On the effects of the reunification on German researchers’ publication patterns

After developing independently following World War II, the research systems of East and West Germany reunited at the end of the Cold War, resulting in Westernization of East German Research institutions. Using data from the Web of Science over the 1980–2000 period, this paper analyses the effects of these political changes on the research activity of scholars from East and West Germany before and after the reunification. It shows that these groups differ in terms of levels of production, publication language, collaboration patterns and scientific impact and that, unsurprisingly, the scholarly output of the East became much more similar to that of the West after the reunification. At the level of individual researchers, analysis shows that East German researchers who had direct or indirect ties with the West prior to the 1990s were less affected by the reunification, or were perhaps quicker to adapt to this major change, than their colleagues who were more deeply rooted in the Eastern research system.     

International orientation,efficiency of and regard for research in East and West Germany: A bibliometric investigation of aspects of technology genesis in the United Germany

The efficiency of areas of science was evaluated using the DEA method. Areas achieving a maximum orientation or regard of international publication are rated as efficient. The areas of reproductive medicine, organic and inorganic chemistry in the former Federal Republic can thus be regarded as efficient areas of science. No area of scientific research in the former East Germany was able to achieve the optimum. The determinant in this connection is the adverse situation with respect to international orientation whilst no substantial difference in regard for further research could be detected between East and West German research.     

A review of operations management literature: a data-driven approach

Production and operations management has been a significant field of research for many years. However, other than an educated guess by researchers in the field or a perusal of textbook chapter titles, the major topics and their trends over time are not well established. This study provides a comprehensive review of production and operations management literature using a data-driven approach. We use Latent Semantic Analysis on 21,053 abstracts representing all publications in six leading operations management journals since their inception. 18 unique topic clusters were identified algorithmically. Just being aware of the history of research topics should be of great interest to all academics in the field, but to help future researchers we conducted three post hoc analyses: 1) analysis of methods used in all these studies, 2) citation rates by topic area over time, and 3) the growing prevalence of research covering multiple topics.     

Avoiding obscure topics and generalising findings produces higher impact research

Much academic research is never cited and may be rarely read, indicating wasted effort from the authors, referees and publishers. One reason that an article could be ignored is that its topic is, or appears to be, too obscure to be of wide interest, even if excellent scholarship produced it. This paper reports a word frequency analysis of 874,411 English article titles from 18 different Scopus natural, formal, life and health sciences categories 2009–2015 to assess the likelihood that research on obscure (rarely researched) topics is less cited. In all categories examined, unusual words in article titles associate with below average citation impact research. Thus, researchers considering obscure topics may wish to reconsider, generalise their study, or to choose a title that reflects the wider lessons that can be drawn. Authors should also consider including multiple concepts and purposes within their titles in order to attract a wider audience.     

A diachronic comparative study of research article titles in linguistics and literature journals

By investigating a total number of 1364 article titles extracted from seven SSCI-indexed linguistics journals and seven A&HCI-indexed literature journals between 1980 and 2018, this study attempts to present the prominent form features and content attributes of the titles and their diachronic variations, as well as the similarities or differences between the two disciplines regarding title features. Results show that article titles in both subject domains demonstrate consistency in the long-range trend of title length and informativity, enjoying a steady and linear growth in length and an increase with fluctuations in informativity. Nominal and compound structures are both frequently adopted in linguistics and literature journals, but the proportion of compound constructions has always been higher than that of nominal ones in literature journals over the past 39 years. Titles containing topical information enjoy the highest percentage from the 1980s to the 2010s in both linguistics and literature journals. However, in the recent decade, content information provided by linguistic article titles tends to be more diversified, presenting not only research topics, but also results, dataset and methods of the study. No significant variations between the two disciplines have been found in lexical diversity, both of which experienced an overall downward trend.

