An item-by-item subject classification of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals using reference analysis

A serious shortcoming of bibliometric studies based on the(Social) Science (s) Citation Index is the lack of an universally applicable subject classification scheme as individual papers are concerned. Subject classification of papers on the basis of assigning journals to subject categories (like those found in the various supplements of ISI databases) works well in case of highly specialised journals, but fails for multidisciplinary journals such asNature, Science andPNAS—and so far as subfields are taken into consideration-also for “general” journals (e.g.JACS orAngewandte Chemie). This study presents the results of a pilot project attempting to overcome this shortcoming by delimiting the subject of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals by an item-by-item subject classification scheme, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subject classification of reference literature. The results clearly confirmed the conclusions of earlier studies by the authors in the field of reference analysis. For the really important journals (sufficiently high number of annual publications and high impact with respect to the field), the share of classifiable papers was surprisingly high, and the assignment proved reliable as well. Since papers in the leading general and multidisciplinary journals are frequently citing general and multidisciplinary journals, an iterated application of the procedure is expected to increase the number of classifiable publications. The results of the new methodology may improve the validity of bibliometric studies for research evaluation purposes.     

An item-by-item subject classification of papers published in journals covered by the SSCI database using reference analysis

A serious shortcoming of bibliometric studies based on theSocial Sciences Citation Index is the lack of a universally applicable subject classification scheme as individual papers are concerned. Moreover, the selective coverage of more than thousand scientific journals per annum proved to be an insuperable obstacle in the delimitation of social science subject areas. Subject classification of papers on the basis of assigning journals to subject categories (like those found in the various supplements of ISI databases) works well in case of fully covered and highly specialised journals in the social sciences, too, but fails for multidisciplinary and selectively covered journals. This study presents the results of an item-by-item subject classification approach, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subject categories of reference literature. This analysis extends the results of an earlier study by the authors on the possibility of delimiting subfields in the hard and life sciences based on reference analysis. The assignment proved also reliable for a considerable share of literature in the social sciences. Due to the peculiarities of the database this share is lower in the SSCI than that in the SCI. Although an iterated application of the procedure is expected to increase the number of classifiable publications, it is suggested that in the sociated sciences the method should be used in combination with other means of subject assignment.     

Scholarly research in LIS open access electronic journals: A bibliometric study

Using 17 fully open access electronic journals published uninterruptedly during 2000–2004 in the field of Library and Information Science the present study investigated the trend of LIS Open Access e-journals’ literature by analysing articles, authors, institutions, countries, subjects, & references. Quantitative content analysis was carried out on the data, data were analysed in order to project literature growth, authorship pattern, gender pattern, cited references pattern and related bibliometric phenomena. The analysis indicates that there were as many as 1636 articles published during 2000–2004 with an average increment of 23.75 articles per year. The authorship pattern indicates that team research has not been very common in LIS OA publishing and male authors were keener than female authors. Authors from academic institutions were paid more interest in OA publishing and most of them were from developed nations. The subject coverage of these OA e-journals was very vast and almost all facets of information and library science were covered in these articles. There were 90.10% of articles of these e-journals contained references and on an average an article contained 24 references. Of these, 38.53% of references were hyperlinked and 87.35% of hyperlinked references were live during investigation. The analysis of data clearly indicates that OA e-journals in LIS are rapidly establishing themselves as a most viable media for scholarly communication.     

A framework for systematic analysis of open access journals and its application in software engineering and information systems

This article is a contribution towards an understanding of open access (OA) publishing. It proposes an analysis framework of 18 core attributes, divided into the areas of bibliographic information, activity metrics, economics, accessibility, and predatory issues. The framework has been employed in a systematic analysis of 30 OA journals in software engineering (SE) and information systems (IS), which were selected from among 386 OA journals in Computer Science from the Directory of OA Journals. An analysis was performed on the sample of the journals, to provide an overview of the current situation of OA journals in the fields of SE and IS. The journals were then compared between-group, according to the presence of article processing charges. A within-group analysis was performed on the journals requesting article processing charges from authors, in order to understand what is the value added according to different price ranges. This article offers several contributions. It presents an overview of OA definitions and models. It provides an analysis framework born from the observation of data and the existing literature. It raises the need to study OA in the fields of SE and IS while offering a first analysis. Finally, it provides recommendations to readers of OA journals. This paper highlights several concerns still threatening the adoption of OA publishing in the fields of SE and IS. Among them, it is shown that high article processing charges are not sufficiently justified by the publishers, which often lack transparency and may prevent authors from adopting OA.     

