Are you in top 1% (1‰)?

A new simple bibliometric indicator is based on the number of highly cited papers (as defined by WoS^®). It can be used to assess individuals, journals and universities. Unlike most other citation-based-indicators it equalizes the chances of young scientists (vs. their more experienced colleagues) and of scientists working in less-popular disciplines. The ranking of scientists based on the new indicator is not correlated with the rankings based upon the number of citations or on the Hirsch-index.     

Citedness and uncitedness of cancer articles

There is a rapid growth of cancer literature. Thousands of papers are being regularly published every year not only in speciality journals, but also in journals of other disciplines. Citation studies are nowadays considered a major basis of science indicators for ascertaining the importance of a scientific journal and that of the published articles on a particular subject. In oncological research the journalCancer is considered as one of the top most journals and is universally well known for its high standard and excellence. In this paper an attempt has been made to find out the importance of all the articles published in it for a particular year. Side by side bibliometric analysis was made to ascertain various other aspects like time lag between publication and first citation of articles, average citation time, subject scattering and identification of most important journals in the field etc. It is believed that this study would be of help to the working oncologists, librarians and information scientists to assess the importance of articles published in a top ranking journal of cancer and also that of different journals publishing oncological research results.     

Natural selection of academic papers

Academic papers, like genes, code for ideas or technological innovations that structure and transform the scientific organism and consequently the society at large. Genes are subject to the process of natural selection which ensures that only the fittest survive and contribute to the phenotype of the organism. The process of selection of academic papers, however, is far from natural. Commercial for-profit publishing houses have taken control over the evaluation and access to scientific information with serious consequences for the dissemination and advancement of knowledge. Academic authors and librarians are reacting by developing an alternative publishing system based on free-access journals and self-archiving in institutional repositories and global disciplinary libraries. Despite the emergence of such trends, the journal monopoly, rather than the scientific community, is still in control of selecting papers and setting academic standards. Here we propose a dynamical and transparent peer review process, which we believe will accelerate the transition to a fully open and free-for-all science that will allow the natural selection of the fittest ideas.     

Bibliometric analysis of scientific productivity: A case study of an Indian physics laboratory

The paper analyses the output of the publication data of an Indian laboratory in the field of physics inSCI and nonSCI covered Indian and foreign journals, processes developed and Indian patents filed during the period 1965–82 to find out the pattern of productivity. Looks at the journals wherein the laboratory scientists publish. Also points out the sub-areas of physics in which the laboratory scientists have published maximum papers and also mentions about the pattern of scientific co-authorship in the research work. Correlation coefficients between input variable (manpower and budget) with output variables (number of papers published, processes developed and Indian patents accepted) have been calculated.     

Scientometrics of laser research in India and China

An analysis of 1223 papers published by India (347papers) and China (876papers) at conferences and in journals during 1993 and 1997 in the field of laser S&T indicates that China"s output was twice to that of India. However, Activity Indices for both the countries in 1993 and 1997 were almost the same. Chinese scientists preferred to publish in domestic journals, while Indian scientists published in foreign journals. The number of papers by Indian scientists in SCI covered journals and journals with high-Normalized Impact Factors was more than for China, and, thus India was better connected to the mainstream science compared to China. The impact made by Indian papers was more than for Chinese papers, as reflected by normalized impact per paper, proportion of papers in high quality journals, and publication effective index. Indian papers also got more citations per paper than Chinese papers. Team research appears to be better in China than in India, as reflected by the number of mega-authored papers produced by the two countries. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A ‘perverse incentive’ from bibliometrics: could National Research Assessment Exercises (NRAEs) restrict literature availability for nature conservation?

