serve as a basis of comparative assessment within and even among different clusters, provided that their profiles still overlap and such comparison is thus meaningful.
Abstract: A common problem in comparative bibliometric studies at the meso and micro level is the differentiation and specialisation of research profiles of the objects of analysis at lower levels of aggregation. Already the institutional level requires the application of more sophisticated techniques than customary in evaluation of national research performance. In this study institutional profile clusters are used to examine which level of the hierarchical subject-classification should preferably be used to build subject-normalised citation indicators. It is shown that a set of properly normalised indicators can serve as a basis of comparative assessment within and even among different clusters, provided that their profiles still overlap and such comparison is thus meaningful. On the basis of 24 selected European universities, a new version of relational charts is presented for the comparative assessment of citation impact.
TL;DR: The UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) as mentioned in this paper provides a unique opportunity to test and validate a wealth of old and new scientometric predictors, through multiple regression analysis: Publications, journal impact factors, citations, co-citations, citation chronometrics (age, growth, latency to peak, decay rate), hub/authority scores, h-index, prior funding, student counts, coauthorship scores, endogamy/exogamy, textual proximity, download/co-downloads and their chronometric, etc.
Abstract: Scientometric predictors of research performance need to be validated by showing that they have a high correlation with the external criterion they are trying to predict. The UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) -- together with the growing movement toward making the full-texts of research articles freely available on the web -- offer a unique opportunity to test and validate a wealth of old and new scientometric predictors, through multiple regression analysis: Publications, journal impact factors, citations, co-citations, citation chronometrics (age, growth, latency to peak, decay rate), hub/authority scores, h-index, prior funding, student counts, co-authorship scores, endogamy/exogamy, textual proximity, download/co-downloads and their chronometrics, etc. can all be tested and validated jointly, discipline by discipline, against their RAE panel rankings in the forthcoming parallel panel-based and metric RAE in 2008. The weights of each predictor can be calibrated to maximize the joint correlation with the rankings. Open Access Scientometrics will provide powerful new means of navigating, evaluating, predicting and analyzing the growing Open Access database, as well as powerful incentives for making it grow faster.
TL;DR: The evolution of China’s publication activity and citation impact in the social sciences is studied for the period 1997-2006 and an attempt is made to interpret the results in both the regional and global context.
Abstract: At present China is challenging the leading sciento-economic powers and evolving to one of the world’s largest potentials in science and technology. Jointly with other emerging economies, China has already changed the balance of power among the formerly leading nations as measured by scientific production. In the present paper, the evolution of China’s publication activity and citation impact in the social sciences is studied for the period 1997–2006. Besides the comparative analysis of trends in publication and citation patterns and of national publication profiles, an attempt is made to interpret the results in both the regional and global context.
TL;DR: The utility of the method is shown in two different applications: identifying specific potential collaborations at the author level between two institutions, and generating an index that can be used for strategic planning purposes.
Abstract: Research on the effects of collaboration in scientific research has been increasing in recent years. A variety of studies have been done at the institution and country level, many with an eye toward policy implications. However, the question of how to identify the most fruitful targets for future collaboration in high-performing areas of science has not been addressed. This paper presents a method for identifying targets for future collaboration between two institutions. The utility of the method is shown in two different applications: identifying specific potential collaborations at the author level between two institutions, and generating an index that can be used for strategic planning purposes. Identification of these potential collaborations is based on finding authors that belong to the same small paper-level community (or cluster of papers), using a map of science and technology containing nearly 1 million papers organized into 117,435 communities. The map used here is also unique in that it is the first map to combine the ISI Proceedings database with the Science and Social Science Indexes at the paper level.
TL;DR: There is academic bureaucratization that reduces performance and efficiency of institutes within Italian Public Research Council, and institutes have two organizational behaviours: high bureaucracy — low performance and low bureaucracy - high performance.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between bureaucracy and research performance within Public Research Bodies. The research methodology is applied on a sample of 100 interviewed belonging to 11 institutes of National Research Council of Italy. The main finding is that within Italian Public Research Council there is academic bureaucratization that reduces performance and efficiency of institutes. In fact, institutes have two organizational behaviours: high bureaucracy – low performance and low bureaucracy – high performance. These bureaucratic tendencies are also present in other countries and particularly: the public research labs have an academic bureaucratization because of administrative burden necessary to the governance of the structures, whereas the universities have mainly an administrative bureaucratization generated by the increase of administrative staff in comparison with researchers and faculty.
TL;DR: It was concluded that the difference in the number of citations found did not correspond to the difference of coverage of WoS and Scopus, and it was found that both databases generate similar results.
