Multivariate statistical analysis of the bibliographic output from a research institution,in relation to the measures of scientific policy

The publications produced in a medical research institute in a 16 year interval were classified into five categories (scientific papers in the journals covered byCurrent Contents orScience Citation Index, scientific papers in other journals, books and monographs, technical papers, congress and symposia communications) and counted for each year separately. The number of researchers and yearly budgets were also recorded. The data were analysed by contingency table, correlation and factor-analytical methods. It was shown that, upon introducing quantitative minimal criteria for job promotions, the proportion of scientific papers increased. Principal component analysis indicated that the data can be approximately represented as linear combinations of three mutually independent factors. The approach used is recommended for evaluating the production of scientific information in research institutions and for assessing the effects of the measures of scientific policy.     

Bibliometric analysis of publications of Spanish pharmacologists in the SCI (1984–89). Part II

During the period 1984–89 Spanish pharmacologists published 344 papers (44.3% of their total scientific production) (Science Citation Index, CD-Edition) in journals classified by theSCI in subfields different from Pharmacology & Pharmacy. Distribution by institutions, geographical regions, journals, subfields and research levels are presented. The Normalized Journal Position (NJP) is introduced as indicator of the expected impact in each subfield. Results are compared with those of the analysis of the production of Spanish pharmacologists in the Pharmacology & Pharmacy subfield, presented in a previous paper. Some of the features detected are common to both areas, such as: increasing trend in the productivity over years, irregular geographical distribution with three regions as major producers, or university as main producer institution. Special features of the extra-Pharmacology area are also pointed out: irregular growth of publication number over years, high dispersion of publications in journals and subfields, high collaboration rate, and low percentage of authors with at least 1 paper/year, among others. Attending to journal of publication, cross-disciplinarity research of Spanish pharmacologists is analysed, being Neurosciences, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Physiology, the main border fields involved.     

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.     

The role of domestic journals in geographically-oriented disciplines: The case of Spanish journals on earth sciences

The role of domestic journals in disseminating research results in the filed of Earth Sciences in Spain is discussed. The analysis is based on bibliometric indicators of Spanish scientific production, as well as on the opinion of Spanish researchers in this field, obtained through a specially designed survey. A reasonable correspondence has been found between the results of bibliometric analysis and scientists' judgements. Results show that 69% of Spanish articles in Earth Sciences were published in Spanish journals during the period 1990–1994. Scientists use both national and international journals to communicate, their research results, although due to the nature of the discipline, geographically oriented and therefore mostly devoted to local problems, they use basically domestic journals. In terms of international visibility, although none of the Spanish journals in this field is covered by the SCI, most of them are covered by some of the most representative international databases in the field concerned. The study points out the importance of domestic journals in the field of Earth Sciences in Spain.     

Publications resulting from Spanish radiology meeting abstracts: Which, Where and Who

Summary Many abstracts submitted to medical meetings never come to full publication in peer-reviewed journals. From the 2,992 abstracts presented at the 1994-1998 Spanish Congresses of Radiology, 464 (15%) were published as full articles in journals covered by the Medline and IME (índice Médico Espa?ol), the Spanish medical database. The publication rate of oral presentations was higher than that of posters (18% versus 13%). Collaboration between radiologists and clinicians and between radiologists from different institutions increased full publication (21% and 27%, respectively) compared to abstracts from just one institution (14%). Therefore, oral presentations, multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration in the abstract predicted full publication.     

Effects of scholar’s gender and professional position on publishing productivity in different publication types. Analysis of a Finnish university

This paper examines the effects of a scholar’s position and gender on publishing productivity in several types of scientific publications: monographs, articles in journals, articles in edited books, and articles in conference proceedings. The data consist of 1,367 scholars who worked at the University of Helsinki, Finland, during the period 2002–2004. The analysis shows that professors are the most productive, PhDs publish more than non-PhDs, and men perform better than women, also when other scholarly characteristics are controlled for. These differences are greater for monographs and articles in edited books than for articles in journals. In terms of conference proceedings, no remarkable productivity differences were found.     

Cooperative research projects between the Spanish National Research Council and Latin-American institutions

Research projects in cooperation between Spanish National Research Council and Latin-American Organizations, that have been developed in the last eight years, were studied. Around forty Spanish research institutes have cooperated with Latin-American ones, mostly with Cuba, Chile, Brazil and Mexico. The interpretation of the collaboration rates with the different countries is discussed. Duration of the projects, number of researchers and research output were examined. The cooperation results were quantified through articles, presentations to congresses, reports, monographs, patents and thesis. Diffusion, languages and impact of the journals used for publication were studied. Non quantifiable outputs were also examined.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990.     