     

Titles in English-medium Astrophysics research articles

In this study we analyse a corpus of 300 randomly selected research paper titles written in English and published between 1998 and 2012 in the most prestigious journals in the field of Astrophysics, an under-researched discipline from a linguistic standpoint. We specifically address issues related to the evolution of titles, their length, their lexical density, their type distribution and their semantic content. Our findings reveal a trend towards relatively long titles with a high lexical density, a preference for nominal and simple titles over verbal and compound ones, a very low occurrence of question constructions, and a prevalence of purpose and results over methods as key research concepts expressed in titles. We compare our findings with the results of previous studies on titles in other scientific disciplines and provide explanations for the differences and similarities observed.     

Topic-based Pagerank: toward a topic-level scientific evaluation

Within the same research field, different subfields and topics may exhibit varied citation behaviors and scholarly communication patterns. For a more effect scientific evaluation at the topic level, this study proposes a topic-based PageRank approach. This approach aims to evaluate the scientific impact of research entities (e.g., papers, authors, journals, and institutions) at the topic-level. The proposed topic-based PageRank, when applied to a data set on library and information science publications, has effectively detected a variety of research topics and identified authors, papers, and journals of the highest impact from each topic. Evaluation results show that compared with the standard PageRank and a topic modeling technique, the proposed topic-based PageRank has the best performance on relevance and impact. Different perspectives of organizing scientific literature are also discussed and this study recommends the mode of organization that integrates stable research domains and dynamic topics.     

基于文献计量学的界面设计可用性中外对比研究

目的 全面对比分析国内外学界界面设计可用性研究的异同,发现我国目前研究现状及问题。方法 将国内外数据库Web of Science(WOS)以及China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)作为数据来源,通过科学文献计量学对现有文献资料进行可视化分析。结论 界面设计可用性研究国内外文献产出趋势较为一致,总体呈上升趋势,但近年来波动较大且有下降的发展趋势;工科、计算机相关学科的优势院校为研究主体;国内外的热点研究主题既有相似性又有异质性,相似性方面表现在研究主题总体一致均形成了四个主要研究聚类、国内外学界均重视用户研究,强调从用户角度出发以及均呈现出较强的学科交叉融合特性;异质性方面表现在国际学界更加重视基础理论研究,而国内学界则更多是具体的应用研究,国内学界数据收集、分析方法有待充实;研究创新性以及研究特色不强,亟需发展自己的研究特色是现阶段我国研究的主要局限。     

KeyGraph-based chance discovery for exploring the development of e-commerce topics

The purpose of this study is to integrate the method of chance discovery with visualization tools (KeyGraph) for presenting important and latent research topics in the e-commerce (EC) field. This study collects keywords and abstracts from 995 articles in four primary EC journals. To establish the professional terms of EC, this work divides EC development into three periods: the development of the Internet, the growth of information technology, and the extension of commerce applications. For exploring significant and latent EC topics, this study analyzes the differences and similarities between international and Taiwanese sources. Pursuing this approach yields three findings. First, this paper determines that the KeyGraph as a computing process and a visualization tool is an effective method for exploring future research topics. Second, international EC topics have different thematic characteristics at different phases and they are more diverse and extensive than Taiwanese sources. Third, a professional thesaurus is very helpful in identifying EC research topics. All these findings suggest Taiwanese scholars should pay more attention to research issues from international journals when studying EC.     

United Germany: The new scientific superpower?

As a consequence of the dramatic upheaval in East-Europe the German reunification has become one of the central problems of nowadays. Several relevant publications have more or less cautiously forecasted the rise of a new superpower in the midst of Europe. The present study attempts to shed light on some quantitative aspects of the research performance in both parts of Germany. Selected citation based indicators are used to determine the initial position and future of the United Germany in scientific research. Though the reunification involves an essential increase of the “scientific potential”, the actual indicator values exhort to rather cautious expectations concerning the immediate intensification of research performance.     

