Do types of collaboration change citation? A scientometric analysis of social science publications in South Africa

Scientometrics - Scientometric studies have, by and large, focused on the features of the hard sciences rather than the soft sciences. Prior research has been highly centered around natural science...     

A bibliometric analysis of NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

Bibliometric analysis techniques are increasingly being used to analyze and evaluate scientific research produced by institutions and grant funding agencies. This article uses bibliometric methods to analyze journal articles funded by NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER), an extramural grant-funding agency focused on the scientific exploration of the world’s oceans. OER-supported articles in this analysis were identified through grant reports, personal communication, and acknowledgement of OER support or grant numbers. The articles identified were analyzed to determine the number of publications and citations received per year, subject, and institution. The productivity and citation impact of institutions in the US receiving OER grant funding were mapped geographically. Word co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling networks were created and visualized to identify the research topics of OER-supported articles. Finally, article citation counts were evaluated by means of percentile ranks. This article demonstrates that bibliometric analysis can be useful for summarizing and evaluating the research performance of a grant funding agency.     

A bibliometric analysis of research on Antarctica during 1993–2012

A bibliometric analysis was applied in this work to evaluate Antarctic research from 1993 to 2012 based on the Science Citation Index database. According to samples of 30,024 articles related to Antarctica, this study reveals the evolution of the scientific outputs on Antarctic research from the aspects of subject categories, major journals, international collaboration, and temporal trends in keywords focus. Antarctic research has developed rapidly in the past two decades, with an increasing amount of article output, references and citations. Geosciences multidisciplinary, oceanography, ecology, meteorology and atmospheric sciences and geography physical were the most popular subject categories. Among the 20 major journals related to Antarctic research, Polar Biology, Geophysical Research Letters and Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres ranked as the top three. With the largest quantity of articles and high citations, USA was the leading contributor to global Antarctic research and had a dominant position in collaborative networks. In addition, a keywords analysis determined that climate change, sea ice and krill were the topics that generated the most interest and concern. Because this paper reveals underlying patterns in scientific outputs, research subjects and academic collaboration, it may serve as a summary of global research history on Antarctica and a potential basis for future research.     

A bibliometric study of the world’s research activity in sustainable development and its sub-areas using scientific literature

This paper presents a bibliometric study of the world’s research activity in Sustainable Development using scientific literature. The study was conducted using data from the Scopus database over the time period of 2000–2010. We investigated the research landscape in Sustainable Development at country level and at institute level. Sustainable Development and its sub-areas are defined by keywords vetted by the domain experts, allowing publications to be identified independent of the journals and conferences in which they are published. The results indicate that institutes strong in Sustainable Development overall may not be strong in all sub-areas and that institutes not strong in Sustainable Development overall may have significant niche strengths in a given sub-area. It is also noted that China appears strong in terms of publication output in Sustainable Development and its sub-areas but it does not appear strong in terms of citation counts. The information produced in this study can be useful for government research agencies in terms of understanding how to more effectively knit together the various niche strengths in the country; and for the institutes to find strategic partners that can coordinate in niche areas of Sustainable Development and complement their strengths. In order to conduct bibliometric analysis in an interdisciplinary research area, the keyword collection approach appears to be very useful. This approach is flexible and can be used to conduct such analysis for interdisciplinary research fields.     

The “Mendel syndrome” in science: durability of scientific literature and its effects on bibliometric analysis of individual scientists

