Synthesizing scientometric paterns in Spanish educational research

Educational research systems as the Spanish one can be studied using scientometric tools. Here 41 secondary-bibliometric studies are synthesized in a tertiary study, which could illuminate the nature of this research system, revealing at the same time its underlying framework. A clustering procedure reveals how this system has been scientometrically approached through the time. ILE was a progressive pedagogical initiative conceived as a series of private teaching centers with a liberal and middle class ideology opposite to the traditional catholic stance. ILE was open at 1876 and closed at the end of the Spanish civil war (1936–39) as a reprisal by general Franco’s regime.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Structure and research performance of Spanish universities

The aim of this paper is to describe Spanish universities by means of structural, input and output indicators, to explore the relationship between those indicators and to analyse university behaviour in different dimensions. Seniority of the universities and environmental conditions are taken into account, together with input and output indicators, as well as others related to the networks and links established. Our results will contribute to the knowledge of the university research system in Spain, producing data that could be useful for research management at the institutional, regional and national level.     

A bibliometric evaluation of the research performance of British university politics departments: Publications in leading journals

The research performance of 41 British university politics departments was evaluated through an analysis of articles published between 1987 and 1992 in nine European politics journals with the highest citation impact factors. Annual performance scores were obtained by dividing each department's number of publications in these journals in each year (departmental productivity) by the corresponding departmental size. These scores were summed to obtain a research performance score for each department over the period of assessment. They correlate significantly with research performance scores from two previous studies using different methodologies: Crewe's per capita simple publication count for the years 1978 to 1984, and the Universities Funding Council's research selectivity ratings covering the years 1989 to 1992.     

Applying educational research to design education

This paper is a brief review of recent trends in educational research, with some comments on applying research methods in the context of design education. The recent trends in educational research are identified as being linked with classroom practice, and include case studies, action research and phenomeno-logical methods. Some examples are given of these types of educational research. The paper concludes with suggestions for classroom-based research that teachers themselves can do.     

Research on impact evaluation of open access journals

Scientometrics - Impact evaluation of open access journals represent how citation indicator and open metric indicators may be affected by open access. Citation indicators and open metric indicators...     

The classification of biomedical journals by research level

A new method of classification of biomedical research journals by research level (RL) into clinical or basic, or somewhere in between, is described that updates the system developed by CHI Research Inc. nearly 30 years ago. It is based on counting articles that have one of about 100 “clinical” title words, or one of a similar number of “basic” title words, or both. It allows over 3000 journals in the Science Citation Index (or other databases) to be classified rapidly and transparently, for changes in their research level with time, and for many individual papers in “mixed” journals to be categorised as clinical or basic. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Impact and visibility of Norwegian,Finnish and Spanish journals in the fields of humanities

Scientometrics - This article analyses the impact and visibility of scholarly journals in the humanities that are publishing in the national languages in Finland, Norway and Spain. Three types of...     

Facebook in educational research: a bibliometric analysis

Facebook has become the object of research in different areas. The present study presents a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature related to the use of this social network in educational research. To this end, bibliometric techniques were applied in the analysis of scientific articles indexed at the Web of Science Core Collection, from Thomson Reuters, and linked to the research areas of Education/Educational Research. This resulted in the identification of, among others, developments in scientific production, the most important journals that publish papers on the topic, the main authors and the main articles published in the area. The results indicate the growth of scientific production in the area from 2008 onwards, pointing to Computers and Education as the most relevant journal by number of publications (22) and impact factor and indicate that authors from the United States, Australia, Taiwan, United Kingdom and South Africa stand out in the construction of knowledge on educational research applying Facebook. Moreover, the ego-network of the Educational Research area shows that this area coexists with other areas of knowledge in the use of social networking, such as Computer Science, Linguistics and Health Sciences, indicating an interdisciplinary and transversal nature in different areas of research.     

The journals in physics that publish Nobel Prize research

Scientometrics - We use the Nobel Foundations Scientific Background material to determine which journals have published Nobel Prize-awarded papers in physics since 1995. Analysing all references in...     

Authorship patterns in theory based versus research based journals

This article examines authorship pattern in two theory based journals, one American and one Canadian. Data were collected on the number of single, double, and multiple authors from 1955 to 1994 inEducational Theory and from 1970 to 1994 in theJournal of Educational Thought. The years were, in turn, divided into eight and five five-year intervals respectively. Frequencies and percentages were generated for each interval and chi-squares were computed between intervals and overall. In addition, author/article ratios were calculated for each year forEducational Theory. Results revealed that the majority of authorships were single in both journals regardless of the date of publication. These findings further challenge de Solla Price's predictions that co-and multiple authorships would eventually outnumber single authorships. The failure to distinguish between journal type and to allow for discrepancies within disciplines raises new concerns about conclusions drawn, to date, in the literature.     

Co-authorship and citation networks in Spanish history of science research

This paper studies cooperation patterns in Spain between science history researchers by analysing co-authorship in the scientific publications of the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and the Science Citation Index (SCI) databases.     

Power laws of research output. Evidence for journals of economics

In this paper we examine the validity of Lotka's law and Zipf'slaw for research output in 15 top journals of economics in the period 1977to 1997. Our data for individual authors satisfy a general form of Lotka'slaw. We find increasing competition over time among economists on the individuallevel. However, publications in top journals are concentrated heavily whenthe institutional level is under consideration. Research output of institutionscan be fit adequately by Zipf's law. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Scientific literature cited in USPTO patent documents as indicators for the evaluation and analysis of Spanish scientific research in biomedical disciplines

The use of indicators based on the analysis of the scientific literature cited in patent documents is proposed for the evaluation of biomedical research. A study carried out on several groups of researchers working in universities, public research centers, and hospitals, has shown that an important percentage of Spanish scientists have authored publications that are cited in US patents in the field of Biotechnology. The study and analysis of those cites allows a evaluation of the flow of knowledge generated by the different groups of scientists towards the development of technologies, and to learn on the relationship between the characteristics of the cited publications and the frequency they are cited in the patents. The results obtained avail the use of new indicators based on the cites in patents to perform a more complete evaluation of the published research related with Biotechnology and Biomedicine, both at the level of research institutions and individual scientists.     

Toward a classification of Spanish scholarly journals in social sciences and humanities considering their impact and visibility

Scientometrics - The characteristics of the production and dissemination of scientific activity in social sciences and humanities make such endeavours less visible than other areas in international...     

Policies regarding public availability of published research data in pediatrics journals

Scientometrics - Sharing research data is an increasingly necessary requirement for the advancement of science. The goal of this paper is twofold. First, to analyze the policies on openness in...