What makes a scientific article influential? The case of demographers

In this paper we examine, by means of a citation analysis, which factors influence the impactof articles published in demography journals between 1990 and 1992. Several quantifiablecharacteristics of the articles (characteristics with respect to authors, visibility, content andjournals) are strongly related to their subsequent impact in the social sciences. Articles are mostfrequently cited when they deal with empirical, ahistorical research focusing on populations in thedeveloped world, when they are prominently placed in a journal issue, when they are written inEnglish and when they appear in core demography journals. Furthermore, although eminentscholars are likely to be cited on the basis of their reputation, the effect of reputation appears to besmall in demography.     

Can social impact assessment contribute to social development outcomes in an emerging economy?

Social impact assessment (SIA) addresses the ‘people aspect’ of development-induced change by empowering communities with a voice in the environmental impact assessment process. Globally, poverty and inequality is growing. Countries with emerging economies are especially affected, and SIA conducted within this context necessitates mitigation of both the direct impacts of particular developments as well as the social legacies that entrench poverty and inequality. Social development is an approach that can be used to reduce poverty and inequality. This paper analyses the practice of SIA and its potential to contribute to social development outcomes in emerging economies. SIA, as practised in South Africa, was analysed from the theoretical framework of social development using an exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The findings indicate that weak implementation of mitigation, monitoring and management measures dilute the potential for SIA to achieve social development outcomes. Through minor evolution of SIA practice, the process can lay a firm foundation to facilitate social development outcomes, especially considering its potential contribution to poverty reduction through the social protection floor, skills development and job creation.     

What makes an accurate and reliable subject-specific finite element model? A case study of an elephant femur

Finite element modelling is well entrenched in comparative vertebrate biomechanics as a tool to assess the mechanical design of skeletal structures and to better comprehend the complex interaction of their form–function relationships. But what makes a reliable subject-specific finite element model? To approach this question, we here present a set of convergence and sensitivity analyses and a validation study as an example, for finite element analysis (FEA) in general, of ways to ensure a reliable model. We detail how choices of element size, type and material properties in FEA influence the results of simulations. We also present an empirical model for estimating heterogeneous material properties throughout an elephant femur (but of broad applicability to FEA). We then use an ex vivo experimental validation test of a cadaveric femur to check our FEA results and find that the heterogeneous model matches the experimental results extremely well, and far better than the homogeneous model. We emphasize how considering heterogeneous material properties in FEA may be critical, so this should become standard practice in comparative FEA studies along with convergence analyses, consideration of element size, type and experimental validation. These steps may be required to obtain accurate models and derive reliable conclusions from them.     

f-Value: measuring an article’s scientific impact

The f-value is a new indicator that measures the importance of a research article by taking into account all citations received, directly and indirectly, up to depth n. The f-value considers all information present in a Citation Graph in order to produce a ranking of the articles. Apart from the mathematical equation that calculates the f-value, we also present the corresponding algorithm with its implementation, plus an experimental comparison of f-value with two known indicators of an article’s scientific importance, namely, the number of citations and the Page Rank for citation analysis. Finally, we discuss the similarities and differences among the indicators.     

What makes viewpoint-invariant properties perceptually salient?

It has been noted that many of the perceptually salient image properties identified by the Gestalt psychologists, such as collinearity, parallelism, and good continuation, age invariant to changes in viewpoint. However, I show that viewpoint invariance is not sufficient to distinguish these Gestalt properties; one can define an infinite number of viewpoint-invariant properties that are not perceptually salient. I then show that generally, the perceptually salient viewpoint-invariant properties are minimal, in the sense that they can be derived by using less image information than for nonsalient properties. This finding provides support for the hypothesis that the biological relevance of an image property is determined both by the extent to which it provides information about the world and by the ease with which this property can be computed. [An abbreviated version of this work, including technical details that are avoided in this paper, is contained in K. Boyer and S. Sarker, eds., Perceptual Organization for Artificial Vision Systems (Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2000), pp. 121-138.]     

What might get published in management and applied psychology? Experimentally manipulating implicit expectations of reviewers regarding hedges

Scientometrics - Researchers’ careers depend on publishing papers. There are explicit expectations (e.g., paper structure) that affect editors’ and reviewers’ perceptions of...     

What makes outsourcing effective? A transaction-cost economics analysis

This study extends the discussion of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and outsourcing to the selection of governance mechanisms for an effective outsourcing transaction. Specifically, our objective is to provide a better understanding as to how firms follow up on their outsourcing decisions to enhance manufacturing competitiveness through the governance mechanism, such as contract and relational adaptation (buyer-supplier cooperation). A TCE-based outsourcing model is developed to depict the relationships among key TCE variables, transaction attributes, governance mechanisms, and manufacturing competitiveness. Based on the data collected from 969 manufacturing plants in 17 countries, we found significant mediated effects from contractual clauses and relational adaptation. Firms in our sample rely on either or both types of governance mechanisms to safeguard uncertainties and opportunism inherent in outsourcing, which enhances manufacturing competitiveness. The important managerial and research implication is that, for making an outsourcing decision, it is insufficient to merely examine the transaction attributes without recognising how various forms of governance mechanisms can be implemented to enhance outsourcing effectiveness.     

Grain growth in perovskites: What is the impact of boundary transitions?

