Bibliometric Output from Colombian Researchers with Approved Projects by COLCIENCIAS between 1983 and 1994

We present a characterization of bibliometric output in Colombia resulting from research projects financed by COLCIENCIAS between 1983 and 1994 in the following programs: Health Sciences; Basic Science; Energy and Mining; Agricultural Sciences; Technological, Industrial and Quality Development; Marine Sciences; Social Sciences; Education; Environment and Habitat; Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Systems.In the case of periodicals, we establish: patterns of production by author; patterns of publication in national journals vs. international journals; the effect of international collaboration in projects over publication in international journals; patterns of bibliometric production by fields of research using UNESCO classifications; a list of the most frequently used journals by Colombian researchers as vehicles to communicate their results; patterns of bibliometric production from Colombian institutions; geographical distribution of bibliometric output; and finally, a review on the mean number of authors of articles for some fields of science and technology.We present also theses production patterns for books and B.Sc., MSc. and PhD. theses using UNESCO codes of the projects. We comment on the human resources formation.It is found as a dominant behavior of the so commented patterns a low index of publication per project and a high tendency in the distribution of publications to concentrate on few actors (researchers, institutions, origin of the publication, journals, human resources). It is also found that there exists a strong concentration of bibliometric output in the program of Basic Sciences, in fields such as phytochemistry and solid state physics (super and semiconductors).     

Document categories in the ISI Web of Knowledge: Misunderstanding the Social Sciences?

Thomson Reuter’s ISI Web of Knowledge (or ISI for short) is used in the majority of benchmarking analyses and bibliometric research projects. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the limitations of data provided by ISI. This article deals with a limitation that disproportionally affects the Social Sciences: ISI’s misclassification of journal articles containing original research into the “review” or “proceedings paper” category. I report on a comprehensive, 11 year analysis, of document categories for 27 journals in nine Social Science and Science disciplines. I show that although ISI’s “proceedings paper” and “review” classifications seem to work fairly well in the Sciences, they illustrate a profound misunderstanding of research and publication practices in the Social Sciences.     

An item-by-item subject classification of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals using reference analysis

A serious shortcoming of bibliometric studies based on the(Social) Science (s) Citation Index is the lack of an universally applicable subject classification scheme as individual papers are concerned. 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 highly specialised journals, but fails for multidisciplinary journals such asNature, Science andPNAS—and so far as subfields are taken into consideration-also for “general” journals (e.g.JACS orAngewandte Chemie). This study presents the results of a pilot project attempting to overcome this shortcoming by delimiting the subject of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals by an item-by-item subject classification scheme, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subject classification of reference literature. The results clearly confirmed the conclusions of earlier studies by the authors in the field of reference analysis. For the really important journals (sufficiently high number of annual publications and high impact with respect to the field), the share of classifiable papers was surprisingly high, and the assignment proved reliable as well. Since papers in the leading general and multidisciplinary journals are frequently citing general and multidisciplinary journals, an iterated application of the procedure is expected to increase the number of classifiable publications. The results of the new methodology may improve the validity of bibliometric studies for research evaluation purposes.     

Between policy categories and research activities: Reviews and journals to describe “environment” networks

This article presents a scientometric procedure which assists in the production of bibliometric indicators for conducting international comparisons about transdisciplinary research field. The procedure aims at the analysis of how a nomenclature in the field of the environment, established by public research administrators, translates into subsets of scientific journals. Relations between the nomenclature and scientific disciplines were obtained through analysis of reviews. The environmental field's structure has been analysed by using journal cross-citation data.     

Citedness and uncitedness of cancer articles

There is a rapid growth of cancer literature. Thousands of papers are being regularly published every year not only in speciality journals, but also in journals of other disciplines. Citation studies are nowadays considered a major basis of science indicators for ascertaining the importance of a scientific journal and that of the published articles on a particular subject. In oncological research the journalCancer is considered as one of the top most journals and is universally well known for its high standard and excellence. In this paper an attempt has been made to find out the importance of all the articles published in it for a particular year. Side by side bibliometric analysis was made to ascertain various other aspects like time lag between publication and first citation of articles, average citation time, subject scattering and identification of most important journals in the field etc. It is believed that this study would be of help to the working oncologists, librarians and information scientists to assess the importance of articles published in a top ranking journal of cancer and also that of different journals publishing oncological research results.     

