Neophilia ranking of scientific journals

The ranking of scientific journals is important because of the signal it sends to scientists about what is considered most vital for scientific progress. Existing ranking systems focus on measuring the influence of a scientific paper (citations)—these rankings do not reward journals for publishing innovative work that builds on new ideas. We propose an alternative ranking based on the proclivity of journals to publish papers that build on new ideas, and we implement this ranking via a text-based analysis of all published biomedical papers dating back to 1946. In addition, we compare our neophilia ranking to citation-based (impact factor) rankings; this comparison shows that the two ranking approaches are distinct. Prior theoretical work suggests an active role for our neophilia index in science policy. Absent an explicit incentive to pursue novel science, scientists underinvest in innovative work because of a coordination problem: for work on a new idea to flourish, many scientists must decide to adopt it in their work. Rankings that are based purely on influence thus do not provide sufficient incentives for publishing innovative work. By contrast, adoption of the neophilia index as part of journal-ranking procedures by funding agencies and university administrators would provide an explicit incentive for journals to publish innovative work and thus help solve the coordination problem by increasing scientists’ incentives to pursue innovative work.     

Use of publication lists to study scientific production and strategies of scientists in developing countries

A bibliometric study using the lists of publications and work of 207 scientists working in Asia, Latin America and Africa was conducted. Number of authored and co-authored articles published in scientific journals and bulletins, conference papers, books, chapters of books, reports were taken into consideration to measure the total scientific output. Local vs. international production was also determined by scientific fields, geographic areas, sexe and language of publication. Co-authorship studies were also used to particularly measure the degree of collaboration and dependance of Developing Countries' (DC) scientists on foreign co-authors. An analysis of the references used (age, origins) was also made. Conclusions drawn concern the comparatively specific nature of science produces by DC's researcher. Partly given the importance of the scientific production published in local journals, the inadequacy of international databases to study Dc science is confirmed. Most of the DC scientists published in both national and international journals. They often cite their colleagues from the developed countries but their own work being less visible is seldom cited.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990     

Characteristics of papers published in journals: an analysis of open access journals,country of publication,and languages used

This study explores how the citation of open access (OA) journal articles occurs by analyzing the impact of certain journal characteristics, namely, whether the journal is OA and whether its country of publication is the same as the affiliation of a paper’s author. As the language of a paper is an important factor contributing to paper citations, this study uses papers in English. This analysis included publications from 77 countries from 2010 to 2012. This analysis included 19,530 journals and 3,215,742 papers without duplication. The results showed that papers published in OA and international journals were cited in more countries than non-OA and domestic journals, and a higher percentage of these were being cited by foreign countries. From these findings, it was determined that the more widely accessible OA journals were effectively being accessed by researchers from multiple countries. However, of the top 10% most cited papers in international journals, a higher percentage of these came from non-OA compared to OA journals. Among domestic journals, no such difference was found. Papers published in non-OA international journals were most cited in foreign countries with a large number of published papers. Hence, the effect of OA’s expanded accessibility, while having an apparent effect on heightening the interest of foreign readership, has a limited impact in terms of increasing citations.     

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.     

Some citation-related characteristics of scientific journals published in individual countries

Relationships between publication language, impact factors and self-citations of journals published in individual countries, eight from Europe and one from South America (Brazil), are analyzed using bibliometric data from Thomson Reuters JCR Science Edition databases of ISI Web of Knowledge. It was found that: (1) English-language journals, as a rule, have higher impact factors than non-English-language journals, (2) all countries investigated in this study have journals with very high self-citations but the proportion of journals with high self-citations with reference to the total number of journals published in different countries varies enormously, (3) there are relatively high percentages of low self-citations in high subject-category journals published in English as well as non-English journals but national-language journals have higher self-citations than English-language journals, and (4) irrespective of the publication language, journals devoted to very specialized scientific disciplines, such as electrical and electronic engineering, metallurgy, environmental engineering, surgery, general and internal medicine, pharmacology and pharmacy, gynecology, entomology and multidisciplinary engineering, have high self-citations.     

The ‘language preference’ in sociology: Measures of ‘language self-citation’, ‘relative own-language preference indicator’, and ‘mutual use of languages’

