Bibliometric analysis of publications of Spanish pharmacologists in the SCI (1984–89). Part II

During the period 1984–89 Spanish pharmacologists published 344 papers (44.3% of their total scientific production) (Science Citation Index, CD-Edition) in journals classified by theSCI in subfields different from Pharmacology & Pharmacy. Distribution by institutions, geographical regions, journals, subfields and research levels are presented. The Normalized Journal Position (NJP) is introduced as indicator of the expected impact in each subfield. Results are compared with those of the analysis of the production of Spanish pharmacologists in the Pharmacology & Pharmacy subfield, presented in a previous paper. Some of the features detected are common to both areas, such as: increasing trend in the productivity over years, irregular geographical distribution with three regions as major producers, or university as main producer institution. Special features of the extra-Pharmacology area are also pointed out: irregular growth of publication number over years, high dispersion of publications in journals and subfields, high collaboration rate, and low percentage of authors with at least 1 paper/year, among others. Attending to journal of publication, cross-disciplinarity research of Spanish pharmacologists is analysed, being Neurosciences, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Physiology, the main border fields involved.     

Research productivity in education and psychology in the Philippines and comparison with ASEAN countries

An objective assessment using bibliometric indicators of research productivity in education and psychology in the Philippines was conducted. Results were then benchmarked against its Southeast Asian neighbors’ research productivity in the same fields. Results showed that the Philippines ranked low in research productivity compared to Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, particularly starting in the 1990s. Only a few researchers, mainly coming from a small number of higher education institutions, were publishing papers on a regular basis in a small range of journals. Those journals had either no or low impact factors and most papers had low citation counts. It also collaborated less with domestic and international institutions. This low research productivity was explained in terms of economic indicators, the local orientation of many social science research studies, funding, individual characteristics of researchers, and the epistemic culture of knowledge production in the country. However, the reforms initiated by the government, particularly in the higher education sector, would hopefully lead to a better research landscape and, consequently, improved research productivity in the near future.     

Brazilian scientific production in areas of biological sciences: a comparative study on the modalities of full doctorate in Brazil or abroad

Know and compare the Brazilian scientific production of researchers that did full PhD in Brazil or abroad may be important to evaluate the development of science in the country. In this context, the current study was planned to verify the evolution of scientific production of researchers that concluded PhD in Brazil or abroad between 1997 and 2002. The evaluation included specifically the scientific production of PhDs in the areas of biochemistry, physiology and pharmacology during the period of 9 years after the PhD conclusion. The data were obtained from the database of CAPES (Foundation for Higher Education Development in Brazil), CNPq (National Council of Technological and Scientific Development), Lattes, Web of Science (Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and Scival—Scopus). In terms of quantity, researchers that did full PhD in Brazil published more articles than the researchers that did it abroad. However, articles from researchers that did the PhD in Brazil were published in journals with lower impact factor and received less citation than the articles published by researchers that did PhD abroad. The results indicate that the qualitative performance of researchers that did PhD abroad was better than those who did PhD in Brazil. Consequently, the policies of Brazilian government need to be devoted to enhance the relevance of Brazilian articles in terms of scientific quality and international insertion.     

Scientific collaboration in Brazilian researches: a comparative study in the information science,mathematics and dentistry fields

This study attempts to describe, in a comparative way, scientific collaboration and co-authoring activities and understanding of Brazilian researchers of productivity level 1 at the National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq). In order to do so, a questionnaire was sent to the researchers of productivity level 1 at CNPq in the Mathematics, Dentistry and Information Science fields, with questions about scientific collaboration and co-authoring activities. We analyzed the scientific production of the researchers who answered the questionnaire and we have identified that 78% of the participants consider that scientific collaboration and co-authorship are different activities, and the potential and usual number of research collaborators is between 2 and 3 in Mathematics and Information Science, and between 5 and 6 collaborators in Dentistry. Differences among fields were pointed out by identifying main collaborators and co-authors. The reasons for collaborating vary according to the nature of the research, however, the percentages are high in these three areas: “training of researchers and students”, “desire to increase their own experience through the experience of others” and “increased productivity.” From the analysis of the scientific production declared in their Lattes Curriculum, we have found that the average number of authors per publication in the field of Information Science is 2.2 authors, in Mathematics is 2.8 authors per publication, and in Dentistry the average is 5.3 authors per publication. We have concluded that scientific collaboration and co-authorship are terms assigned to different activities for the analyzed fields.     

Bibliometric analysis of publications of Spanish pharmacologists in the SCI (1984–89)

The present study is a bibliometric analysis, of publications of Spanish pharmacologists, referenced in the journals of the Pharmacology & Pharmacy subfield of the Science Citation Index- CD Edition from 1984 to 1989. During this time the scientific output of Spanish pharmacologists has been growing at an impressive rate being almost doubled. This rate being notably greater than that corresponding to publications of Spain in all science fields. This increase in scientific output was accompanied by a time-dependent decrease on year by year step basis in the expected impact factor (EIF) of publications (Articles plus Notes), from 1.71 in 1984 to 1.28 in 1989, in close correlation with an increase of mean number of authors per paper, from 3.67 to 4.16 authors/paper, respectively. Moreover, the larger the number of authors/paper, the smaller the EIF. Only 8 journals cumulated more than 50% of the papers. The scientific production was geographically localized at a high extent (Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia accounted for the 63.7% of all the papers) in governmental institutions (University, 75.2%, Hospitals, 14.1%; CSIC, 10.5%) with one large geographical area lacking any productivity.     