Four aspects of the institutionalization of physics research in India (1990–1950): Substantiating the claims of histortical sociology through bibliometrics

This paper examines the process of the institutionalization of research in physics in India. In order to do so, it employs bibliometric data such as research publications in physics research journals between 1900 and 1950. This data is then analyzed to obtain certain indicators that are pointers of the aspects of the institutionalization of research in physics in India. The four aspects of institutionalization studied here are important for the researches of those adopting sociological approaches in the study of the history of sciences. Thus the bibliometric techniques employed complements the efforts of historians of science studying the professionalization of physics research in India, and in this case those dealing with disciplines like physics. Further, the bibliometric data helps substantiate the claims of historians of science that the years 1905 to 1935 were particularly important for the history of physics in India. The conclusions of historians are based on success stories of a few leading physicists of the time. Within an institutional framework, this paper argues that there was a larger ground swell indicative of the emergence of a phhsics research community in India.     

Measuring multidisciplinary health research at South African universities: a comparative analysis based on co-authorships and journal subject categories

This study developed a comparative bibliometric profile of multidisciplinary health research at South African universities over a 30-year period (1984–2013), based on two measures of multidisciplinarity. The first measure used article co-authorship as a proxy for collaboration between authors with health and non-health addresses, and the second measure focussed on articles published in journals with both health and non-health subject categories. The article overlap between the two measures was 25%, meaning that one measure would exclude 75% of articles identified by the other. Both showed an increase in the percentage contribution of multidisciplinary health research to health research over time, and both generated similar profiles of the national institutions that contribute to multidisciplinary health research. Both measures also provided evidence of a sustained increase in the percentage international co-authorship in health research although the second measure gave a markedly lower estimate of the percentage international co-authorship. These preliminary results would need to be followed up with more advanced bibliometric approaches, and possibly qualitative analyses to investigate the degree of integration between disciplines, pointing to interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary health research.     

National research assessment exercises: a measure of the distortion of performance rankings when labor input is treated as uniform

Measuring the efficiency of scientific research activity presents critical methodological aspects, many of which have not been sufficiently studied. Although many studies have assessed the relation between quality and research productivity and academic rank, not much is known about the extent of distortion in national university performance rankings when academic rank and the other labor factors are not considered as a factor of normalization. This work presents a comparative analysis that aims to quantify the sensitivity of bibliometric rankings to the choice of input, with input considered as only the number of researchers on staff, or alternatively where their cost is also considered. The field of observation consists of all 69 Italian universities active in the hard sciences. Performance measures are based on the 81,000 publications produced during the 2004–2006 triennium by all 34,000 research staff, with analysis carried out at the level of individual disciplines, 187 in total. The effect of the switch from labor to cost seems to be minimal except for a few outliers.     

What do university rankings by fields rank? Exploring discrepancies between the organizational structure of universities and bibliometric classifications

University rankings by fields are usually based on the research output of universities. However, research managers and rankings consumers expect to see in such fields a reflection of the structure of their own organizational institution. In this study we address such misinterpretation by developing the research profile of the organizational units of two Spanish universities: University of Granada and Pompeu Fabra University. We use two classification systems, the subject categories offered by Thomson Scientific which are commonly used on bibliometric studies, and the 37 disciplines displayed by the Spanish I-UGR Rankings which are constructed from an aggregation of the former. We also describe in detail problems encountered when working with address data from a top down approach and we show differences between universities structures derived from the interdisciplinary organizational forms of new managerialism at universities. We conclude by highlighting that rankings by fields should clearly state the methodology for the construction of such fields. We indicate that the construction of research profiles may be a good solution for universities for finding out levels of discrepancy between organizational units and subject fields.     