Vom Mittel der Familienplanung zum differenzierenden Lifestyle-Pr?parat

Based upon flyers and advertisements for the contraceptive pill from 1961 until 2005, this paper discusses the ways in which the drug and its female users were represented in the marketing of two West European countries, France and the German Federal Republic. As my analysis suggests, national differences are only discernible in the marketing until the end of the 1970s. In West Germany, the pill was depicted from early on as a contraceptive, whereas, due to the restrictive legal situation, in France the pill was marketed as a multi-purpose drug. Nevertheless, the sources in both countries emphasized the safety of the drug. Likewise the representations of women changed from the notion of the married mother to a more diverse image, including young, modern and active women. From the early 1980s on, French and German materials conformed to one another. Now more classification systems were developed, emphasizing the differences between types of pills and types of women. Lifestyle, leisure and fun became increasingly central topics. Correspondingly, the female user was often portrayed in a sexualized way and represented as an active consumer with individual needs and wishes.     

The growth and development of research in the field of ecology

This study assesses the growth, the patterns of development and the complexity of research in the field of ecology from 1976 to 1993 in Spain and the five Spanish speaking countries of the Caribbean. Using as a yardstick of research and development in that field, the dissertation titles were counted for each region. The total length, the key words per title were recorded and analysed statistically. Results show that the growth of research in ecology is greater in Spain and peaked earlier than in the Caribbean countries. However, the titles in the latter region were more complex than those in Spain.     

SCHUMPETER IN THE CONTEXT OF TWO CANONS OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

The publication of Schumpeter's "lost" seventh chapter--with the holistic and Faustian title "The economy as a whole", so typical of the German economic tradition--again raises the question of the 'duality' in Schumpeter's economic thinking: On the one hand Schumpeter's typical 'Germanic' approach, emphasizing dynamics, technical change and the entrepreneur, on the other hand his admiration for the mechanical economics of Walras. This paper attempts to explain Schumpeter's duality--his "schizophrenia"--by placing his work in the context of two different canons of economic thought, the standard mainstream canon (the ordnende and passivist-materialist tradition in Werner Sombart's terms) and what we have labelled "The Other Canon" (the verstehende and activist-idealist tradition in Sombart's terminology). The paper attempts to show that in the light of the now almost extinct Other Canon of economics, Schumpeter appears far less original than what he does to today's mainstream. It is argued that while the Harvard Economics Department during Schumpeter's tenure there moved away from the Other Canon type economics, Schumpeter found ample support and research activity in this alternative canon of economics at Harvard Business School. The paper explores the possible influences and similarities of thought on Schumpeter from three economists associated with Harvard Business School: Herbert Somerton Foxwell, Edwin Gay and Fritz Redlich.     

Discovering cross-topic collaborations among researchers by exploiting weighted association rules

Identifying the most relevant scientific publications on a given topic is a well-known research problem. The Author-Topic Model (ATM) is a generative model that represents the relationships between research topics and publication authors. It allows us to identify the most influential authors on a particular topic. However, since most research works are co-authored by many researchers the information provided by ATM can be complemented by the study of the most fruitful collaborations among multiple authors. This paper addresses the discovery of research collaborations among multiple authors on single or multiple topics. Specifically, it exploits an exploratory data mining technique, i.e., weighted association rule mining, to analyze publication data and to discover correlations between ATM topics and combinations of authors. The mined rules characterize groups of researchers with fairly high scientific productivity by indicating (1) the research topics covered by their most cited publications and the relevance of their scientific production separately for each topic, (2) the nature of the collaboration (topic-specific or cross-topic), (3) the name of the external authors who have (occasionally) collaborated with the group either on a specific topic or on multiple topics, and (4) the underlying correlations between the addressed topics. The applicability of the proposed approach was validated on real data acquired from the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man catalog of genetic disorders and from the PubMed digital library. The results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

     

Identifying economics’ place amongst academic disciplines: a science or a social science?

Different academic disciplines exhibit different styles, including styles in journal titles. Using data from the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK we are able to identify the stylistic trends of different disciplines using 155,552 journal titles across all disciplines. Cluster analysis is then used to group the different disciplines together. The resulting identification fits the social sciences, the sciences and the arts and humanities reasonably well. Economics overall, fits best with philosophy, but the linkage is weak. When we divided economics into papers published in theory, econometrics and the remaining journals, the first two link with mathematics and computer science, particularly econometrics, and thence the sciences. The rest of economics then links with business and thence the social sciences.     