The obsolescence and “durability” of scientific literature have been important elements of debate during many years, especially regarding the proper calculation of bibliometric indicators. The effects of “delayed recognition” on impact indicators have importance and are of interest not only to bibliometricians but also among research managers and scientists themselves. It has been suggested that the “Mendel syndrome” is a potential drawback when assessing individual researchers through impact measures. If publications from particular researchers need more time than “normal” to be properly acknowledged by their colleagues, the impact of these researchers may be underestimated with common citation windows. In this paper, we answer the question whether the bibliometric indicators for scientists can be significantly affected by the Mendel syndrome. Applying a methodology developed previously for the classification of papers according to their durability (Costas et al., J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 61(8):1564–1581, 2010a; J Am Soc Inf Sci Technol 61(2):329–339, 2010b), the scientific production of 1,064 researchers working at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in three different research areas has been analyzed. Cases of potential “Mendel syndrome” are rarely found among researchers and these cases do not significantly outperform the impact of researchers with a standard pattern of reception in their citations. The analysis of durability could be included as a parameter for the consideration of the citation windows used in the bibliometric analysis of individuals.     

A historical review and bibliometric analysis of GPS research from 1991–2010

We performed a bibliometric analysis of published research on Global Positioning System (GPS) for the period of 1991–2010, based on the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Our search identified a total of 15,759 GPS-related publications in the period. We analyzed the patterns of publication outputs, subject categories and major journals, international productivity and collaboration, geographic distribution of authors, and author keywords. The annual number of publications in GPS research increased from 98 in 1991 to 1934 in 2010. “Geochemistry & Geophysics”, “Geosciences, Multidisciplinary”, and “Engineering, Electrical & Electronic” were the top 3 most popular subject categories. As the flagship journal in the field, Geophysical Research Letters had the highest publication count. The USA, the UK and Germany were the top 3 most productive countries. The most productive institution was the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), followed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Colorado. The USA was the most frequent partner in international collaborations. Caltech took the central position in the collaboration network. The major spatial clusters of authors were in the USA, the Europe Union, and East Asia (including China, Japan and South Korea). “Ionosphere”, “Remote Sensing” and “Monitoring” are growing research subjects in the field of GPS, while “Deformation”, “Geoid” and “Tectonics” are becoming gradually less significant. Our study revealed underlying patterns in scientific outputs and academic collaborations and may serve as an alternative and innovative way of revealing global research trends in GPS.     

How scientific research incorporates policy: an examination using the case of China’s science and technology evaluation system

Scientometrics - Governments typically formulate sets of policies to guide the direction of scientific research. And the possible effects of these policies on scientific research have been...     

Alzheimer’s disease research in the future: bibliometric analysis of cholinesterase inhibitors from 1993 to 2012

In this study, the bibliometric study of cholinesterase inhibitors was used to find the trend of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research and the order of drugs which was most tolerated or more effective in AD treatment. 4,982 articles and reviews from the Science Citation Index Expanded during 1993–2012 were analyzed. The main results were as follows: The publication of cholinesterase inhibitor research increased overall during 1993–2012. Chinese Academy of Science had most publications, University of California, San Diego and Hebrew University of Jerusalem won first place with the highest average citation per paper and the highest h-index respectively. Neurosciences, pharmacology and chemistry were “raising” subject categories in cholinesterase inhibitors research. With the comprehensive analysis of distribution and change of author keywords in two 10-year-time periods, it can be concluded as follows: (i) the order of drugs which was most tolerated or more effective in AD treatment might be donepezil, galantamine, rivastigmine, tacrine, memantine and huperzine A, and memantine attracted increasing interest recently and might be used more frequently now, especially for moderate to severe dementia. (ii) The pathogenesis of oxidative stress hypothesis attracted extensive attention. The interest to β-amyloid cascade hypothesis increased slightly but that of the cholinergic hypothesis decreased during the past decade. (iii) “Oxidative stress”, “β-amyloid”, “neuroprotection”, “memory” and “cognition” are the main orientations in the AD research in the future.     

Mapping of dental science research in India: a scientometric analysis of India’s research output, 1999–2008

The study examines India’s performance based on its publication output in dental sciences during 1999–2008, based on several parameters, including the country annual average growth rate, global publication share & rank among 25 most productive countries of the world, national publication output and impact in terms of average citations per paper, international collaboration output and share and contribution of major collaborative partners, contribution and impact of select top 25 Indian institutions and select top 15 most productive authors, patterns of communication in national and international journals and characteristics of its 45 high cited papers. The study uses 10 years (1999–2008) publications data in dental sciences of India and other countries drawn from Scopus international multidisciplinary bibliographical database.     