National Research Assessment Exercises (NRAEs) aim to improve returns from public funding of research. Critics argue that they undervalue publications influencing practice, not citations, implying that journals valued least by NRAEs are disproportionately useful to practitioners. Conservation biology can evaluate this criticism because it uses species recovery plans, which are practitioner-authored blueprints for recovering threatened species. The literature cited in them indicates what is important to practitioners’ work. We profiled journals cited in 50 randomly selected recovery plans from each of the USA, Australia and New Zealand, using ranking criteria from the Australian Research Council and the SCImago Institute. Citations showed no consistent pattern. Sometimes higher ranked publications were represented more frequently, sometimes lower ranked publications. Recovery plans in all countries also contained 37 % or more citations to ‘grey literature’, discounted in NRAEs. If NRAEs discourage peer-reviewed publication at any level they could exacerbate the trend not to publish information useful for applied conservation, possibly harming conservation efforts. While indicating the potential for an impact does not establish that it occurs, it does suggest preventive steps. NRAEs considering the proportion of papers in top journals may discourage publication in lower-ranked journals, because one way to increase the proportion of outputs in top journals is by not publishing in lower ones. Instead, perhaps only a user-nominated subset of publications could be evaluated, a department’s or an individual’s share of the top publications in a field could be noted, or innovative new multivariate assessments of research productivity applied, including social impact.     

Does place of publication influence citation behavior?

Two separate studies have looked at the question of whether or not the sources cited by scientists when they publish in their own national journals differ somewhat from the sources they cite when they publish outside their own country. Data derived from studies of Philippine scientists and Korean mathematicians do suggest that place of publication may exert some influence on citation behavior. In particular, a scientist is more likely to cite national sources when publishing in a national journal than when publishing internationally.     

Citation patterns of Korean physicists and mechanical engineers: Differences by type of publication source and type of authorship

By comparing the citation patterns of Korean researchers in physics and mechanical engineering, this study identifies the extent to which type of publication source (Korean non-SCI, Korean SCI, and international SCI) and type of authorship (purely Korean authors, Korean-foreign co-authors, and foreign-Korean co-authors) influence the choice of sources cited by Korean scientists. Koreans publishing physics or mechanical engineering papers in international SCI journals are more likely to cite articles published in journals of the science mainstream countries (the U.S., the U.K., the Netherlands, and Germany) than articles published in national journals, while Koreans publishing in Korean journals tend to cite articles published in national journals. In terms of authorship, articles published in mainstream journals are more highly cited by internationally co-authored papers than Korean-authored papers in both disciplines. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An investigation into diabetes researcher’s perceptions of the Journal Impact Factor — reconsidering evaluating research

Currently the Journal Impact Factors (JIF) attracts considerable attention as components in the evaluation of the quality of research in and between institutions. This paper reports on a questionnaire study of the publishing behaviour and researchers preferences for seeking new knowledge information and the possible influence of JIF on these variables. 54 Danish medical researchers active in the field of Diabetes research took part. We asked the researchers to prioritise a series of scientific journals with respect to which journals they prefer for publishing research and gaining new knowledge. In addition we requested the researchers to indicate whether or not the JIF of the prioritised journals has had any influence on these decisions. Furthermore we explored the perception of the researchers as to what degree the JIF could be considered a reliable, stable or objective measure for determining the scientific quality of journals. Moreover we asked the researchers to judge the applicability of JIF as a measure for doing research evaluations. One remarkable result is that app. 80% of the researchers share the opinion that JIF does indeed have an influence on which journals they would prefer for publishing. As such we found a statistically significant correlation between how the researchers ranked the journals and the JIF of the ranked journals. Another notable result is that no significant correlation exists between journals where the researchers actually have published papers and journals in which they would prefer to publish in the future measured by JIF. This could be taken as an indicator for the actual motivational influence on the publication behaviour of the researchers. That is, the impact factor actually works in our case. It seems that the researchers find it fair and reliable to use the Journal Impact Factor for research evaluation purposes.     