SCHUMPETER IN THE CONTEXT OF TWO CANONS OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

The publication of Schumpeter's "lost" seventh chapter--with the holistic and Faustian title "The economy as a whole", so typical of the German economic tradition--again raises the question of the ''duality'' in Schumpeter's economic thinking: On the one hand Schumpeter's typical ''Germanic'' approach, emphasizing dynamics, technical change and the entrepreneur, on the other hand his admiration for the mechanical economics of Walras. This paper attempts to explain Schumpeter's duality--his "schizophrenia"--by placing his work in the context of two different canons of economic thought, the standard mainstream canon (the ordnende and passivist-materialist tradition in Werner Sombart's terms) and what we have labelled "The Other Canon" (the verstehende and activist-idealist tradition in Sombart's terminology). The paper attempts to show that in the light of the now almost extinct Other Canon of economics, Schumpeter appears far less original than what he does to today's mainstream. It is argued that while the Harvard Economics Department during Schumpeter's tenure there moved away from the Other Canon type economics, Schumpeter found ample support and research activity in this alternative canon of economics at Harvard Business School. The paper explores the possible influences and similarities of thought on Schumpeter from three economists associated with Harvard Business School: Herbert Somerton Foxwell, Edwin Gay and Fritz Redlich.     

The domestic localization of knowledge flows as evidenced by publication citation: the case of Italy

Scientometrics - Blockchain technology has become an ubiquitous phenomenon. While the topic originated in computer science, the business and economics literature was comparatively slow to pick up...     

Wavelet- and Fourier-transform-based spectrum similarity approaches to compound identification in gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

The high-throughput gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) technology offers a powerful means of analyzing a large number of chemical and biological samples. One of the important analyses of GC/MS data is compound identification. In this work, novel spectral similarity measures based on the discrete wavelet and Fourier transforms were proposed. The proposed methods are composite similarities that are composed of weighted intensities and wavelet/Fourier coefficients using cosine correlation. The performance of the proposed approaches along with the existing similarity measures was evaluated using the NIST Chemistry WebBook mass database maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a library of reference spectra and repetitive mass spectral data as query spectra. The analysis results showed that the identification accuracies of the wavelet- and Fourier-transform-based methods were improved by 2.02% and 1.95%, respectively, compared to that of the weighted dot product (cosine correlation) and by 3.01% and 3.08%, respectively, compared to that of the composite similarity measure. The improved identification accuracy demonstrates that the proposed approaches outperformed the existing similarity measures in the literature.     

A new bibliometric approach to measure knowledge transfer of internationally mobile scientists

This study introduces a new bibliometric approach to study the effects of international scientific mobility on knowledge transfer. It is based on an analysis of internationally mobile and non-internationally mobile German scientists publishing in journals that are indexed in Scopus. Using bibliometric data such co-authored articles, references and lexical abstract terms from the Scopus database, a method is presented that is based on cosine similarity to measure the similarity of the knowledge base of authors and their co-authors. This quantifiable method is capable of revealing potential knowledge transfer between internationally mobile scientists and different types of co-authors. In addition, the Shannon index is used as a diversity measure to analyse the knowledge base of scientists. Analyses are presented for an overall 9-year publication period (2007–2015), split into a pre-mobility phase, a mobility phase and a post-mobility phase, each of which lasts for 3 years. Internationally mobile scientists are compared with non-internationally mobile scientists and the potentials and limitations of the method presented are discussed. It is concluded that the bibliometric approach proposed is useful when applied on a large scale. International mobility proves to benefit the exchange of knowledge between scientists and various types of co-authors.     

A thermodynamic approach to selecting a number of clusters based on topic modeling

A thermodynamic approach has been applied to solving the problem of selecting the number of clusters/topics in topic modeling. The main principles of this approach are formulated and the behavior of topic models during temperature variations is studied. Using thermodynamic formalism, the existence of the entropy phase transition in topic models is shown and criteria for the choice of optimum number of clusters/ topics are determined.