India’s contribution on antioxidants: a bibliometric analysis, 2001–10

The study examines India’s performance on antioxidants using several quantitative measures such as India’s global publication share, rank, growth rate and citation quality, its publication share in various sub-fields in terms of national share utilising last 10 year’s (2001–10) publications data obtained from the Scopus database. We have also determined Indian share with international collaborative papers at the national level as well as is major international collaborative partners, besides analysing the characteristics of its high productivity institutions, authors and high-cited papers, etc.     

Arab Spring’s effect on scientific productivity and research performance in Arab countries

This study focuses on the Arab literature published by researchers from all 22 members of the Arab League during the last 5 years before Arab Spring (2006–2010) and the 5 years after Arab Spring (2011–2015), in order to identify effects of the Arab Spring on research in the Arab world both performance and Productivity, based on bibliometrics analysis of the data extracted from Web of Science and InCites Essential Science Indicators provided by Thomson Reuters, and by using the statistical software package SPSS. The total productivity of Arab researchers before the Arab Spring was (103,917) document. Countries that witnessed revolution and government overthrown produced the largest productivity (42.5%). The Arab countries’ production doubled after the Arab Spring (214,864 document). Countries that witnessed Minor protests advanced to second place (30%) as a result of the leap that occurred in Saudi Arabia publications. The extent of collaboration among Arab countries before the Arab Spring was twice the number of publications in which they collaborated with the rest of the world. The number of citations was positive after the Arab Spring for 12 countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Egypt and United Arab Emirates, while it was negative for 10 countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon. There is no significant difference between Arab countries exposed to different levels of protests of Arab Spring, and between Counties’ performance after and before Arab Spring. However, counties’ productivity after Arab Spring has increased higher than before Arab Spring.     

The dynamics of the studies of China’s science,technology and innovation (STI): a bibliometric analysis of an emerging field

Scientometrics - Since 1978, alongside China’s rise as a leading country in science, technology and innovation (STI), the studies of the country’s STI have been emerging as a field...     

A scientometric analysis of the effectiveness of Taiwan’s educational research projects

The seeking of evidence for revealing the research performance of Education in Taiwan, in response to the stimulus by the national research projects, is presented and interpreted. More than 70,000 publication records over the years 1990–2011 from Web of Science were downloaded and analyzed. The overview analysis by data aggregation and country ranking shows that Taiwan has significantly improved its publication productivity and citation impact over the last decade. The drill-down analysis based on journal bibliographic coupling, information visualization, and diversity and trend indexes, reveals that e-Learning and Science Education are two fast growing subfields that attract global interests and that Taiwan is among the top-ranked countries in these two fields in terms of research productivity. Implications of the analysis are discussed with an emphasis on the subfield characteristics from which more insightful interpretations can be obtained, such as the regional or cultural characteristics that may affect the performance ranking.     

Flow and social relationships of knowledge in science, technology and innovation: A patentometric study of UNICAMP’s technological production

The object is to identify the flux of information and get to know the socio-spatial and socioinstitutional dimensions of knowledge in the process of innovation, and to be able to visualize the impact and cognitive relationships of the sources of information used in the production of patents, as well as interactions and social cooperation that exists between the local innovative agents of The State University of Campinas. The research is of an exploratory nature with a case study design, in order to find out, by means of patentometric indicators, the flow and social relations characterized by cognitive and institutional aspects of local and regional knowledge based on the production of the Institution’s patents.     

