Impact of open access on citation of scholarly publications in the field of civil engineering

The development of science is accompanied by growth of scholarly publications, primarily in the form of articles in peer-reviewed journals. Scientific work is often evaluated through the number of scientific publications in international journals and their citations. This article discusses the impact of open access (OA) on the number of citations for an institution from the field of civil engineering. We analyzed articles, published in 2007 in 14 international journals with impact factor, which are included in the Journal Citation Reports subject category “Civil Engineering”. The influence of open access on the number of citations was analyzed. The aim of our research was to determine if open access articles from the field of civil engineering receive more citations than non-open access articles. Based on the value of impact factor and ranking in quartiles, we also looked at the influence of the rank of journals on the number of citations, separately for OA and Non OA articles, in databases Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and Google Scholar. For 2,026 studied articles we found out that 22 % of them were published as OA articles. They received 29 % of all citations in the observed period. We can conclude by the significance level 5 % or less that in the databases WOS and Scopus the articles from top ranked journals (first quartile) achieved more citations than Non OA articles. This argument can be confirmed for some other journals from second quartile as well, while for the journals ranked into the third quartile it can’t be confirmed. This could be confirmed only partly for journals from the second quartile, and would not be confirmed for journals ranked into the third quartile. This shows that open access is not a sufficient condition for citation, but increases the number of citations for articles published in journals with high impact.     

A citation-analysis of economic research institutes

The citation analysis of the research output of the German economic research institutes presented here is based on publications in peer-reviewed journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index for the 2000–2009 period. The novel feature of the paper is that a count data model quantifies the determinants of citation success and simulates their citation potential. Among the determinants of the number of cites the quality of the publication outlet exhibits a strong positive effect. The same effect has the number of the published pages, but journals with size limits also yield more cites. Field journals get less citations in comparison to general journals. Controlling for journal quality, the number of co-authors of a paper has no effect, but it is positive when co-authors are located outside the own institution. We find that the potential citations predicted by our best model lead to different rankings across the institutes than current citations indicating structural change.     

Does the multi-authorship trend influence the quality of an article?

In the last few decades, multi-authored articles have increased in different disciplines with increasing instances of authorship abuse although multi-authorship is not always due to undeserving authorship (McDonald et al. in Mayo Clin Proc 85(10):920–927, 2010). It may be necessitated by interdisciplinary research, the evolution of a discipline, or the intention of quality improvement. This article studies the relationship between the authorship and the quality of articles (publications in better impact factor journals or core journals) in the field of Oceanography. The result shows ~75 % increase in the number of authors per article from 1990 to 2009 in the discipline. The increase in authorship correlates not only with the percentage of articles in core journals but also with the mean impact factor (IF) of journals (where the articles were published). The ANOVA study shows that though multi-authorship has no influence on the preference to publish in core journals during the 1990s or 2000s, it does have a significant influence on the preference to publish in high IF journals in both the decades. So these findings establish that in the field of Oceanography, the increase in collaboration would have resulted in more publications in core journals (without any influence of authorship increase) and in better impact factor journals (due to the influence of authorship increase).     

Differences between journals and years in the proportions of students,researchers and faculty registering Mendeley articles

This article contains two investigations into Mendeley reader counts with the same dataset. Mendeley reader counts provide evidence of early scholarly impact for journal articles, but reflect the reading of a relatively young subset of all researchers. To investigate whether this age bias is constant or varies by narrow field and publication year, this article compares the proportions of student, researcher and faculty readers for articles published 1996–2016 in 36 large monodisciplinary journals. In these journals, undergraduates recorded the newest research and faculty the oldest, with large differences between journals. The existence of substantial differences in the composition of readers between related fields points to the need for caution when using Mendeley readers as substitutes for citations for broad fields. The second investigation shows, with the same data, that there are substantial differences between narrow fields in the time taken for Scopus citations to be as numerous as Mendeley readers. Thus, even narrow field differences can impact on the relative value of Mendeley compared to citation counts.     