Correlations between bibliometrics and peer evaluation for all disciplines: the evaluation of Brazilian scientists

This paper correlates the peer evaluations performed in late 2009 by the disciplinary committees of CNPq (a Brazilian funding agency) with some standard bibliometric measures for 55 scientific areas. We compared the decisions to increase, maintain or decrease a scientist’s research scholarship funded by CNPq. We analyzed these decisions for 2,663 Brazilian scientists and computed their correlations (Spearman rho) with 21 different measures, among them: total production, production in the last 5 years, production indexed in Web of Science and Scopus, total citations received (according to WOS, Scopus, and Google Scholar), h-index and m-quotient (according to the three citation services). The highest correlations for each area range from 0.95 to 0.29, although there are areas with no significantly positive correlation with any of the metrics.     

Does the aging of tenured academic staff affect the research performance of universities?

This paper examines the common contentions that the collective aging of tenured academic staff has negative effects on research performance of universities due to (a) negative effects of aging in itself, and (b) to a lack of newcomers who could revitalise the research. Data on academic staff and research at Norwegian universities over two decades have been used to examine these contentions. While older staff published less than their younger colleagues two decades ago, no differences in productivity are found today. Furthermore, during this period, a large increase in the number of post-doctoral fellows and PhD students has taken place, compensating for the aging of tenured staff.     

Scientists' performance and consolidation of research teams in Biology and Biomedicine at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research

Summary Empirical evidence is given on how membership in a consolidated, well-established research team provides researchers with some competitive advantage as compared to their colleagues in non-consolidated teams. Data were obtained from a survey of researchers ascribed to the 'Biology and Biomedicine' area of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research, as well as from their curricula vitae. One quarter of the scientists work as members of teams in the process of consolidation. Our findings illustrate the importance, for the development and consolidation of research teams, of the availability of a minimum number of researchers with a permanent position and of a minimum number of support staff and non-staff personnel (mainly post-doctoral fellows). Consolidation of research teams has a clear influence on the more academic-oriented quantitative indicators of the scientific activity of individuals. Researchers belonging to consolidated teams perform quantitatively better than their colleagues in terms of the number of articles published in journals covered in the Journal Citation Reports, but not in terms of the impact of these publications. Consolidation favours publication, but not patenting, and it also has a positive effect on the academic prestige of scientists and on their capacity to train new researchers. It does not significantly foster participation in funded R&D projects, nor does it influence the establishment of international collaborations. Impact is influenced to a remarkable degree by seniority and professional background, and is significantly greater for young scientists who have spent time abroad at prestigious research laboratories.     

The role of public policies in the decentralization process of Mexican science and the formation of new researchers in institutions outside the Mexico City area

We analyze the scientific productivity of the public state universities that are located outside of the metropolitan area of Mexico City through the outputs of researchers who have the benefit of been “New Full Time Professors” (NFTP) of the “Faculty Improvement Program” (PRODEP). This program was designed by the Mexican government with special emphasis to support the creation of new full-time positions in these universities. A good proportion of professors hired as NFTP in the universities mentioned earlier became members of the national system of researchers (SNI, Sistema Nacional de Investigadores). As a consequence of these two public policies, SNI and PRODEP, our results show that research groups of these universities are reducing their science gap with respect to the stronger research institutions located in Mexico City in terms of the outputs that are being published in mainstream journals with high impact factors. We found that engineering is an area that has been mainly benefited with the PRODEP program in the period 2010-2015.     

The nature and relationship between the productivity of journals and their citations in semiconductor literature

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between journals" productivity and their citations in the field of semiconductors. Journal samples were gathered from the INSPEC database, 1978 to 1997 while the data of citation frequency, impact factor, cited half-life and citing half-life were obtained from Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports 1997 CD-ROM edition. One thousand and eight hundred and seventy seven journals publishing articles on semiconductors were retrieved. The nature for the data of journal productivity, impact factor, cited half-life and citing half-life are explored. Among these journals, only 672 journals that were covered in JCR were compared. Moreover, statistical tests of more productive journals with cumulative publication in semiconductor >100 were also conducted on the basis of all articles they published annually (for 1997). The results of the study showed that there is a significant correlation between journal productivity and citation frequency and between journal productivity and impact factor. However, there are no associations between journal productivity and cited half-life and between journal productivity and citing half-life. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Defining the intellectual structure of information systems and related college of business disciplines: a bibliometric analysis

Information systems permeate every business function, thereby requiring holistic Information Systems (IS) approaches. Much academic research is still discipline specific. More interdisciplinary research is needed to inform both industry and academe. Interdisciplinary research has been positively associated with increased levels of innovation, productivity and impact. IS research contributes to the knowledge creation and innovation within IS and other College of Business (COB) disciplines. This research defines the intellectual structures within IS and between IS and other COB disciplines. We use a large scale, diachronic bibliometric analysis of COB journals to assess reciprocal knowledge exchange and also to identify potential intra- and interdisciplinary publication outlets. Our findings show an increase in IS knowledge contributions to other COB disciplines, which supports the discussion that IS is a reference discipline. Our research also visually depicts the intellectual structures within IS and between IS and other COB disciplines. Anyone exploring research in IS and allied COB disciplines can peruse the proximity maps to identify groups of similar journals. The findings from this research inform decisions related to which journals to read, target as publication outlets, and include on promotion and tenure lists.     

