Critical Aspects of the Danish Welfare State — as Revealed by Issue Tracking

The paper examines the applicability of informetric methods to trace the pattern of debate about the three main critical issues of the modern Welfare State in Denmark: economic aspects, legitimacy and functionality. The methodology of issue tracking is used to follow the developments of these issues in periods through national databases of various types covering information about the research, implementation, press and legislation aspects. The approach taken is novel in that it implements and tests issue tracking in this area of social sciences, and tries to reduce subjectivity in the analysis of trends influencing social policy and public opinion. The study aims to show how the emerging data and text mining techniques can be applied to integrate downloaded bibliographic data with other types of information in a strategic mix.     

Approach to the Cuban scientific activity by using publication based quantitative indicators (1985–1989)

An estimation about Cuban scientific productivity based on output indicators during the period 1985–1989 is provided. Nine international bibliographic databases and three Cuban repertories have been used. Except for journal articles, no other type of Cuban document gets worldwide recognition as they are not generally included in the international databases. The greater effort in research is made in Agriculture, Biomedicine, Chemistry and Engineering, but this last topic does not reach international visibility, since the majority of its results are published in local journals. The Cuban contribution to the mainstream of world science is increasing annually. Collaboration in high level research projects existed mainly between Cuba and either USSR, German Democratic Republic and Italy. The most productive Cuban institutions in collaborative programs are the Havana University and the Academy of Sciences.     

The rise of China in gastroenterology? A bibliometric analysis of ISI and Medline databases

Summary China has made great progress in economy and science in the last two decades. Its scientific development in gastroenterology has been seldom reported. Using two authoritative bibliographic databases, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) and Medline, we analyze China's research output in gastroenterology journals from 1990 to 2004. After detailed analysis, we found that China have greatly advanced in gastroenterology research, but the growth of Chinese articles in gastroenterology journals can largely be attributed to the selection of China-based journals into international bibliographic databases.     

Assessment of research fields in Scopus and Web of Science in the view of national research evaluation in Slovenia

Web of Science (wos) and scopus have often been compared with regard to user interface, countries, institutions, author sets, etc., but rarely employing a more systematic assessment of major research fields and national production. The aim of this study was to appraise the differences among major research fields in scopus and wos based on a standardized classification of fields and assessed for the case of an entire country (Slovenia). We analyzed all documents and citations received by authors who were actively engaged in research in Slovenia between 1996 and 2011 (50,000 unique documents by 10,000 researchers). Documents were tracked and linked to scopus and wos using complex algorithms in the Slovenian cobiss bibliographic system and sicris research system where the subject areas or research fields of all documents are harmonized by the Frascati/oecd classification, thus offsetting some major differences between wos and scopus in database-specific subject schemes as well as limitations of deriving data directly from databases. scopus leads over wos in indexed documents as well as citations in all research fields. This is especially evident in social sciences, humanities, and engineering & technology. The least citations per document were received in humanities and most citations in medical and natural sciences, which exhibit similar counts. Engineering & technology reveals only half the citations per document compared to the previous two fields. Agriculture is found in the middle. The established differences between databases and research fields provide the Slovenian research funding agency with additional criteria for a more balanced evaluation of research.     

Promoting scientodiversity inspired by biodiversity

Diversity of science (variety in and balance among research subjects) is often regarded as a key driver of innovation, but it is typically understood by means of heuristics, given the lack of precise formulations such as those found in biodiversity studies. From the policy perspective, a standard methodology for characterization of diversity of science is needed to enable the efficient management and breeding of diverse research responsive to socio-economic demands. We investigated the distribution of research subjects in a bibliographic database to develop a framework of diversity of science analogous to that of biodiversity. Our analysis of the distribution of research subjects among countries suggests that diversity of science has similar statistical characteristics as biodiversity. We find that number of research subjects follows log-normal distribution for almost all countries and indicates linear dependency on research budget in log–log plot. We also identify an inflection point in the subject–budget relationship curve. The results may validate the adoption of sophisticated concepts and techniques from biodiversity work in “scientodiversity” studies.     

Coping with the problem of subject classification diversity

The delimitation of a research field in bibliometric studies presents the problem of the diversity of subject classifications used in the sources of input and output data. Classification of documents according to thematic codes or keywords is the most accurate method, mainly used in specialised bibliographic or patent databases. Classification of journals in disciplines presents lower specificity, and some shortcomings as the change over time of both journals and disciplines and the increasing interdisciplinarity of research. Differences in the criteria in which input and output data classifications are based obliges to aggregate data in order to match them. Standardization of subject classifications emerges as an important point in bibliometric studies in order to allow international comparisons, although flexibility is needed to meet the needs of local studies.     