Several perovskite ceramics are known to have non-Arrhenius type grain growth and to show grain growth transitions instead. These growth transitions are coupled to bimodal microstructures and seem to be caused by the existence, coexistence and transition of two different grain boundary types. This paper gives a review on the details of the grain growth transitions in perovskite ceramics. A simple mean field approach and standard grain growth experiments are used for quantification. However, this approach is far too simple to understand bimodal anisotropic grain growth completely as apparent in perovskites. Important parameters such as atomistic boundary structure, segregation effects, wetting transitions, faceting, grain boundary stoichiometry, space charge and interfacial drag effects are discussed with respect to their impact on grain growth in perovskites. A summary of open questions and future directions is given.     

Patterns and impact of collaboration in China’s social sciences: cross-database comparisons between CSSCI and SSCI

Scientometrics - This study quantitatively analyzes the patterns and impact of collaboration at author and country levels in China’s social sciences from 1998 to 2017. Chinese Social Sciences...     

What makes the first forward citation of a patent occur earlier?

Identifying the economic value of a patent is crucial to technology management. It also facilitates the commercialization and transactions of patents. As a proxy of patent value, forward citation counting is widely used, but it takes a long time for a patent to be sufficiently cited. In this context, we suggest the first citation lag, namely the time taken until the first citation, as a proxy of patent value, as it is positively correlated with the patent value and considers the fact that important patents with a high economic value tend to receive many citations in a short space of time. We explore the influential patent attributes related to the first citation lag to build a model to predict the patent value. By using the Cox proportional hazard model on green inventory patent data, we find that patents with a shorter technology cycle time and a larger number of IPC four-digit classes, claims, patent family, and backward citations are associated with the shorter first citation lag, while a patent’s science linkage has an inverse U-shaped relationship with the first citation lag. Further, patents having an unconventional technological core have a longer first citation lag and among patents having an unconventional technological core, the presence of a novel element makes the first citation earlier. Our study is expected to help patent evaluation in the early stage of technology transfer.     

Does the multi-authorship trend influence the quality of an article?

In the last few decades, multi-authored articles have increased in different disciplines with increasing instances of authorship abuse although multi-authorship is not always due to undeserving authorship (McDonald et al. in Mayo Clin Proc 85(10):920–927, 2010). It may be necessitated by interdisciplinary research, the evolution of a discipline, or the intention of quality improvement. This article studies the relationship between the authorship and the quality of articles (publications in better impact factor journals or core journals) in the field of Oceanography. The result shows ~75 % increase in the number of authors per article from 1990 to 2009 in the discipline. The increase in authorship correlates not only with the percentage of articles in core journals but also with the mean impact factor (IF) of journals (where the articles were published). The ANOVA study shows that though multi-authorship has no influence on the preference to publish in core journals during the 1990s or 2000s, it does have a significant influence on the preference to publish in high IF journals in both the decades. So these findings establish that in the field of Oceanography, the increase in collaboration would have resulted in more publications in core journals (without any influence of authorship increase) and in better impact factor journals (due to the influence of authorship increase).     

What do the scientists think about the impact factor?

The impact factor is a highly polemic metric. It was designed to help scientists in searching for bibliographic references for their own works, enabling communication among researchers and helping librarians in deciding which journal they should purchase. Nevertheless, it has soon become the most important measure of scientific performance applied to journals, articles, scientists, universities, etc. Since then, some researchers argue that it is a useless and flawed measure, while others defend its utility. The current study is the first survey on the opinion on the topic of a broad sample of scientists from all over the world. The questionnaire was answered by 1,704 researchers from 86 different countries, all the continents and all the UNESCO major fields of knowledge. The results show that the opinion is slightly above the median which could be understood as ??neither positive nor negative??. Surprisingly, there is a negative correlation between the number of articles published by the respondents and their opinion on the impact factor.     

What makes a great journal great in the sciences? Which came first,the chicken or the egg?

The paper is concerned with analysing what makes a great journal great in the sciences, based on quantifiable Research Assessment Measures (RAM). Alternative RAM are discussed, with an emphasis on the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI). Various ISI RAM that are calculated annually or updated daily are defined and analysed, including the classic 2-year impact factor (2YIF), 5-year impact factor (5YIF), Immediacy (or 0-year impact factor (0YIF)), Eigenfactor, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, Zinfluence, PI-BETA (Papers Ignored—By Even The Authors), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), and three new RAM, namely Historical Self-citation Threshold Approval Rating (H-STAR), 2 Year Self-citation Threshold Approval Rating (2Y-STAR), and Cited Article Influence (CAI). The RAM data are analysed for the 6 most highly cited journals in 20 highly-varied and well-known ISI categories in the sciences, where the journals are chosen on the basis of 2YIF. The application to these 20 ISI categories could be used as a template for other ISI categories in the sciences and social sciences, and as a benchmark for newer journals in a range of ISI disciplines. In addition to evaluating the 6 most highly cited journals in each of 20 ISI categories, the paper also highlights the similarities and differences in alternative RAM, finds that several RAM capture similar performance characteristics for the most highly cited scientific journals, determines that PI-BETA is not highly correlated with the other RAM, and hence conveys additional information regarding research performance. In order to provide a meta analysis summary of the RAM, which are predominantly ratios, harmonic mean rankings are presented of the 13 RAM for the 6 most highly cited journals in each of the 20 ISI categories. It is shown that emphasizing THE impact factor, specifically the 2-year impact factor, of a journal to the exclusion of other informative RAM can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal performance and influence on different disciplines, especially in view of inflated journal self citations.     

What is the best article publishing strategy for early career scientists?

Scientometrics - To date, it remains unclear how different approaches to early career publishing behaviors (e.g., publishing papers in the same journal or in different journals) may benefit a young...