A bibliometric analysis and comparison on three information science journals: JASIST,IPM, JOD, 1998–2008

Employing a citation analysis, this study explored and compared the bibliometric characteristics and the subject relationship with other disciplines of and among the three leading information science journals, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information Processing and Management and Journal of Documentation. The citation data were drawn from references of each article of the three journals during 1998 and 2008. The Ulrich’s Periodical Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading, retrieved from the WorldCat, and LISA database were used to identify the main class, subclass and subject of cited journals and books. Quantitative results on the number of JASIST, IPM and JOD literature references, average number of references cited per paper, document type of cited literature and the journal self-citation rate are reported. Moreover, the highly cited journals and books, the main classes and subclasses of cited journals and books in papers of the three journals, the highly cited subjects in journals and books of library and information science were identified and analyzed. Comparison on the characteristics of cited journals and books confirmed that all the three journals under study are information science oriented, except JOD which is library science orientation. JASIST and IPM are very much in common and diffuse to other disciplines more deeply than JOD.     

Defining the intellectual structure of information systems and related college of business disciplines: a bibliometric analysis

Information systems permeate every business function, thereby requiring holistic Information Systems (IS) approaches. Much academic research is still discipline specific. More interdisciplinary research is needed to inform both industry and academe. Interdisciplinary research has been positively associated with increased levels of innovation, productivity and impact. IS research contributes to the knowledge creation and innovation within IS and other College of Business (COB) disciplines. This research defines the intellectual structures within IS and between IS and other COB disciplines. We use a large scale, diachronic bibliometric analysis of COB journals to assess reciprocal knowledge exchange and also to identify potential intra- and interdisciplinary publication outlets. Our findings show an increase in IS knowledge contributions to other COB disciplines, which supports the discussion that IS is a reference discipline. Our research also visually depicts the intellectual structures within IS and between IS and other COB disciplines. Anyone exploring research in IS and allied COB disciplines can peruse the proximity maps to identify groups of similar journals. The findings from this research inform decisions related to which journals to read, target as publication outlets, and include on promotion and tenure lists.     

A bibliometric study of the world’s research activity in sustainable development and its sub-areas using scientific literature

This paper presents a bibliometric study of the world’s research activity in Sustainable Development using scientific literature. The study was conducted using data from the Scopus database over the time period of 2000–2010. We investigated the research landscape in Sustainable Development at country level and at institute level. Sustainable Development and its sub-areas are defined by keywords vetted by the domain experts, allowing publications to be identified independent of the journals and conferences in which they are published. The results indicate that institutes strong in Sustainable Development overall may not be strong in all sub-areas and that institutes not strong in Sustainable Development overall may have significant niche strengths in a given sub-area. It is also noted that China appears strong in terms of publication output in Sustainable Development and its sub-areas but it does not appear strong in terms of citation counts. The information produced in this study can be useful for government research agencies in terms of understanding how to more effectively knit together the various niche strengths in the country; and for the institutes to find strategic partners that can coordinate in niche areas of Sustainable Development and complement their strengths. In order to conduct bibliometric analysis in an interdisciplinary research area, the keyword collection approach appears to be very useful. This approach is flexible and can be used to conduct such analysis for interdisciplinary research fields.     

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 growth of knowledge and literature in neuroscience