Measuring regional science networks in China: a comparison of international and domestic bibliographic data sources

Bibliographic databases are frequently used and analysed for the purpose of assessing the capacity and performance of individual researchers or entire research systems. Many of the advantages and disadvantages are the subject of continued discussion in the relevant literature, although only rarely with respect to the regional dimension of scientific publication activity. The importance of the regional dimension of science is reflected in many theoretical concepts, ranging from innovation system theories to territorial cluster concepts and learning regions. This article makes use of the extensive information found in bibliographic data and assesses the reliability of this information as a proxy indicator for the spatial dimension of scientific collaboration in emerging economies. This is undertaken using the example of the emerging field of biotechnology in China from 2000 onwards. Two data sets have been prepared: (1) the frequently used ISI Web of Knowledge database (SCI-Expanded) and (2) the domestic Chinese Chongqing VIP database. Both data sources were analysed using a variety of bibliometric and network scientific methods. The structural and topological similarity of networks, built from co-authorship data, is apparent between the two databases. At an abstract level, general network forces are present, resulting in similar network sizes, clustering, or assortativity. However, introducing additional complexity through regional subdivision reveals many differences between the two data sources that must be accounted for in the analytic design of future scientometric research in dynamic spaces.     

Access to third world science in international scientific and technical bibliographic databases

For the past eight years, the author has been examining trends in access to international scientific literature in major international bibliographic databases available on various information systems. A major portion of the research program examined and compared the languages of documents and countries of publication for items published between 1970–1990 and recorded on MEDLINE, PsycInfo, BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts, and other databases on the DIALOG system. The second phase of this study examines the remaining scientific databases on DIALOG, including MATHFILE and AGRICOLA. A comparison of the international range of MEDLINE and EMBASE has also recently been completed. In order to attempt to assess actual amounts of literature produced, the Unesco statistics for literature production have been studied. In the course of this research, the author encountered a variety of system attributes that affect the ways in which Third World science can be identified. Some of the policies and procedures of database development that affect the inclusion of Third World science have been identified.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990.     

R&D dynamics and scientific breakthroughs in HIV/AIDS drugs development: the case of Integrase Inhibitors

Transformations and applications of scientific knowledge into new technologies are usually complex interactive processes. Is it possible to detect, from bibliographic information alone, structural alterations and significant events within these processes that may indicate breakthrough discoveries? In this empirical study we focus on R&D processes leading to HIV/AIDS medicines called Integrase Inhibitors. Where scientific progress and discoveries are reflected in research papers, patents signify inventions and technological achievements. Our temporal analysis of distinctive events in this R&D area, tracing trends within both bibliographic information sources, is driven by three bibliometric indicators: (1) contributions of ‘bridging researchers’ who are also inventors, (2) ‘key papers’ that subject experts in the field considered milestones in the research process, and (3) the multidisciplinary impact of those papers. The main results indicate that a combination of key papers, bridging researchers and multidisciplinary impact might help track potential ‘Charge type’ breakthrough developments.     

Visualizing the research on pervasive and ubiquitous computing

The aim of this paper is to identify the research status quo on pervasive and ubiquitous computing via scientometric analysis. Information visualization and knowledge domain visualization techniques were adopted to determine how the study of pervasive and ubiquitous computing has evolved. A total of 5,914 papers published between 1995 and 2009 were retrieved from the Web of Science with a topic search of pervasive or ubiquitous computing. CiteSpace is a java application for analyzing and visualizing a wide range of networks from bibliographic data. By use of it, we generated the subject category network to identify the leading research fields, the research power network to find out the most productive countries and institutes, the journal co-citation map to identify the distribution of core journals, the author co-citation map to identify key scholars and their co-citation patterns, the document co-citation network to reveal the ground-breaking literature and detect the co-citation clusters on pervasive and ubiquitous computing, and depicted the hybrid network of keywords and noun phrases to explore research foci on pervasive and ubiquitous computing over the entire span 1995–2009.     

Forty years of World Patent Information: A bibliometric overview

World Patent Information (WPI) is the leading international academic peer reviewed journal in the field of patent information. The journal was launched in 1979 and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019. In recognition of this event, the aim of this work is to analyse the main actors, research themes and audiences of WPI. The analyses are based on the Scopus and Web of Science databases and include bibliographic coupling, co-citation and co-occurrence of author keywords. WPI is a boundary-spanning journal with authors from academia, industry and governmental organisations, such as patent authorities. This unique composition provides a prominent platform for knowledge transfer between academia and industry. In addition, WPI facilitates knowledge transfer between academia and industry, with research institutions citing contributions from authors affiliated to industry and patent offices. Furthermore, WPI not only crosses the boundaries between organisations (academia, industry and government), but also across disciplines, linking IP management, technology and innovation management, engineering, computer sciences, physical and natural sciences.     

Is Google Scholar useful for bibliometrics? A webometric analysis

Google Scholar, the academic bibliographic database provided free-of-charge by the search engine giant Google, has been suggested as an alternative or complementary resource to the commercial citation databases like Web of Knowledge (ISI/Thomson) or Scopus (Elsevier). In order to check the usefulness of this database for bibliometric analysis, and especially research evaluation, a novel approach is introduced. Instead of names of authors or institutions, a webometric analysis of academic web domains is performed. The bibliographic records for 225 top level web domains (TLD), 19,240 university and 6,380 research centres institutional web domains have been collected from the Google Scholar database. About 63.8% of the records are hosted in generic domains like .com or .org, confirming that most of the Scholar data come from large commercial or non-profit sources. Considering only institutions with at least one record, one-third of the other items (10.6% from the global) are hosted by the 10,442 universities, while 3,901 research centres amount for an additional 7.9% from the total. The individual analysis show that universities from China, Brazil, Spain, Taiwan or Indonesia are far better ranked than expected. In some cases, large international or national databases, or repositories are responsible for the high numbers found. However, in many others, the local contents, including papers in low impact journals, popular scientific literature, and unpublished reports or teaching supporting materials are clearly overrepresented. Google Scholar lacks the quality control needed for its use as a bibliometric tool; the larger coverage it provides consists in some cases of items not comparable with those provided by other similar databases.     