Although between one-third to one-half of world social sciences research literature is published in languages other than English, studies show very scant use of it by American and English scholars. Almost all studies, however, were conducted from the Anglo-Saxon perspective, limiting the scope of the study to English-published sources or English-speaking scientists and research workers. The present study aimed at assessing the scope of the language preference in a social sciences field, not only among American and British scholars, but among German and French ones as well, using the technique of citation analysis. Samples including mostly 50–60 original research articles were drawn from the 1985–1994 volumes of nine leading sociology journals published in the US, UK, Germany and France and the references appended to each were scrutinized in order to determine the frequency distribution of the languages cited in each periodical. Findings clearly showed a strong preference of writers to cite material in their own language. However, the extent of this bias differed from journal to journal. The American and British writers rank first, with close to 99% of their references being in English. German scholars rank next, preferring German sources in 75% of the cases, and French scholars quote French sources in only 66% of their references. In order to calculate the new refined measure of ‘relative own-language preference’ (ROLP) indicator, the proportions of ‘language self-citation’ were related to the estimated proportions of these languages in the existing body of sociology research. This measure reveals that German sociologists have the strongest bias towards their mother-tongue, their ratio of references in German exceeding almost 12 to 28 times the expected figure according to the German language share in sociology research. Next come French sociologists (8 to 14 times) while American and British ones display the lowest own-language bias, only slightly higher than expected. Further analysis of the foreign languages preference of each group, according to a ‘mutual-use’ matrix, shows a relative low use of German and French sources by British-American sociologists.     

A Comparison of Iranian Scientific Publications in the Science Citation Index: 1985–1989 and 1990–1994

Iranian scientific publications in the Science Citation Index for two five-year periods, 1985–1989 and 1990–1994, were compared. Distributions of various attributes of the publication output for the two periods were obtained primarily through the Rank command of the Dialog Online System. Results include: productivity by publication year and by ranked order of the most productive Iranian authors; influence or impact of the most productive Iranian authors by ranking them as cited authors; collaboration of Iranian scientists with scientists from other countries; and the journals Iranian scientists published in and the journals they cite in their papers. The subject areas of Iran's scientific publications were examined vis-à-vis the world's publication output and that of the Third World Countries (TWC).     

Croatian scientific publications in top journals according to the Science Citation Indexfor the 1980–2000 Period

A top journal is defined as a journal which is within the first 10% of journals ranked by impact factor in the SCI list, within a particular scientific subfield, for the year considered. Journals which were for 11 or more years within the first 10% were considered top journals during the whole period even though they were not within the first 10%, in some of the years covered by this study.In the period from 1980 to 2000, the Croatian scientists affiliated with research institutions within the Republic of Croatia, published a total of 13,021 papers in journals covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI). Out of these papers, only 2,720 were published in top journals. This amounts to 20.9% of the total, and this is below the world average of 29.5% for the same scientific subfields. Out of the above 2,720 publications, 1,250 (46.0%) were published in international collaboration, and 335 (12.3%) papers were Meeting Abstracts. The Croatian scientists were most productive in the main scientific fields: Physics (875 papers; 32.2%), Medicine (786 papers; 28.9%), and Chemistry (580 papers; 21.3%). All others fields, taken together, comprised 17.6% of the total scientific output. Of the 786 medical papers, 290 were Meeting Abstracts, or 36.9% of the total output in the field of Medicine, and medical Meeting Abstracts represent 86.6% of the total number of abstracts (335). Articles (2,060) represent 75.7% of the total Croatian scientific output in top journals. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The value of an overseas research trip

As an essential part of the academic environment, international scientific mobility draws considerable attention from researchers. Previous studies have indicated a strong relationship between scientific mobility and scientific output. However, few researchers have addressed the causality between them. The research questions in this study focused on how the international scientific mobilization of the researchers affects their number of international collaborations, their ability to get published at higher impact factor journals, the number of citations that they get. Based on the SCOPUS database of English language scientific journal articles, this paper revealed the causal effects of international scientific mobility of the researchers on their scientific productivity, collaborations, and impact on science using the synthetic control method. The author’s affiliation on their articles provided the geographical location that can be tracked in time to infer the international scientific mobility of each author. A sample of more than 79,000 immobile scientists was used to create the synthetic versions of over 1500 internationally mobile scientists, so that, the synthetic version of each mobile author best resembled the academic ability of her/his counterpart mobile author in the pre-mobilization period. This allowed investigating the effects of the international mobilization on their publications by comparing the post-mobilization publication characteristics of the mobile authors and their immobile synthetic controls.The findings show strong evidence of a substantial positive effect of scientific mobility on the ability to get published in more prestigious journals, the number of citations received in total and from overseas, and international collaborations. The magnitude of the effect is conditional on the duration of scientific mobility.

     

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.     

Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

This study analyzed the use of acknowledgements in medical articles published in five countries (Venezuela, Spain, France, UK and USA) from 1950 to 2010. For each country, we selected 54 papers (18 research papers, 18 reviews and 18 case reports), evenly distributed over six decades, from two medical journals with the highest impact factors. Only papers written by native speakers in the national language were included. The evolution of the frequency and length of acknowledgments was analyzed. Of 270 articles studied, 127 (47%) had acknowledgments. The presence of acknowledgments was associated with country (p = 0.001), this section being more common and longer in US and UK journals. Acknowledgments were most common in research papers (70 vs. 40% in case reports and 31% in reviews, p < 0.001). Reviews without acknowledgments were significantly more common than those with (69 vs. 31%), but there was no trend in case reports. Altogether, articles with acknowledgments predominated only after 2000. Since the frequency of use of acknowledgments remained stable over time in US and UK journals but increased in non-Anglophone journals, the overall increase is attributed to the change in non-English publications. Authors acknowledged sub-authorship more in English language journals than in those published in the national language in France, Spain and Venezuela. However, the practice of acknowledging is increasing in non-Anglophone journals. We conclude that the concept of intellectual indebtedness does not only differ from one geographical context to another, but also over time and from one academic genre to another.     