Countries positioning in open access journals system: An investigation of citation distribution patterns

By their widespread availability and dissemination through open access media, scholarly outputs witness an improved visibility supposed to cause a better citation performance. However, due to the existence of the Matthew effect in science system, which affects users’ perceptions of quality, ultimate effects of the enhanced visibility on different entities are obscure. Moreover, different attitudes towards open access give rise to a more strong quality dynamics in the open access world. Aiming to explore the consequence of the interaction between visibility and quality dynamics, this study investigates countries positioning in open access journals. The results show that the world’s countries welcome open access pattern whether by submitting to or publishing open access journals. A large proportion of the enduring, prestigious open access journals are published by scientifically proficient and developing nations, emphasizing their successful commitment to maintain the undertaken role. The results of the citation analysis highlight national inequalities regarding citation distributions among countries contributing to the journals within the system and within individual disciplines in the system. Well-performing countries mainly consist of advanced ones; however, some lessdeveloped nations are found to perform well in the journal system.     

Influence of publication languages on the citation rate of scientific articles: A case study of East German journals

In order to quantify the influence of publication languages on the rate of citation of scientific articles, such East German journals from the Science Citation Index database were selected which publish relevant shares of contributions in several languages, especially in English and German. For a fixed period of time (1988) the selective citation impact of both English- and German-language articles was calculated. The results of our investigation reveal a non-uniform picture: In some cases English-language papers exhibit a significantly higher citations-per-paper average than German-language articles, but in a few cases German-language publications achieve a higher mean citation rate. For the half of selected journals there does not exist a statistically significant difference of citation frequencies of publications in both languages. Possible causes of these phenomena (editorial practice of journals, native countries of authors) are considered.     

Open access in ethics research: an analysis of open access availability and author self-archiving behaviour in light of journal copyright restrictions

The current state of open access to journal publications within research areas belonging to the humanities has received relatively little research attention. This study provides a detailed mapping of the bibliometric state of open access to journal publications among ethicists, taking into account not only open access publishing in journals directly, but also where and in what form ethicists make their journal articles available elsewhere on the web. As part of the study 297 ethicists affiliated with top-ranking philosophy departments were identified and their journal publication information for the years 2010–2015 were recorded (1682 unique articles). The journal articles were then queried for through Google Scholar in order to establish open access status (web locations, document versions) of each publication record. Publication records belonging to the 20 most frequently used journal outlets (subset of 597 unique articles) were put under closer inspection with regards to alignment with publisher copyright restrictions as well as measuring unused potential to share articles. The results show that slightly over half of recent journal publications are available to read for free. PhilPapers and academic social networks (Academia.edu and ResearchGate) were found to be key platforms for research dissemination in ethics research. The representation of institutional repositories as providers of access was found to be weak, receiving the second lowest frequency rating among the eight discrete web location categories. Further, the study reveals that ethicists are at the same time prone to copyright infringement and undersharing their scholarly work.     

Effect of policies promoting open access in the scientific ecosystem: case study of ERC grantee publication practice

Scientometrics - The European Research Council (ERC) is one of the leading sources of research funding worldwide. This article analyses the papers published by its grantees. The primary aim was to...     

The open access usage advantage: a temporal and spatial analysis

Scientometrics - In this study, we compare the article impact in terms of article usage between open access (OA) and non-open access (Non-OA) articles from both the temporal and spatial...