Comparison of independent research of China’s top universities using bibliometric indicators

The institutionally independent publications of Tsinghua University and Peking University were compared by two main indicators namely peak-year citations per publication and h-index, based on the data extracted from the Science Citation Index Expanded, Web of Science from 1974 to 2011. Analyzed aspects covered total publication outputs, annual production, impact, authorships, Web of Science categories, journals, and most cited articles. Results shows that the two universities were in the same scale based on the peak-year citations per publication, the h-index, and top cited articles with no less than 100 citations. Publication of the top three most productive Web of Science categories differed between these two universities. Tsinghua University published more articles in applied science and engineering fields, while Peking University had more basic science articles. In addition, article life was applied to compare the impact of the most cited articles and single author articles of the two universities.     

Citation frequency: A biased measure of research impact significantly influenced by the geographical origin of research articles

Context. The use of citation frequency and impact factor as measures of research quality and journal prestige is being criticized. Citation frequency is augmented by self-citation and for most journals the majority of citations originate from a minority of papers. We hypothesized that citation frequency is also associated with the geographical origin of the research publication. Objective. We determined whether citations originate more frequently from institutes that are located in the same country as the authors of the cited publication than would be expected by chance. Design. We screened citations referring to 1200 cardiovascular publications in the 7 years following their publication. For the 1200 citation recipient publications we documented the country where the research originated (9 countries/regions) and the total number of received citations. For a selection of 8864 citation donor papers we registered the country/region where the citing paper originated. Results. Self-citation was common in cardiovascular journals (n = 1534, 17.8%). After exclusion of self-citation, however, the number of citations that originated from the same country as the author of the citation recipient was found to be on average 31.6% higher than would be expected by chance (p<0.01 for all countries/regions). In absolute numbers, nation oriented citation bias was most pronounced in the USA, the country with the largest research output (p<0.001). Conclusion. Citation frequency was significantly augmented by nation oriented citation bias. This nation oriented citation behaviour seems to mainly influence the cumulative citation number for papers originating from the countries with a larger research output.     

Global knowledge management research: A bibliometric analysis

The present study characterizes the dynamic publication activity of global knowledge management (KM) by data collected through a search restricted to articles in ISI Web of Science.A total of 2727 unique authors had contributed 1407 publications since 1975. The overwhelming majority (2349 or 86%) of them wrote one publication. The productive authors, their contribution and authorship position are listed to indicate their productivity and degree of involvement in their research publications. The sum of research output of the first or responsible authors from USA, UK and Germany reaches 57% of the total productivity. The distribution of articles is rather widespread - they published in 462 titles of serials, spanning 110 Journal Citation Reports subject categories. The higher quality journals make publication of findings more visible. A Pearson's correlation coefficient is statistically found to be significant between citation frequency of article and impact factor of journal, instead of authorship pattern. The results also indicate that R&D expenditures were actually not proportional to research productivity or citation counts. As the subject highly interacts with other disciplines, the field of KM has not yet developed its own body of literature. KM might have been evolving an interdisciplinary theory that is developing at the boundaries of scientific disciplines. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Scientometric analysis of geostatistics using multivariate methods

Multivariate methods were successfully employed in a comprehensive scientometric analysis of geostatistics research, and the publications data for this research came from the Science Citation Index and spanned the period from 1967 to 2005. Hierarchical cluster analysis (CA) was used in publication patterns based on different types of variables. A backward discriminant analysis (DA) with appropriate statistical tests was then conducted to confirm CA results and evaluate the variations of various patterns. For authorship pattern, the 50 most productive authors were classified by CA into 4 groups representing different levels, and DA produced 92.0% correct assignment with high reliability. The discriminant parameters were mean impact factor (MIF), annual citations per publication (ACPP), and the number of publications by the first author, for country/region pattern, CA divided the top 50 most productive countries/regions into 4 groups with 95.9% correct assignments, and the discriminant parameters were MIF, ACCP, and independent publication (IP); for institute pattern, 3 groups were identified from the top 50 most productive institutes with nearly 88.0% correct assignment, and the discriminant parameters were MIF, ACCP, IP, and international collaborative publication; last, for journal pattern, the top 50 most productive journals were classified into 3 groups with nearly 98.0% correct assignment, and its discriminant parameters were total citations, impact factor and ACCP. Moreover, we also analyzed general patterns for publication document type, language, subject category, and publication growth.     