Scientific collaboration in Library and Information Science viewed through the Web of Knowledge: the Spanish case

This study analyzes the level of co-authorship of Spanish research in Library and Information Science (LIS) until 2009, the chronological development that has taken place, and the level of local, domestic and international cooperation. This bibliometric study was made using the data retrieved from the Web of Knowledge (WoK) following a dual strategy—on the one hand through the filter of the category Information Science & Library Science, and on the other hand through a subject search. In this way a significant number of works has been retrieved, some of which are in journals indexed in SCI or A&HCI and not in the SSCI. The results show a significant increase in all co-authorship, including publications in English and those involving international collaboration. As with the increase in Spanish participation in social science (WoK), this growth, coupled with the significant increase in Spanish scientific production in the area of LIS, suggests that the discipline in Spain has entered a more mature phase—although so far it has focused particularly on bibliometric studies.     

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.     

Advantages and limitations in the use of impact factor measures for the assessment of research performance

Impact factor is a quasi-qualitative indicator, which provides a measurement of the prestige and international visibility of journals. Although the use of impact factor-based indicators for science policy purposes has increased over the last two decades, several limitations have been pointed out and should be borne in mind. The use of impact factor should be treated carefully when applied to the analysis of peripheral countries, whose national journals are hardly covered by ISI databases. Our experience in the use of impact factor based indicators for the analysis of the Spanish scientific production is shown. The usefulness of the impact factor measures in macro, meso and micro analyses is displayed. In addition, the main advantages, such as the great accessibility of impact factor and its ready-to-use nature are pointed out. Several limitations such as the need to avoid inter-field comparisons or the convenience of using a fixed journal set for international comparisons are also stressed. It is worth noting that the use of impact factor in the research evaluation process has influenced strongly the publication strategy of scientists. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Filling the citation gap: measuring the multidimensional impact of the academic book at institutional level with PlumX

More than 5 years after their emergence, altmetrics are still seen as a promise to complement traditional citation-based indicators. However, no study has focused on their potential usefulness to capture the impact of scholarly books. While recent literature shows that citation indicators cannot fully capture the impact of books, other studies have suggested alternative indicators such as usage, publishers’ prestige or library holdings. In this paper, we calculate 18 indicators which range from altmetrics to library holdings, views, downloads or citations to the production of monographs of a Spanish university using the bibliometric suite PlumX from EBSCO. The objective of the study is to adopt a multidimensional perspective on the analysis of books and understand the level of complementarity between these different indicators. Also, we compare the overview offered by this range of indicators when applied to monographs with the traditional bibliometric perspective focused on journal articles and citation impact. We observe a low presence of altmetric indicators for monographs, even lower than for journal articles and a predominance of library holdings, confirming this indicator as the most promising one towards the analysis of the impact of books.     

Hypothetical influence of non-indexed Spanish medical journals on the impact factor of the Journal Citation Reports-indexed journals

The purpose of this study is to analyze the hypothetical changes in the 2002 impact factor (IF) of the biomedical journals included in the Science Citation Index-Journal Citation Reports (SCI-JCR) by also taking into account cites coming from 83 non-indexed Spanish journals on different medical specialties. A further goal of the study is to identify the subject categories of the SCI-JCR with the largest increase in their IF, and to estimate the 2002 hypothetical impact factor (2002 HIF) of these 83 non-indexed Spanish journals. It is demonstrated that the inclusion of cites from a selection of non SCI-JCR-indexed Spanish medical journals in the SCI-JCR-indexed journals produces a slight increase in their 2002 IF, specially in journals edited in the USA and in the UK. More than half of the non-indexed Spanish journals has a higher 2002 HIF than that of the SCI-JCR-indexed journal with the lowest IF in the same subject category.     

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.     

The use of multiple databases in the assesment of research. An application in the field of plant science

This paper argues the convenience of considering multiple databases in order to obtain a reliable set of scientific indicators in case of fields that includes a variety of disciplines. With this aim we analyse the Spanish scientific output in Plant Sciences regarding mainstream literature covered by SCI database and that published in domestic journals covered by ICYT database. This method allows us to obtain two different profiles of research. These results clearly underly the need to consider these databases jointly, thus avoiding potential inaccuracies induced by the use of the SCI as the only information source to be considered for the assessment of research.     