Abstract: In this work, we compare the difference in the number of citations compiled with Scopus as opposed to the Web of Science (WoS) with the aim of analysing the agreement among the citation rankings generated by these databases. For this, we analysed the area of Health Sciences of the University of Navarra (Spain), composed of a total of 50 departments and 864 researchers. The total number of published works reflected in the WoS during the period 1999–2005 was 2299. For each work, the number of citations in both databases was recorded. The results indicate that the works received 14.7% more citations in Scopus than in WoS. In the departments, the difference was greater in the clinical ones than in the basic ones. In the case of the rankings of citations, it was found that both databases generate similar results. The Spearman and Kendall-Tau coefficients were higher than 0.9. It was concluded that the difference in the number of citations found did not correspond to the difference of coverage of WoS and Scopus.
TL;DR: This study encompasses most disciplines, and shows that no single indicator is the best predictor for all disciplines, but the Hirsch index h provides the least bad correlations, followed by the number of papers published.
Abstract: We have developed a method to obtain robust quantitative bibliometric indicators for several thousand scientists. This allows us to study the dependence of bibliometric indicators (such as number of publications, number of citations, Hirsch index...) on the age, position, etc. of CNRS scientists. Our data suggests that the normalized h index (h divided by the career length) is not constant for scientists with the same productivity but differents ages. We also compare the predictions of several bibliometric indicators on the promotions of about 600 CNRS researchers. Contrary to previous publications, our study encompasses most disciplines, and shows that no single indicator is the best predictor for all disciplines. Overall, however, the Hirsch index h provides the least bad correlations, followed by the number of papers published. It is important to realize however that even h is able to recover only half of the actual promotions. The number of citations or the mean number of citations per paper are definitely not good predictors of promotion.
TL;DR: A Hirsch-type index can be used for assessing single highly cited publications by calculating the h-index of the set of papers citing the work in question by measuring not only the direct impact of a publication but also its indirect influence through the citing papers.
Abstract: It is shown that a Hirsch-type index can be used for assessing single highly cited publications by calculating the h-index of the set of papers citing the work in question. This index measures not only the direct impact of a publication but also its indirect influence through the citing papers.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared the performance gap between male and female star scientists with the rest of the population and found that male scientists had a greater relative concentration of males among star scientists.
Abstract: The state of the art on the issue of sex differences in research efficiency agrees in recognizing higher performances for males, however there are divergences in explaining the possible causes. One of the causes advanced is that there are sex differences in the availability of aptitude at the “high end”. By comparing sex differences in concentration and performance of Italian academic star scientists to the case in the population complement, this work aims to verify if star, or “high-end”, scientists play a preponderant role in determining higher performance among males. The study reveals the existence of a greater relative concentration of males among star scientists, as well as a performance gap between male and female star scientists that is greater than for the rest of the population. In the latter subpopulation the performance gap between the two sexes is seen as truly marginal.
TL;DR: This work studies the effect quantitatively in the example of four major and four medium Hungarian universities of similar international status on the citation rate of scientific publications.
Abstract: International co-authorship is generally thought and often found to have positive effects on the citation rate of scientific publications. We study the effect quantitatively in the example of four major and four medium Hungarian universities. The conclusions may be generalized to other countries of similar international status.
TL;DR: Analysis of bibliographic records from the Science Citation Index shows that collaboration research in South Africa has been growing steadily and the scientists are highly oriented towards collaborative rather than individualistic research.
Abstract: Using bibliographic records from the Science Citation Index, the paper examines the publication of South African scientists. The analysis shows that collaboration research in South Africa has been growing steadily and the scientists are highly oriented towards collaborative rather than individualistic research. International collaboration is preferred to domestic collaboration while publication seems to be a decisive factor in collaboration. The paper also looks at the collaboration dimensions of partnering countries, sectors and disciplines, and examines how collaboration can be predicted by certain publication variables. Characteristic features are evident in both the degree and nature of collaboration which can be predicted by the number of countries involved, number of partners and the fractional count of papers.
TL;DR: The citation context analysis of citing articles on information and library science reveals that hypertext has directly great impact on information retrieval and world wide web; therefore, the concept has had profound influence on information, library and computer science disciplines.
Abstract: This study investigates Ted Nelson’s works and the influence of his hypertext concept through citation analysis, including citation counting, characteristics of citing articles on language, document type, citing year, discipline, and citation content. The selection of the Nelson’s works was based on searching Library Literature & Information Science, Library and Information Science Abstracts, Google and Yahoo search engines. The citation data were compiled from the database of Web of Science. The results of the study reveal that hypertext has directly great impact on information retrieval and world wide web; therefore, the concept has had profound influence on information, library and computer science disciplines. Moreover, the influence of Nelson’s works spreads to other disciplines variously, especially on education, literature, business and economics, engineering, sociology, psychology, etc. The citation context analysis of citing articles on information and library science reveals that (1) definition, orientation and general introduction of hypertext; (2) relation of Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson in terms of hypertext; (3) Nelson’s Xanadu system and its component of hypertext; (4) the application of hypertext in information science and library science are four most citing purpose.