Latin American and Caribbean journals indexed in Google Scholar Metrics

Scientometrics - This research analyzes the coverage of Latin American and Caribbean journals in Google Scholar Metrics. It has identified the number of indexed journals by country and compared...     

Cumulative advantage of the impact of the Latin American and Caribbean science system on JCR journals outside the region

Scientometrics - The objective of the study is to compare the growth of the citation impact of articles published by the Latin American and Caribbean science system in JCR journals outside the...     

Publication and cooperation patterns of the authors of neuroscience journals

Characteristics of publication activity and co-authorship in neurosciences are analysed. The present study aims at describing the common, as well as the distinguishing features of productivity and co-publication patterns of four types of authors. For this purpose, authors are classified according to their anterior and posterior records. The role of the author types in the process of documented scientific communication, the relation between co-authorship and publication activity, as well as collaboration between the four types is studied. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Latin American and Caribbean intercomparison of surface contamination monitoring equipment

In October 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sponsored an intercomparison exercise of surface contamination monitoring equipment, which was held at the Laboratório Nacional de Metrologia das Radia??es Ionizantes, from the Instituto de Radioprote??o e Dosimetria, IRD/CNEN, Rio de Janeiro. This intercomparison was performed to evaluate the calibration accessibility in Latin America and the Caribbean. Thirteen countries within the region and IAEA have sent instruments to be compared, but only five countries and IAEA were considered apt to participate. Analysis of instruments, results and discussions are presented and recommendations are drawn.     

Exploring knowledge patterns of library and information science journals within the field: a citation analysis from 2009 to 2016

Scientometrics - A substantial number of studies have examined the journal quality and ranked them using academic survey, scientometric indicator, or citation analysis. This study aims to...     

The citation impacts and citation environments of Chinese journals in mathematics

Based on the citation data of journals covered by the China Scientific and Technical Papers and Citations Database (CSTPCD), we obtained aggregated journal-journal citation environments by applying routines developed specifically for this purpose. Local citation impact of journals is defined as the share of the total citations in a local citation environment, which is expressed as a ratio and can be visualized by the size of the nodes. The vertical size of the nodes varies proportionally to a journal’s total citation share, while the horizontal size of the nodes is used to provide citation information after correction for the within-journal (self-) citations. In the “citing” environment, the equivalent of the local citation performance can also be considered as a citation activity index. Using the “citing” patterns as variables one is able to map how the relevant journal environments are perceived by the collective of authors of a journal, while the “cited” environment reflects the impact of journals in a local environment. In this study, we analyze citation impacts of three Chinese journals in mathematics and compare local citation impacts with impact factors. Local citation impacts reflect a journal’s status and function better than (global) impact factors. We also found that authors in Chinese journals prefer international instead of domestic ones as sources for their citations.     

Publication and citation patterns of the Mexican contribution to a “Big Science” discipline: Elementary particle physics

The publication and citation patterns of the Mexican community in elementary particle physics (MEPP) were determined by bibliometric analysis of the scientific production and citations registered in the SPIRES-HEP system from 1971 to 2000. All papers, both citing and cited, were classified as theoretical, phenomenological or experimental according to the type of study carried out and citing papers as local (Mexican) or foreign. The growth dynamics of the citation patterns over the thirty-year period was also studied. Results show that the Mexican scientific community in EPP follow the pre-publication and pre-citation communication patterns typical of a Big Science field. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Countries positioning in open access journals system: An investigation of citation distribution patterns

By their widespread availability and dissemination through open access media, scholarly outputs witness an improved visibility supposed to cause a better citation performance. However, due to the existence of the Matthew effect in science system, which affects users’ perceptions of quality, ultimate effects of the enhanced visibility on different entities are obscure. Moreover, different attitudes towards open access give rise to a more strong quality dynamics in the open access world. Aiming to explore the consequence of the interaction between visibility and quality dynamics, this study investigates countries positioning in open access journals. The results show that the world’s countries welcome open access pattern whether by submitting to or publishing open access journals. A large proportion of the enduring, prestigious open access journals are published by scientifically proficient and developing nations, emphasizing their successful commitment to maintain the undertaken role. The results of the citation analysis highlight national inequalities regarding citation distributions among countries contributing to the journals within the system and within individual disciplines in the system. Well-performing countries mainly consist of advanced ones; however, some lessdeveloped nations are found to perform well in the journal system.     

The power law relationship between citation impact and multi-authorship patterns in articles in Information Science & Library Science journals

The aim of this paper is to extend the conversation about the correlation between collaboration and citation impact in articles in Information Science & Library Science journals by analyzing this correlation’s behavior using a power scaling law approach. 28,131 articles that received 215,693 citations were analyzed. The number of these articles that were published through collaboration accounts for 69%. In general, the scaling exponent of multi-authored articles, both international and domestic, increases over time while the exponent of single-authored papers decreases. The citation impact and collaboration patterns exhibit a power law correlation with a scaling exponent of 1.34 ± 0.02. Citations to multi-authored articles increased \(2^{1.34}\) or 2.53 times each time the number of multi-authored papers doubled. The Matthew Effect is stronger for multi-authored papers than for single-authored. The scaling exponent for the power law relationship of domestic multi-authored papers was 1.35 ± 0.02. The citations to domestic multi-authored articles increased \(2^{1.35}\) or 2.55 times each time the number of domestic multi-authored articles doubled. Contrary to previous studies we found that the Matthew Effect is stronger for domestic multi-authored papers than for international multi-authored ones.     