A new Price’s estimate on the size of scientific specialties based on scientific community structure

Price argued that the average scientific specialty consists of about 100 scientists, publishing an average 100 articles each during their career. Wray recently attempted to revise the number of scientists in a specialty based on the information that the average scientist publishes only 3.5 papers during their career. However, his final estimate, between 250 and 600 scientists, does not support Price’s idea that a specialty fills about 10,000 articles, unless the ad hoc assumption is made that nearly 80 % of articles circulating in a field are from other fields. This article shows that by distinguishing between graduate students, who spend only a couple of years in a specialty, and professors, who spend their entire career in a field, the ad hoc assumption becomes unnecessary, and Wray’s number of 600 scientists turns out to be a remarkable intuitive insight that is consistent with Price’s 10,000 articles. A number of 520 scientists, or somewhat larger, is suggested for Price’s estimate.     

China’s research in chemical engineering journals in Science Citation Index Expanded: a bibliometric analysis

This study was designed to evaluate China’s scientific output of chemical engineering in Science Citation Index Expanded in the Web of Science from 1992 to 2011. The document type, language, trend and collaboration patterns were analyzed, as well as the output of different journals. Distributions of article titles and abstracts, author keywords, KeyWords Plus of different periods, and the most cited articles were studied to figure out the research focuses and trends. Chinese Journal of Catalysis, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, and Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering published most of Chinese articles in the area of chemical engineering. The Chemical Engineering Department of Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Tianjin University, and East China University of Science and Technology were the top four institutions that published most articles in China. This study showed that adsorption, photocatalysis and synthesis have been the hot points of research in the past two decades, while ionic liquid tends to be the new area of special interest in future. Pseudo-second order model for sorption processes is getting more and more popular with great influence since its publication. In addition, the ratio of institutional independent articles: nationally collaborative articles: internationally collaborative articles has been developed to compare different institutions’ publication characteristics.     

Investigating different types of research collaboration and citation impact: a case study of Harvard University’s publications

This study aims to investigate the influence of different patterns of collaboration on the citation impact of Harvard University’s publications. Those documents published by researchers affiliated with Harvard University in WoS from 2000–2009, constituted the population of the research which was counted for 124,937 records. Based on the results, only 12% of Harvard publications were single author publications. Different patterns of collaboration were investigated in different subject fields. In all 22 examined fields, the number of co-authored publications is much higher than single author publications. In fact, more than 60% of all publications in each field are multi-author publications. Also, the normalized citation per paper for co-authored publications is higher than that of single author publications in all fields. In addition, the largest number of publications in all 22 fields were also published through inter-institutional collaboration and were as a result of collaboration among domestic researchers and not international ones. In general, the results of the study showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the number of authors and the number of citations in Harvard publications. In addition, publications with more number of institutions have received more number of citations, whereas publications with more number of foreign collaborators were not much highly cited.     

Discussing Arab Spring’s effect on scientific productivity and research performance in Arab countries

Scientometrics - This research letter discusses whether Arab Spring explains the changes in research productivity and impact of Arab countries by identifying non-sociopolitical factors that can be...     

A bibliometric analysis and comparison on three information science journals: JASIST,IPM, JOD, 1998–2008

Employing a citation analysis, this study explored and compared the bibliometric characteristics and the subject relationship with other disciplines of and among the three leading information science journals, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information Processing and Management and Journal of Documentation. The citation data were drawn from references of each article of the three journals during 1998 and 2008. The Ulrich’s Periodical Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading, retrieved from the WorldCat, and LISA database were used to identify the main class, subclass and subject of cited journals and books. Quantitative results on the number of JASIST, IPM and JOD literature references, average number of references cited per paper, document type of cited literature and the journal self-citation rate are reported. Moreover, the highly cited journals and books, the main classes and subclasses of cited journals and books in papers of the three journals, the highly cited subjects in journals and books of library and information science were identified and analyzed. Comparison on the characteristics of cited journals and books confirmed that all the three journals under study are information science oriented, except JOD which is library science orientation. JASIST and IPM are very much in common and diffuse to other disciplines more deeply than JOD.