Popular science publishing

The article gives an overview of the extent of popular science publishing and contributions to public debate, as compared to scientific publishing among faculty members at Norwegian universities. Faculty publish far fewer articles for the lay public than publications for their specialist colleagues. There are, however, clear field differences in this respect. The most productive researchers in terms of scientific publishing are also the most prolific in nonscientific publishing.     

On the money value of peer review

Scientometrics - Peer review is commonly recognized among the cornerstones of the scientific publishing system and, less narrowly, of scientific production in general. Although it plays such a...     

Digital publishing and China’s core scientific journals: a position paper

In this position paper we discuss the current status of the core scientific journals in China. Based on discussions of journals’ relation to a small group of full-text database providers, open access publishing and copyright problems, we conclude that China’s digital publishing industry is not yet in a healthy state and some key issues related to revenue, digital piracy and copyright must be solved.     

Scientific publishing and global university rankings. How well are top publishing universities recognized?

Scientometrics - The paper asks to what extent the top 200 universities in scientific publishing in four research fields are the same universities that occupy the top 200 positions in global...     

Are firms withdrawing from basic research? An analysis of firm-level publication behaviour in Germany

Scientometrics - Previous research has expressed concerns about firms engaging less in basic research. We contribute to this debate by studying trends in the scientific publishing activities of...     

A systemic view of British science

Systemic analyses of national research systems are now within the reach of bibliometricians. By systemic we mean comprehensive, time series, institutionally based, sectoral level analyses of national research output. This paper describes such an analysis for the UK, a system comprising 8% of world scientific output. The paper analyses publishing size and the number of publishing institutions for each sector. Then each sector's intra-sectoral, inter-sectoral and international collaboration is assessed. The paper then examines the data by field, looking at sector publishing profiles across fields, and at how the collaborative patterns vary between fields. It concludes with a summary profile of each institutional sector.     

Natural selection of academic papers

Academic papers, like genes, code for ideas or technological innovations that structure and transform the scientific organism and consequently the society at large. Genes are subject to the process of natural selection which ensures that only the fittest survive and contribute to the phenotype of the organism. The process of selection of academic papers, however, is far from natural. Commercial for-profit publishing houses have taken control over the evaluation and access to scientific information with serious consequences for the dissemination and advancement of knowledge. Academic authors and librarians are reacting by developing an alternative publishing system based on free-access journals and self-archiving in institutional repositories and global disciplinary libraries. Despite the emergence of such trends, the journal monopoly, rather than the scientific community, is still in control of selecting papers and setting academic standards. Here we propose a dynamical and transparent peer review process, which we believe will accelerate the transition to a fully open and free-for-all science that will allow the natural selection of the fittest ideas.     

An efficient ontology-based topic-specific article recommendation model for best-fit reviewers

Scientometrics - In general peer review is accredited as the vital and utmost cornerstone of the scientific publishing and research developments. Undeniably, the reviewers play a decisive role in...     

Are predatory journals undermining the credibility of science? A bibliometric analysis of citers

Warnings against publishing in predatory journals are plentiful and so are the suggested solutions to the problem. The existing studies all confirm that authors of articles published in potential predatory journals are typically young, inexperienced and from Asia or Africa. To what extend we can consider the problem negligible is determined by the impact they are having on the scholarly communication in terms of publications and citations. The existing literature can provide more information about the former than the latter. This paper is an analysis of potential predatory journals as well as potential poor scientific standards journals. Citations to 124 potential predatory journals and poor scientific standards journals are looked up in Scopus and the citing authors analysed in regards to geographic location, publications and citations. The results show that the characteristics of the citing author indeed resemble those of the publishing author. Implications for recommendations and future research are discussed.     

Some scientometric measures of publishing performance for 85 Hungarian research institutes

A sample comprising the three years publication output (1976–1978) of 85 Hungarian research institutes was subjected to scientometric analysis. Values of and correlations between some measures of publishing performance, scientific manpower, and citation impact were compared across the following research fields: mathematical and physical sciences, chemical sciences, biological and medical sciences, agricultural sciences, and engineering. A new quality measure of publishing performance, thetotal impact of the journal papers of individual institutes has been suggested.     