A new methodological approach to bibliographic coupling and its application to the national,regional and institutional level

In an earlier study the authors have shown that bibliographic coupling techniques can be used to identify hot research topics. The methodology is based on appropriate thresholds for both number of related documentsand the strength of bibliographic links. Those papers are calledcore documents that have more than 9 links of at least the strength 0.25 according toSalton's measure, provided they are articles, notes or reviews. This choice resulted in a selection of nearly one per cent of all papers of the above types recorded in the 1992 annual cumulation of the SCI.Core documents proved important nodes in the network of documented science communication.In the present study, the set ofcore documents is analysed by journals, subfields and corporate addresses. The latter analysis is conducted on both national and regional-institutional level. First all countries which have published at least 20 core documents in 1992 are investigated in terms of their research profiles, their international collaboration patterns and their citation impact. Finally, those eight members of the European Union which have published at least 20 core documents in 1992 are analysed in respect of regional and institutional distribution of core documents.     

Reconstructing the Indigenous in African Management Research

• The primary aim of this article is to help lay the foundations for mainstreaming indigenous research within international and cross-cultural management studies, taking sub-Saharan Africa as the primary and initial focus, and using the informal economy as an example.
• It sets out to critically examine the concept of indigenous, looking at how concepts and scholarship have been shaped by global dynamics, and the implications for developing empirical management research. It then discusses a research agenda and methods for undertaking indigenous management research, going on to discuss the importance of this to the further development of international and cross-cultural management within a global and changing context.
• Its contribution to scholarship is a more systematic re-examining of the concepts of indigenousness and indigenous knowledge drawing on a range of disciplines and what these concepts mean to undertaking management research that more thoroughly reflect global realities, while evaluating indigenous research methods that could be used effectively and appropriately in this endeavour.

     

Displaying content of scientific journals: A co-heading analysis

A co-heading analysis is proposed for representing the subject content of scientific journals. It is based on the subject headings assigned to documents before their input in bibliographic databases. The method utilizes specifically the co-appearance of headings in the document records to display the subject scope of a given journal not only by the topics covered but by their relationships as well. This analysis is applied in superconductivity for displaying the content of some physics journals using data from 1984 Physics Abstracts. The results (in the form of inclusion maps) could help information scientists and library staff in evaluating and selecting appropriate journals.     

Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Research on ‘Born Global’ Firms and INVs: A Citation/Co-citation Analysis

The present research paper shows the results of an analysis of the existing literature on one of the topics that has sparked the most interest among scholars and researchers in the fields of international management and entrepreneurship: born global firms or international new ventures. Concretely, with the aim of identifying and visualising the intellectual structure of research on this phenomenon, a total of 124 research papers whose titles contain the above terms are analysed. The methodology is mainly based on the bibliometric techniques of document citation and co-citation analyses and the analysis of social networks.     

Search where you will find most: Comparing the disciplinary coverage of 56 bibliographic databases

Scientometrics - This paper introduces a novel scientometrics method and applies it to estimate the subject coverages of many of the popular English-focused bibliographic databases in academia. The...     

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.     

The distribution of bibliographic records in databases using different counting methods for duplicate records

Knowing how records on a particular topic are distributed over databases is useful for both practical and theoretical reasons; however little work in this area appears to have been done. This paper examines the distribution of records on the topic of “Fuzzy Set Theory” in over 100 bibliographic databases and determines whether the distribution of records over databases is similar to the traditional Bradford hyperbolic distribution of records over journals. Different methods for counting duplicate records between and within databases have been developed. A comparison of the various distributions based on these counting methods is presented; and the distributions are compared to results of earlier studies. The results also give an indication of the number of databases necessary to search for coverage of a literature to specified percentages using the different counting techniques developed in this study.     

Coverage analysis of Scopus: A journal metric approach

Our aim is to compare the coverage of the Scopus database with that of Ulrich, to determine just how homogenous it is in the academic world. The variables taken into account were subject distribution, geographical distribution, distribution by publishers and the language of publication. The analysis of the coverage of a product of this nature should be done in relation to an accepted model, the optimal choice being Ulrich’s Directory, considered the international point of reference for the most comprehensive information on journals published throughout the world. The results described here allow us to draw a profile of Scopus in terms of its coverage by areas — geographic and thematic — and the significance of peer-review in its publications. Both these aspects are highly pragmatic considerations for information retrieval, the evaluation of research, and the design of policies for the use of scientific databases in scientific promotion.