Competition in science and the Matthew core journals

Competition is one of the most essential features of science. A new journal indicator - the"number of Matthew citations in a journal" was found that reflects certain aspects of thiscompetition. The indicator mirrors the competition of countries in scientific journals forrecognition in terms of seemingly "redistributed" citations.The indicator shows, as do other journal indicators, an extreme skewed distribution over anensemble of 2712 SCI journals. Half of all Matthew citations are contained in 144 so-calledMatthew core journals.In this paper, a new typology of scientific journals, including the Matthew core journals, isintroduced. For a few selected journals, graphs are presented showing national impact factors aswell as the absolute number of Matthew citations gained or lost by the countries publishing in thejournal.Scientific competition among countries for recognition is strongest in the Matthew corejournals, they are the most competitive markets for scientific publications. Conclusions are drawnfor national science policy, for the journal acquisition policy of national libraries, and for thepublication behaviour of individual scientists.     

A comparative study of research performance in computer science

The paper compares the research performance in computer science of four major Western countries, India and China, based on the data abstracted from INSPEC database during the period 1993–2002. A total of 9,632 computer science papers recorded in INSPEC database were used for the comparison. The findings indicate that, on the one hand, the number of papers produced in China has considerably increased in the past few years. Particularly, in recent years, China occupies a remarkable high position in terms of counts of papers indexed by the INSPEC database. On the other hand, Chinese scientists preferred to publish in domestic journals and proceedings and shares of SCI-papers to the total journal papers for China have still remained the lowest. This indicates that the research activities of Chinese scientists in computer science are still rather “local” and suffer from a low international visibility. Various scientometric indicators, such as Normalized Impact Factor, ratio of papers in high quality journals are further adopted to analyze research performance and diverse finding are obtained. Nevertheless, for these surrogate indicators, China has optimistically achieved great progress, characterized with “low level of beginning and high speed of developing”. The policy implication of the findings lies in that China, as well as other less developed countries in science, can earn relative competitive advantages in some new emerging or younger disciplines such as computer science by properly using catch-up strategy. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Gender and productivity differentials in science

The paper presents the results of an examination of gender differences in scientific productivity on a sample of 840 respondents, half the young scientific population in Croatia. In the last decade gender differences in the scientific productivity of young researchers have increased, which may be the result of introducing a more competitive scientific system. Young female researchers publish an average of two scientific papers less than their male counterparts in five years, and their publications reach 70.6% of males" publication productivity in the same period. In the case of both sexes, about 15% researchers publish about half of all research papers, but even the most productive women publish less than their male counterparts Socio-demographic, educational and qualificational predictors contribute more or less equally to the number of scientific publications by women and men. It is not until we introduce structural variables that a strong sex differentiation appears because these factors are much more powerful in explaining the production of women. They show that female scientists" publication productivity is more strongly influenced by their position in the social organization of science. There are also considerable sex differences in the case of individual productivity predictors. International contacts determine the number of papers by female scientists most of all. Attendance at scientific conferences abroad is the most powerful predictor of male productivity, too, but reviewing colleagues" papers and academic degree are also very important. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Papers written by Nobel Prize winners in physics before they won the prize: an analysis of their language and journal of publication

In this paper, we analyzed data relating to the language of papers written by winners of Nobel Prizes in physics before they won the prize and their journals of publication, and we identified the change in scientific language corresponding with shifts of the center of the scientific world. Using the science citation index as the main data source, we also collected information on the distribution of prize-winning scientists by country, by each scientist’s number of published papers, and by language. We then analyzed their papers in terms of the different journals based in different countries. The results are presented in three parts: (1) the main languages used in the papers are English and German. The proportion of papers in English is gradually increasing, while that of papers in German is decreasing. (2) The prize winning scientists’ papers have been published mainly in journals in their own nation and in the United States. (3) Journals based in their own countries are very helpful to these scientists early in their careers.     