Assessing improvement in management research in Taiwan

Research performance is difficult to evaluate because most of the criteria are incommensurable, and assessing its improvement over time is even more difficult. This paper assesses the performance improvement in management research in Taiwan between 2006 and 2010 using the Malmquist productivity index (MPI). The criteria for measuring research performance are journal publications, where the journals are classified as SI-, TI-, other international-, and other local-types. While the number of papers has increased for three types and decreased in one, the MPI indicates that the aggregate performance has improved significantly. The areas of management covered in this study are management information systems, production and operations management, and marketing. For all these areas the performance has improved, although the improvement in marketing is insignificant. The assessment sheds some light on the area and category of journals that contribute to the improvement of research performance, and which are useful for setting goals to reach higher levels.     

A new input indicator for the assessment of science &; technology research?

Traditional input indicators of research performance, such as research funding, number of active scientists, and international collaborations, have been widely used to assess countries’ publication output. However, while publication in today’s English-only research world requires sound research in readable English, English proficiency may be a problem for the productivity of non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. Data provided by the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) containing the academic profile of 51,223 Brazilian researchers show a correlation between English proficiency and publication output. According to our results, traditional input indicators may fall short of providing an accurate representation of the research performance of NNES developing countries.     

Research productivity of scientists in consolidated vs. non-consolidated teams: The case of Spanish university geologists

We present some results of an evaluation of research performance of Spanish senior university researchers in Geology. We analyse to what extent productivity of individual researchers is influenced by the level of consolidation of the team they belong to. Methodology is based on the combination of a mail survey carried out among a defined set of researchers, and a bibliometric study of their scientific output. Differences among researchers have been investigated with regard to team size and composition, patterns of publication in domestic and foreign journals, productivity, co-authorship of papers, and impact of publications. Results indicate that not belonging to a research team represents a handicap at the time of publishing in top international journals. Researchers belonging to consolidated teams are more productive than their colleagues in non-consolidated teams, and these in turn more than individuals without team. Team size does not appear to be as important for scientific productivity as the number of researchers within the team that reached a stable job position. Analysis of the impact factor of journals has not revealed differences among researchers with regard to the visibility of their papers. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Dispersion measures for h-index: a study of the Brazilian researchers in the field of mathematics

Although the h-index is considered a significant indicator to evaluate the researchers' performance, as it simultaneously measures aspects related to their scientific productivity and citation impact, several studies have pointed out its deficiencies and limitations. In this context, this study aims to evaluate the contribution of dci and dco indicators, two Hirsch-type indices, to measure the reasonableness of the h-index as a representation of the researcher’s scientific performance. The universe of analysis consisted of 116 Brazilian mathematicians holding CNPq grants. For each researcher, the number of articles, the number of citations per article and the year of publication were collected in the Scopus database. Then, for each researcher, the h-index and dci and dco indices were calculated. The dci and dco indicators allowed selective and productive researchers to be to distinguished more accurately. In addition, they contributed to estimate the possibility of the researcher to increase his/her h-index. The study concludes that the dci and dco indices were able to reliably measure the distribution dispersion of the researchers' citation impact together with their h-index. Consequently, they managed to estimate the representativeness of h-index as an indicator of the researchers' scientific performance in the field of mathematics in Brazil.

     

Comparison of research team activity in two biomedical fields

A study of the structure and scientific activity of the most productive Spanish research teams in two biomedical subfields, Pharmacology & Pharmacy and Cardiovascular System (SCI), during the period 1990–93 was carried out through bibliometric indicators. The teams were characterized according to their size, production, productivity, research level and expected impact factor of their output, collaboration pattern and interdisciplinarity. Main differences between both subfields were analyzed and explained by their different clinical/basic character. The study was undertaken to identify structural or dynamic features of teams associated with good scientific performance.     

Analysis of technological production in biotechnology in northeast Brazil

The aim of the article was to analyze the technological production in Biotechnology in the northeast of Brazil between 1983 and 2012. Data were collected from the analysis of patent applications submitted by professors affiliated to graduate programs in Biotechnology in the region. The research sources were as follows: institutional websites of the northeastern graduate programs, patent bank of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and the Lattes platform maintained by the National Research Council (CNPq). A total of 191 patent applications submitted by researchers residing in the region were identified. Data were analyzed using bibliometrics. The results point to a growing trend in the technological production of biotechnology in the region, with universities and research institutes accounting for the largest number of applications. There was also intense cooperation with public universities in the southern and southeast regions.