Published Papers, Tacit Competencies and Corporate Management of the Public/Private Character of Knowledge

This paper focuses on the movement of scientific and technologicalknowledge. It explores companies' reasons for publishing inthe scientific and technical literature; reasons that turn onthe need to link with other research organizations. The analysisbegins by establishing that firms do indeed publish. Such publishingmediates links with other organizations, serving to signal thepresence of tacit knowledge and to build the technical reputationnecessary to engage in the barter-governed exchange of scientificand technical knowledge. Similar processes are seen in otherareas of technical knowledge exchange.     

Scientific output in Argentina 1966–1983

A scientometric analysis of Argentinian science output during two decades focuses on authorship, as a measure of Argentina scientific size. Comparison is made with more competitive countries like Spain and Brasil. A relative decline in the rate of authors increase was found for Argentina and the derived loss of positions in the publishing authors international ranking was demonstrated. The possible influence of political turmoil and unstable scientific policies is discussed.     

Characterizing a scientific elite (B): publication and citation patterns of the most highly cited scientists in environmental science and ecology

Science is principally driven by the efforts of a vanishingly small fraction of researchers publishing the majority of scientific research and garnering the majority of citations. Despite this well-established trend, knowledge of exactly how many articles these researchers publish, how highly they are cited, and how they achieved their distinctive accomplishments is meager. This article examines the publication and citation patterns of the world’s most highly cited environmental scientists and ecologists, inquiring into their levels of scientific productivity and visibility, examining relationships between scientific productivity and quality within their research programs, and considering how different publication strategies contribute to these distinctive successes. Generally speaking, highly cited researchers are also highly productive, publishing on average well over 100 articles each. Furthermore, articles published by this group are more highly cited on average than articles published in premier generalist journal like Nature and Science, and their citation to publication ratios are more equitably distributed than is typical. Research specialization and primacy of authorship are important determinants of citation frequency, while geographic differences and collaborative propensity matter less. The article closes with a set of suggestions for those wishing to increase the use of their research by the scientific community.     

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.     

Open access

An Editorial from a few years ago had as a title ‘TheTimes Change and We Change With Them’. So, it seems thatwe may again be changing with the times. My first experiencewith publishing an article in a scientific journal was in 1969.At that time, my     

Bibliometrics and internet: Some observations and expectations

Electronic publishing developments and new information technology in general will affect the main functions of scientific communication. Most changes however will be primarily technological but not conceptual. Publication via journals of high reputation is in most fields of science crucial to receive professional recognition. That will remain so in the ihelectronic erale. A much more revolutionary change in science will be the increasing availability and sharing of research data.     

An investigation into diabetes researcher’s perceptions of the Journal Impact Factor — reconsidering evaluating research

Currently the Journal Impact Factors (JIF) attracts considerable attention as components in the evaluation of the quality of research in and between institutions. This paper reports on a questionnaire study of the publishing behaviour and researchers preferences for seeking new knowledge information and the possible influence of JIF on these variables. 54 Danish medical researchers active in the field of Diabetes research took part. We asked the researchers to prioritise a series of scientific journals with respect to which journals they prefer for publishing research and gaining new knowledge. In addition we requested the researchers to indicate whether or not the JIF of the prioritised journals has had any influence on these decisions. Furthermore we explored the perception of the researchers as to what degree the JIF could be considered a reliable, stable or objective measure for determining the scientific quality of journals. Moreover we asked the researchers to judge the applicability of JIF as a measure for doing research evaluations. One remarkable result is that app. 80% of the researchers share the opinion that JIF does indeed have an influence on which journals they would prefer for publishing. As such we found a statistically significant correlation between how the researchers ranked the journals and the JIF of the ranked journals. Another notable result is that no significant correlation exists between journals where the researchers actually have published papers and journals in which they would prefer to publish in the future measured by JIF. This could be taken as an indicator for the actual motivational influence on the publication behaviour of the researchers. That is, the impact factor actually works in our case. It seems that the researchers find it fair and reliable to use the Journal Impact Factor for research evaluation purposes.