Brazilian production in biochemistry. The question of international versus domestic publication

This work describes a bibliometric survey on scientific production in biochemistry originated from 19 Brazilian institutions, which comprised 487 staff investigators, 70–80% of investigation-active biochemists. These investigators published about 3000 papers in international journals in the period 1970–1985, which generated about 17000 citations from 1983 to 1987, according to the Institute for Scientific Information data base. In this survey we distinguished what we called endogenous articles (produced in Brazil) from exogenous articles (produced abroad by Brazilian biochemists), in terms of the spectrum of journals in which they were published and the number of citations generated per article. A comparison was also performed for the two groups in terms of the impact factor generated by Brazilian articles in a given journal versus the expected impact factor for all articles published in that journal. In all cases we detected a certain disadvantage for endogenous articles, the possible reason of which is discussed. Biochemistry is one of the scientific areas in Brazil in which the investigators make a large effort to publish in international journals. We observed differences in the impact generated by these international papers, when biochemistry was compared with other areas which exhibit the same tendency towards an international output. From these observations we discuss the pertinence of publishing for an international audience as opposed in domestic journals.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990.     

Basic science in the Islamic Republic of Iran

The population of Iran has nearly doubled in less than 25 years, while the number of university students has increased more than 10 times and 720 Ph. D. degrees have been awarded in basic science in the past 10 years. Despite the great difficulties that the Iranian scientists have been facing for more than two decades (as a consequence of a social revolution, 8 years of a destructive war imposed by Iraq, excessive brain drain, discriminatory practices by some international journals in publishing the Iranian articles, and unfair sanctions imposed by the industrialized countries) Iran's science is still thriving and the current number of yearly scientific publications exceeds 1500. When normalized with respect to the number of researchers and the research budget, the Iranian scientists seem to outperform most of their counterparts in the advanced industrialized nations. Main reason: total engagement in truncated research activities (basic or applied) leading solely to pure publications; lack of infrastructure for developmental research activities leading to new technologies. The average impact factor of the papers in various fields of basic science seems quite satisfactory considering the difficult conditions the Iranian scientists are working under. Should the research budgets and conditions improve and the unfair sanctions currently imposed by the world politics be eliminated, a far better contribution to the world science can be expected. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Contribution of Turkish Researchers to the World's Biomedical Literature (1988–1997)

The contribution of Turkish researchers to positive sciences is increasing. Turkish scientists published more than 5100 articles in 1998 in scientific journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index, which elevated Turkey to the 25^th place in the world rankings in terms of total contribution to science. In this paper, we report the preliminary findings of the bibliometric characteristics (authors and affiliations, medical journals and their impact factors, among others) of a total of 8442 articles published between 1988 and 1997 by scientists affiliated with Turkish institutions and indexed in the MEDLINE database.     

The relationship between scientists and science: knowledge-based innovation output

Many scientists were respected by people and science has made great development in the twentieth century. What role do scientists play in the process of scientific development? Does scientific development bring more researchers into scientists? This paper mainly analyzes the two interested questions and suggests that: (a) not all researchers’ output could be attributed to scientific knowledge, only the innovative output could promote science to develop. Scientists play a more significant role than the rest researchers in scientific development in average because scientists’ innovative consciousness is far higher than that of non-scientists. (b) Distinguishing scientists from researchers in accordance with the fixed basic contribution of innovative output in the process of scientific development. Researchers’ innovative work becomes easier with the accumulated scientific knowledge growing gradually in the initial stage of scientific development. Thus, scientific development could produce more and more scientists. On the contrary, researchers’ innovative work becomes more challenged with the accumulated scientific knowledge increasing gradually while science develops to a certain stage. As a result, scientific development would make researchers become scientist increasingly difficult.     

Citation analysis and peer ranking of Australian social science journals

Citation analyses were performed for Australian social science journals to determine the differences between data drawn from Web of Science and Scopus. These data were compared with the tier rankings assigned by disciplinary groups to the journals for the purposes of a new research assessment model, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), due to be implemented in 2010. In addition, citation-based indicators including an extended journal impact factor, the h-index, and a modified journal diffusion factor, were calculated to assess whether subsequent analyses influence the ranking of journals. The findings suggest that the Scopus database provides higher number of citations for more of the journals. However, there appears to be very little association between the assigned tier ranking of journals and their rank derived from citations data. The implications for Australian social science researchers are discussed in relation to the use of citation analysis in the ERA.