International scientific collaboration of China: collaborating countries, institutions and individuals

Using bibliometric methods, we investigate China’s international scientific collaboration from three levels of collaborating countries, institutions and individuals. We design a database in SQL Server, and make analysis of Chinese SCI papers based on the corresponding author field. We find that China’s international scientific collaboration is focused on a handful of countries. Nearly 95 % international co-authored papers are collaborated with only 20 countries, among which the USA account for more than 40 % of all. Results also show that Chinese lineage in the international co-authorship is obvious, which means Chinese immigrant scientists are playing an important role in China’s international scientific collaboration, especially in English-speaking countries.     

High-impact papers presented in the subject category of water resources in the essential science indicators database of the institute for scientific information

The Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database is widely used to evaluate institutions and researchers. The objective of this study was to analyze trends and characteristics of papers in the subject category of water resources in the ESI database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Distributions of document type, language of publication, scientific output, and publication of journals are reported in this article. Five indicators (the number and ranking of total papers, first-author papers, corresponding-author papers, independent papers, and collaborative papers) were applied to evaluate country, institute, and author performances. In addition, the numbers of authors cited, numbers of institutes cited, numbers of countries cited, and numbers of subject areas cited were also used to evaluate ESI papers. Results showed that 265 papers, all written in English, were listed in 27 journals in the field of water resources. A review paper was more likely to be included in the ESI than a research paper. Journal of Hydrology published the most papers. The USA and UK were the two leading nations. ESI papers published in the US were more likely to involve inter-institutional collaboration than papers published in the UK. The University of Arizona was the most productive institute. Some papers that were almost excluded from the ESI database appear to have consistently received annual high frequencies of citation. Perhaps the 10 year criterion for inclusion in the ESI should be reassessed.     

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.     

Landmark papers written by the Nobelists in physics from 1901 to 2012: a bibliometric analysis of their citations and journals

We collected 382 landmark papers written by 193 Nobel Laureates in physics from 1901 to 2012 and used bibliometric methods, citation frequencies, impact factor (IF), and tendency of the landmark journals to analyze their contents. The results show: (1) Of landmark papers published during 1980–2009, 74.7 % were cited more than 500 times. Average citation frequencies and proportion of highly cited papers were higher for theoretic discoveries than for experimental methods. However, the proportion of highly cited papers in both domains was lower than for an invention. The average test period for the latter was markedly shorter too. (2) Landmark papers by Nobelists were mainly published in journals with IF from 5.0 to 10.0, but journals below IF 5.0 ranked first among all landmark journals. (3) As to countries where landmark papers were published, the Netherlands ranked at the top of the countries with the most landmark journals, besides the United States and England. In addition, the majority of landmark papers written by non-mainstream countries’ Nobelists were published in foreign journals with IF <7.0. These data indicate some regularity and tendency of landmark papers written by Nobelists in physics.     

Quantitative analysis of Spanish university scientific output in the area of Legal and Forensic Medicine: International exposure

We set out to analyse and quantify the papers published (for an international readership) by Spanish universities in the field of Legal and Forensic Medicine. For this, we used the MEDLINE data base, to analyse research articles in which a Spanish university teacher (whose sole employment was with a university, as registered by the Ministry of Education in July 2005, (n = 67), appeared as author or co-author in this field. The years covered are 1952 (First year that a Spanish author appears for an article on Legal and Forensic Medicine in this service) to July 2005. A total of 770 articles were counted; the productivity in this area was increasing substantially from the 1980’s onwards. English language scientific journals were the preferred channel of communication. Slightly more than 85% of the works can be classified into four themes, of which Genetics is the most prolific. The number of papers published in English journals represented 84% of the total and only 13% was published in Spanish journals. There was a close relationship between growth in the authority index and inter-institutional co-operation, which boosted the production of articles. When at least one of the authorship of a published paper was a Spanish university teacher, the research was led by a university in 62.4% of cases, and of this 85.6% were Spanish universities.     

Scientometrics of big science: a case study of research in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Large-scale scientific projects have become a major impetus of scientific advances. But few studies have specifically analyzed how those projects bolster scientific research. We address this question from a scientometrics perspective. By analyzing the bibliographic records of papers relevant to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we found that the SDSS helped scientists from many countries further develop their own research; investigators initially formed large research groups to tackle key problems, while later papers involved fewer authors; and the number of research topics increased but the diversity of topics remains stable. Furthermore, the entropy analysis method has proven valuable in terms of analyzing patterns of research topics at a macroscopic level.