Knowledge and literature of neuroscience started growing steadily during the last few centuries. This paper aims to study the growth of knowledge in neuroscience as well as its literature. The first part of the paper, enumerates a historical survey of the growth of knowledge based on published data. This is done in view of the fact that a consolidated information at one place will be of great value to the students of scientometrics and also to the research scholars who are desirous to undertake research in this discipline. The second part of the paper is entirely based on experimental data which were collected to analyse the growth of literature of the subject.Neuroscience is notable for its wide range of approaches and techniques. In no other branch of research such a manysided approach is so essential. As a consequence last few decades have witnessed an accelerated research tempo and unprecedented growth of the literature on the subject covering its different sub-fields with gradual and systematic transgression of the conventional boundaries between them. To cope with the growth of literature, a new bibliometric technique has been applied to rank periodicals in the field based on 5785 citation data collected from the bibliographic data base published in the source journal namely,Annual Review of Neuroscience. It is expected that this list will reflect the impact of literature on the advancement of knowledge in the field of neuroscience. A striking feature of this study is the comparatively small contribution (8.8%) coming from the application of biochemical techniques and concepts to neuroscience research which differs from what we had noted earlier in the case of other biomedical disciplines. High position occupied by multidisciplinary science journals brings out the significance of new neuroscience research to science as a whole and confirms the importance of this category of journals in the dissemination of knowledge for the overall growth of science. Relatively low proportion, of citations of journals of medicine, both general as well as specialities, in spite of direct relevance of much work in this field to neurological and mental illness reflects the preponderance of interest in the funcamental aspects of neuroscience research. Like other biomedical disciplines neuroscience literature also exhibits English as the most-preferred lingua franca of the subject; dominance of journals published from USA, UK, Germany and the Netherland; a wide scatter of cited literature showing the multidisciplinary approach characteristic of present-day neuroscience research. The results of this study support Bradford's Law of Scattering and also Sengupta's Law of Bibliometrics. It is expected that the present ranking list will be of great help to the working neuroscientists to select a handful of core periodicals in the field for regular browsing from the viewpoint of their importance and significance as these core journals identify maximum segment of contemporary literature on the topics of direct relevance to their day to day research in the field.     

A made-to-measure indicator for cross-disciplinary bibliometric ranking of researchers performance

This paper presents and discusses a new bibliometric indicator of research performance, designed with the fundamental concern of enabling cross-disciplinary comparisons. The indicator, called x-index, compares a researcher??s output to a reference set of research output from top researchers, identified in the journals where the researcher has published. It reflects publication quantity and quality, uses a moderately sized data set, and works with a more refined definition of scientific fields. x-index was developed to rank researchers in a scientific excellence award in the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. The data set collected for the 2009 edition of the award is used to study the indicator??s features and design choices, and provides the basis for a discussion of its advantages and limitations.     

The use of bibliometric techniques for institutional research evaluation: A study of avian virology research

A bibliometric analysis was made of an area of veterinary research, avian virology, in the context of seeking quantitative indicators to assist research evaluation for the UK Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC). In one approach, a list was made of world publications in avian virology using the CAB database which is the most appropriate literature source in terms of subject specificity and breadth of coverage. Means were sought to minimise the labour input required for citation studies of this kind; results based on peak-year citations only were similar to those from the more widely used four-year count, in terms of country-ranking and time trends. In the second method, the publication outputs of several avian virology research groups were assessed in terms of expected citations i.e. the average number of citations per paper received by the journals in which the groups published, as compared to the actual citations received. The rankings of the groups were the same in both methods. This second approach, while giving only approximate citation rates, has the advantage of requiring only in-house data. It seems more appropriate for the ex-post evaluation of the output of research groups in the context of agricultural and food research, and it is suggested that further studies on journal-based indicators are warranted.     

Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in library and information science in Argentina: a case study

The paper introduces the use of blockmodeling in the micro-level study of the internal structure of co-authorship networks over time. Variations in scientific productivity and researcher or research group visibility were determined by observing authors?? role in the core-periphery structure and crossing this information with bibliometric data. Three techniques were applied to represent the structure of collaborative science: (1) the blockmodeling; (2) the Kamada-Kawai algorithm based on the similarities in co-authorships present in the documents analysed; (3) bibliometrics to determine output volume, impact and degree of collaboration from the bibliographic data drawn from publications. The goal was to determine the extent to which the use of these two complementary approaches, in conjunction with bibliometric data, provides greater insight into the structure and characteristics of a given field of scientific endeavour. The paper describes certain features of Pajek software and how it can be used to study research group composition, structure and dynamics. The approach combines bibliometric and social network analysis to explore scientific collaboration networks and monitor individual and group careers from new perspectives. Its application on a small-scale case study is intended as an example and can be used in other disciplines. It may be very useful for the appraisal of scientific developments.