A scientometric analysis of international LIS journals: Productivity and characteristics

This paper presents a quantitative study of productivity, characteristics and various aspects of global publication in the field of library and information science (LIS). A total of 894 contributions published in 56 LIS journals indexed in SSCI during the years of 2000-2004 were analyzed. A total of 1361 authors had contributed publications during the five years. The overwhelming majority (89.93%) of them wrote one paper. The average number of authors per paper is 1.52. All the studied papers were published in English. The sum of research output of the authors form USA and UK reaches 70% of the total productivity. Most papers received few citations. Each article received on an average 1.6 citations and the LIS researchers cite mostly latest articles. About 48% of citing authors had tendency of self-citation. The productive authors, their contribution and authorship position are listed to indicate their productivity and degree of involvement in their research publications.     

The relation between the quality of research,researchers’ experience,and their academic environment

This article investigates to what extent researchers’ experience and the solidity of their academic environment influence the quality of their research. The hypotheses are derived from the assumptions that experience matters for quality research and that there are great intellectual synergies to be obtained from interacting with many colleagues who are active researchers. All articles published between 2000 and 2006 in five leading transportation journals are included in the analysis, and their research quality is measured by the number of times each article is cited by August 2016. Controlling for other factors influencing citations, such as article age and the number of references, the most important finding is that both experience and academic environment matter for performing quality research. When the authors’ experience, measured by the number of previous publications, increases by 1% from its average level, their published articles are expected to garner 0.31% more citations. Moreover, when the research activity at the unit to which the authors are affiliated, measured by the unit’s total number of publications, increases by 1% from its average level, the number of times their articles are cited will increase by 0.19%. This signals that, relatively speaking, the researchers’ own experience and merits mean more than the academic environment with regard to producing high-quality research. The above results enable us to discuss how researchers’ experience can compensate for working in less active academic communities holding research quality constant.     

Bibliometric analysis of biological invasions research during the period of 1991 to 2007

The objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of all biological invasions-related publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI) from 1991 to 2007. The indicator citation per publication (CPP) was used to evaluate the impact of articles, journals, and institutions. In the 3323 articles published in 521 journals, 7261 authors from 1905 institutions of 100 countries participated. As the most productive country of biological invasions research, the US will benefit from more collaboration between institutions, countries, and continents. In addition, analysis of keywords was applied to reveal research trends.     

The nature and relationship between the productivity of journals and their citations in semiconductor literature

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between journals" productivity and their citations in the field of semiconductors. Journal samples were gathered from the INSPEC database, 1978 to 1997 while the data of citation frequency, impact factor, cited half-life and citing half-life were obtained from Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports 1997 CD-ROM edition. One thousand and eight hundred and seventy seven journals publishing articles on semiconductors were retrieved. The nature for the data of journal productivity, impact factor, cited half-life and citing half-life are explored. Among these journals, only 672 journals that were covered in JCR were compared. Moreover, statistical tests of more productive journals with cumulative publication in semiconductor >100 were also conducted on the basis of all articles they published annually (for 1997). The results of the study showed that there is a significant correlation between journal productivity and citation frequency and between journal productivity and impact factor. However, there are no associations between journal productivity and cited half-life and between journal productivity and citing half-life. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Characteristics of papers published in journals: an analysis of open access journals,country of publication,and languages used

This study explores how the citation of open access (OA) journal articles occurs by analyzing the impact of certain journal characteristics, namely, whether the journal is OA and whether its country of publication is the same as the affiliation of a paper’s author. As the language of a paper is an important factor contributing to paper citations, this study uses papers in English. This analysis included publications from 77 countries from 2010 to 2012. This analysis included 19,530 journals and 3,215,742 papers without duplication. The results showed that papers published in OA and international journals were cited in more countries than non-OA and domestic journals, and a higher percentage of these were being cited by foreign countries. From these findings, it was determined that the more widely accessible OA journals were effectively being accessed by researchers from multiple countries. However, of the top 10% most cited papers in international journals, a higher percentage of these came from non-OA compared to OA journals. Among domestic journals, no such difference was found. Papers published in non-OA international journals were most cited in foreign countries with a large number of published papers. Hence, the effect of OA’s expanded accessibility, while having an apparent effect on heightening the interest of foreign readership, has a limited impact in terms of increasing citations.     