Spanish scientific and technical journals. State of the art

This article analyses the current situation in the field of scientific and technical journals published in Spain, by determining the following scientific indicators for each: I: Specifications. II: Scientific production covered. III: Visibility and accessibility. The first section provides a qualitative and quantitative study of the journals, asking what subjects they cover, who publishes them, how often they are published, how up to data they are and whether the way they are presented meets international publishing standards. The second section analyses scientific production by research sectors and the percentage of articles collected in the ICYT database compared with the total number of papers published in the journals studied. It also studies the reference habits of the authors published therein to identify whether the literature referred to is of local origin or international. Finally, the third section deduces these journals' degree of visibility by analysing how they are distributed amongst the usual media, i.e. international periodicals directories and databases, and how efficiently they work as vehicles for the diffusion of research by foreign authors. The study covers 10 years (1980–1989), thus enabling to recognise past and current trends in Spanish scientific literature.     

Scientists' performance and consolidation of research teams in Biology and Biomedicine at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research

Summary Empirical evidence is given on how membership in a consolidated, well-established research team provides researchers with some competitive advantage as compared to their colleagues in non-consolidated teams. Data were obtained from a survey of researchers ascribed to the 'Biology and Biomedicine' area of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research, as well as from their curricula vitae. One quarter of the scientists work as members of teams in the process of consolidation. Our findings illustrate the importance, for the development and consolidation of research teams, of the availability of a minimum number of researchers with a permanent position and of a minimum number of support staff and non-staff personnel (mainly post-doctoral fellows). Consolidation of research teams has a clear influence on the more academic-oriented quantitative indicators of the scientific activity of individuals. Researchers belonging to consolidated teams perform quantitatively better than their colleagues in terms of the number of articles published in journals covered in the Journal Citation Reports, but not in terms of the impact of these publications. Consolidation favours publication, but not patenting, and it also has a positive effect on the academic prestige of scientists and on their capacity to train new researchers. It does not significantly foster participation in funded R&D projects, nor does it influence the establishment of international collaborations. Impact is influenced to a remarkable degree by seniority and professional background, and is significantly greater for young scientists who have spent time abroad at prestigious research laboratories.     

Measuring China"s research performance using the Science Citation Index

This contribution focuses on the application of bibliometric techniques to research activities in China, based on data extracted from the Science Citation Index (SCI) and related Citation Indexes, produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The main conclusion is that bibliometric analyses based on the ISI databases in principle provide useful and valid indicators of the international position of Chinese research activities, provided that these analyses deal properly with the relatively large number of national Chinese journals covered by the ISI indexes. It is argued that it is important to distinguish between a national and an international point of view. In order to assess the Chinese research activities from a national perspective, it is appropriate to use the scientific literature databases with a good coverage of Chinese periodicals, such as the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), produced at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Assessment of the position of Chinese research from an international perspective should be based on the ISI databases, but it is suggested to exclude national Chinese journals from this analysis. In addition it is proposed to compute an indicator of international publication activity, defined as the percentage of articles in journals processed for the ISI indexes, with the national Chinese journals being removed, relative to the total number of articles published either in national Chinese or in other journals, regardless of whether these journals are processed for the ISI indexes or not. This indicator can only be calculated by properly combining CSCD and ISI indexes. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Can a bibliometric indicator predict the success of an analgesic?

In the assessment of success of new analgesic drugs over the past 50 years (Kissin, Anesth Analg 110:780–789, 2010) we observed a difference in the publication response to a new drug between biomedical journals in general and top journals: number of published articles on a drug increased (and declined) more rapidly in the top journals. Based on this phenomenon we present a new publication indicator—the Top Journal Selectivity Index (TJSI). It represents the ratio between the number of all types of articles in the top 20 biomedical journals and the number of articles in all (>5,000) journals covered by Medline, over 5 years after a drug’s introduction. Ten analgesics developed during the period 1986–2009 were selected for analysis. Three publication indices were used for assessment: the number of all types of articles presented in Medline, the number of articles covering only randomized controlled trials (RCT), and the Top Journal Selectivity Index. We also assessed the success score in the development of these analgesics based on the following criteria: novelty of molecular target, analgesic efficacy, and response by the pharmaceutical market. The relationships between the publication indices and analgesic’s success score were determined with the use of the Pearson correlation coefficient. Positive relationship was found only with the Top Journal Selectivity Index (r = 0.876, p < 0.001). We suggest that this index can predict success in drug development at least in the field of analgesics.