Identification of referencing and citation processes of scientific journals based on the citation distribution model

In this article, we firstly analyze the referencing process and the citation process of a scientific journal in theory, and find that the observed referencing or citation process includes the diffusing process and the aging process of cited literature and the publishing process of citing literature, thereby it is illuminated why the identified average publication delay ( [`(T)] = T_s + t ) \left( {\bar{T} = T_{s} + \tau } \right) was longer than the observed value. Secondly, we compare the transfer function model of the observed citing process with other classical citation distribution models and find that the model is superior to others. Finally, using the model, we identify parameters of actual referencing and citation processes from data of age distributions of references and citations of 38 journals of neurology and applied mathematics in JCR, respectively; and then compare differences of identified parameters and obtain some interesting conclusions.     

IAEA regional intercomparison of in vivo measurements of 131I in the thyroid: the Latin American and Caribbean experience

An in vivo intercomparison exercise, organised in the scope of the IAEA Regional Latin American (RLA) Project 9066, was carried out in 2009 aimed to harmonise measurement procedures on the measurement of (131)I in the thyroid among Latin American and Caribbean countries. The exercise consisted in the measurement of an anthropomorphic thyroid phantom spiked with a certified source of (133)Ba. The phantom was supplied by the In Vivo Monitoring Laboratory of Institute for Radiation Protection and Dosimetry (IRD) to 17 Institutions from 12 countries of the regions. Among these, 13 Institutions from 10 countries returned their measurement results as well as a standard report form containing detailed information about their respective counting facilities. All participants reported activities within an acceptable range, considering American National Standard Institute (ANSI) limits. Uncertainties varied from 0.04 to 12.9 %. Although results show that the general performance was acceptable in terms of accuracy, the need for additional action towards the standardisation of uncertainty estimation in this type of measurement in the region should be highlighted.     

Growth of the number of indexed journals of Latin America and the Caribbean: the effect on the impact of each country

The number of LA–C indexed journals in WoS has increased from 69 to 248 titles in just a period of four years (2006–2009). This unprecedented growth is related to a change in the editorial policy of WoS rather than to a change in the LA–C scientific community. We find that in the LA–C region, Brazil had the largest increase in its WoS production that also corresponded to a large increase in its production in its indexed local journals. As a consequence, Portuguese has been promoted to the second scientific language, only after English, in the LA–C production in WoS. However, while the Brazilian production in its local journals represents about one quarter of its whole WoS production, it shows a rather little effect on the respective number of citations. The rest of the LA–C countries represented in WoS still show very low levels in production and impact. Scopus has also enlarged considerably the database’s coverage of LA–C journals but with a steady growth in the period considered in this study.     

Measuring the similarity between the reference and citation distributions of journals

The “Jaccardized Czekanowski index”, JCz, an indicator measuring the similarity between the cited and citing journal list of a given journal is proposed in the paper. It is shown that the indicator characterizes the network properties of individual journals and, in aggregated form, also that of subject categories or countries. For subject categories, JCz appears to be related to the multidisciplinarity of the category. For countries, the multinational or local character of the publishers seems to have determining role.     

Bibliometric analysis of aids literature in Latin America and the Caribbean

This work reports on the preliminary results of a bibliometric analysis of AIDS literature, as produced in or about Latin America and the Caribbean for the period 1980–1996. Two international and two regional secondary sources were used in order to obtain comparative analyses regarding for example, comprehensiveness of AIDS literature coverage and local/main frame visibility. Less than 1000 records were retrieved from each of the databases searched. Leading countries in AIDSLINE were Haiti, Brasil, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The distribution by year of publication showed a decrease in Haiti records, from 54 in 1983, to 4 in 1995. The rest of the countries either increased or maintained an average production throughout the years. Regional secondary information sources were less current and comprehensive in the field. Further lines of research are described by the authors.     

Comparison of citation and usage indicators: the case of oncology journals

It is the objective of this article to examine in which aspects journal usage data differ from citation data. This comparison is conducted both at journal level and on a paper by paper basis. At journal level, we define a so-called usage impact factor and a usage half-life in analogy to the corresponding Thomson’s citation indicators. The usage data were provided from Science Direct, subject category “oncology”. Citation indicators were obtained from JCR, article citations were retrieved from SCI and Scopus. Our study shows that downloads and citations have different obsolescence patterns. While the average cited half-life was 5.6 years, we computed a mean usage half-life of 1.7 years for the year 2006. We identified a strong correlation between the citation frequencies and the number of downloads for our journal sample. The relationship was lower when performing the analysis on a paper by paper basis because of existing variances in the citation-download-ratio among articles. Also the correlation between the usage impact factor and Thomson’s journal impact factor was “only” moderate because of different obsolescence patterns between downloads and citations.     

Publication and citation patterns in the literature of liquid crystals with special reference to the contribution of India,Canada, Japan,United Kingdom and the Soviet Union

From an analysis of bibliographic data on 430 journal articles on liquid crystals covered inPhysics Abstracts 1976 and the 4729 citations to them up to the end of 1987, we have identified the geographic origin, the prominent institutions, language and journal-wise distribution of the papers, the citedness of these papers, and the distribution of citations as a time series for the highly cited papers. We have also analysed the 126 papers published by authors from India, Canada, Australia, Israel, Japan and the United Kingdom and covered inPhysics Abstracts 1978, and the 1154 citations to them up to 1987. Unlike in most other high tech areas of physics, in LC research the difference in performance between the USA and the other leading countries is not very pronounced. Publication data from 1976, 1978 and 1985 reveal that LC literature is on the rise and that the percentage share of the Soviet Union is rising fast and that of the USA is on the decline.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. Moravcsik