Is the science citation index US-biased?

The Western European science policy establishment often claims that US articles are more frequently cited than articles of the European Union's scientists because they are published in journals with a large number of US publications and that these journals are forming the ‘core’ of the SCI. For the disciplines covered by the SCI, no significant correlation has been found between the ratio of the average number of citations per publication for publications with at least one EU address and at least one US address, respectively, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ratio of the corresponding number of publications per journal.     

Scientometric profile of Indian agricultural research as seen through Science Citation Index Expanded

Summary An analysis of 16891 publications published by Indian scientists during 1993-2002 and indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science) indicates that the publication output in the agricultural sciences is on the decline since 1998 onwards. 'Dairy and animal sciences' followed by 'veterinary sciences' constitute the largest component of the Indian agricultural research output. Agricultural universities and institutes under the aegis of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) are the major producers of research output. Most of the papers have been published in domestic journals and in low normalized impact factor journals with a low rate of citation per paper. Most of the highly productive institutions are either agricultural universities or the institutes under the aegis of ICAR. Most of the prolific authors are from the highly productive institutions. However, only a few highly cited authors are from highly productive institutions.     

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.     

Environmental sciences research in northern Australia, 2000–2011: a bibliometric analysis within the context of a national research assessment exercise

This paper reports on a bibliometric analysis of environmental sciences research in northern Australia between 2000 and 2011. It draws on publications data for Charles Darwin University (CDU) and James Cook University (JCU) researchers to present a bibliometric profile of the journals in which they publish, the citations to their research outputs, and the key research topics discussed in the publications. Framing this analysis, the study explored the relationship between the two universities’ publications and their ‘fit’ with the environmental sciences field as defined by the Australian research assessment model, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). The Scopus database retrieved more records than Web of Science, although only minor differences were seen in the journals in which researchers published most frequently and the most highly cited articles. Strong growth in publications is evident in the 12 year period, but the journals in which the researchers publish most frequently differ from the journals in which the most highly cited articles are published. Many of the articles by CDU and JCU affiliated researchers are published in journals outside of the environmental sciences category as defined by Scopus and Web of Science categories and the ERA, however, the research conducted at each university aligns closely with that institution’s research priorities.     

Scientometrics of laser research in India during 1970-1994

An analysis of 952 publications published by Indian scientists and abstracted by Journal of Current Laser Abstracts during 1970-1994 indicates that laser research in India picked up during 1978-1994 and reached its peak in 1980. The Indian output in the field of laser research forms an integral part of the mainstream science as reflected by the pattern of publications and their citations in the international literature. Laser research performed in India improved considerably during 1985-1994 as compared to 1970-1984 as seen by different impact indicators such as citation per paper, proportion of high quality papers, and publication effective index. The publication output is concentrated among few institutions and there is a similarity in the activity and attractively profile of the highly productive institutions. India"s citation rate per paper for highly productive authors is at par with the world citation rate per paper. The study indicates that the proportion of mega authored papers increased during 1990-1994 and the international collaboration is mainly with the USA.     

Information management or knowledge management? An informetric view of the dynamics of Academia

This study analyzes the similarities and differences of performance of information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM) research publication indexed by the SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI and A&HCI databases since 1994 with informetric methods in order to explore a developing tendency in the near future. The bibliographic search supplied 1199 IM and 1063 KM records. A very few of IM and KM authors contributed two or more articles. Four countries dominated global IM and KM research productivity, while a few institutions played remarkable roles in scholarly activity. IM journals distributed widespread and 84 per cent just published one or two articles; KM publications were rather concentrated to core and borderline periodicals, fitting Bradford's law of scattering and. The result of Pearson's correlation coefficients analysis indicates that the higher the journal impact factor, the more times the published article is cited. The author concludes that KM has been leading IM in both publication productivity and academic population and the tendency is overwhelmingly growing. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.