Journal self-citations that contribute to the impact factor: Documents labeled “editorial material” in journals covered by the Science Citation Index

Summary We investigated the distribution of citations included in documents labeled by the ISI as “editorial material” and how they contribute to the impact factor of journals in which the citing items were published. We studied all documents classified by the ISI as “editorial material” in the Science Citation Index between 1999 and 2004 (277,231 records corresponding to editorial material published in 6141 journals). The results show that most journals published only a few documents that included 1 or 2 citations that contributed to the impact factor, although a few journals published many such documents. The data suggest that manipulation of the impact factor by publishing large amounts of editorial material with many citations to the journal itself is not a widely used strategy to increase the impact factor.     

Trends and performance of oxidative stress research from 1991 to 2010

A bibliometric analysis was performed in this work to determine research trends of oxidative stress publications published between 1991 and 2010 in journals of all the subject categories of the Science citation index. Publication trends were analyzed by the retrieved results in publication type and language, characteristics of articles outputs, country, subject categories and journals, and the frequency of title-words and keywords used. Over the years, there was a significant growth in article outputs, with more countries participating and collaborating. The seven major industrialized countries (G7) published the majority of the world articles while the USA contributed about one-third of the total. Chinese and Indian outputs grew much faster than those of other countries in the past 5 years. Oxidative stress research in food and environmental related fields gradually became the mainstream of the research. An analysis of the title-words, author keywords and keywords plus showed that antioxidants in human or rat cells were the hot topic in the field. In addition, “reaction oxygen species”, “apoptosis”, and “nitric-oxide” were major topics of oxidative stress research recently. More articles dealt with diseases that had a strong relationship with oxidative stress, such as inflammation, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and atherosclerosis.     

Comparative analysis between impact factor and h-index for pharmacology and psychiatry journals

Using strictly the same parameters (identical two publication years (2004–2005) and identical one-year citation window (2006)), IF 2006 was compared with h-index 2006 for two samples of “Pharmacology and Pharmacy” and “Psychiatry” journals computed from the ISI Web of Science. For the two samples, the IF and the h-index rankings of the journals are very different. The correlation coefficient between the IF and the h-index is high for Psychiatry but lower for Pharmacology. The linearity test performed between the h-index and  IF^{\fracaa + 1} . n ^{\frac1a + 1} \,IF^{{{\frac{\alpha }{\alpha \, + 1}}}} .\,n\,^{{{\frac{1}{\alpha \, + 1}}}} showed the great sensitivity of the model compared with α. The IF and h-index can be completely complementary when evaluating journals of the same scientific discipline.     

Top journals selectivity index and “me-too” drugs

To assess the probability of success of an analgesic drug we have proposed a bibliometric indicator, the Top Journals Selectivity Index (TJSI) (Kissin 2011). It represents the ratio (as %) between the number of all types of articles on a particular drug in the top 20 biomedical journals and the number of articles on that drug in all (>5,000) journals covered by Medline over the first 5 years after that drug’s introduction. The aim of this study was to demonstrate that TJSI may be used for the assessment of follow-on drugs (those that follow a first-in-class drug). The study tested two hypotheses. First, TJSI can detect the difference (in the same class) between drugs with distinguishing features and drugs without them (“me-too” drugs) better than other publication indices, i.e., the number of all types of articles on a drug in journals presented by Medline (AJI), and the number of articles covering only randomized controlled trials (RCT). Second, there is a relationship between the TJSI of “me-too” drugs and the order (sequential number) in which those drugs reached the market. The study was based on drug classes approved for marketing between the 1960’s and the early 2000’s. The eight classes that had 4 or more drugs were included for analysis. Five specific indicators were used to determine drug’s distinguishing pharmacological properties. It was found that TJSI can detect the difference between follow-on drugs with distinguishing features and those without them better than the other publication indices (AJI or RCT). Our analysis also demonstrated a negative correlation (r = −0.372, p = 0.014) between the TJSI of drugs without distinguishing features (“me-too” drugs) and the order of the drug’s market entry. This implies that TJSI could be useful for the assessment of situations with multiple market entrants in the same class when a new addition has a questionable value.     

The classification of biomedical journals by research level

A new method of classification of biomedical research journals by research level (RL) into clinical or basic, or somewhere in between, is described that updates the system developed by CHI Research Inc. nearly 30 years ago. It is based on counting articles that have one of about 100 “clinical” title words, or one of a similar number of “basic” title words, or both. It allows over 3000 journals in the Science Citation Index (or other databases) to be classified rapidly and transparently, for changes in their research level with time, and for many individual papers in “mixed” journals to be categorised as clinical or basic. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A bibliometric analysis of the performance of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Water Research</Emphasis>

This paper presents a detailed chronological survey of papers published in the journal titled Water Research which started publication since 1967. This current investigation reviews publication patterns between 1967 and 2008. An analysis of the research performance according to publication output, distribution of words in article title, author keywords, and keywords plus. Performances of countries, institutes, and authors, including total, single, collaborative, first author, and corresponding author publications were analyzed. The most-frequently cited articles each year and the articles of the highest impact in 2008 were also reported. Results showed that “activated sludge” was the most frequently used author keyword, followed by “adsorption,” and “drinking water.” Authors from 114 different countries/territories published in the journal, with the most articles submitted by authors from the USA.     

Research trends analysis by comparing data mining and customer relationship management through bibliometric methodology

There are few comprehensive studies and categorization schemes to discuss the characteristics for both data mining and customer relationship management (CRM) although they have already become more important recently. Using a bibliometric approach, this paper analyzes data mining and CRM research trends from 1989 to 2009 by locating headings “data mining” and “customer relationship management” or “CRM” in topics in the SSCI database. The bibliometric analytical technique was used to examine these two topics in SSCI journals from 1989 to 2009, we found 1181 articles with data mining and 1145 articles with CRM. This paper implemented and classified data mining and CRM articles using the following eight categories—publication year, citation, country/territory, document type, institute name, language, source title and subject area—for different distribution status in order to explore the differences and how data mining and CRM technologies have developed in this period and to analyze data mining and CRM technology tendencies under the above result. Also, the paper performs the K–S test to check whether the analysis follows Lotka’s law. The research findings can be extended to investigate author productivity by analyzing variables such as chronological and academic age, number and frequency of previous publications, access to research grants, job status, etc. In such a way characteristics of high, medium and low publishing activity of authors can be identified. Besides, these findings will also help to judge scientific research trends and understand the scale of development of research in data mining and CRM through comparing the increases of the article author. Based on the above information, governments and enterprises may infer collective tendencies and demands for scientific researcher in data mining and CRM to formulate appropriate training strategies and policies in the future. This analysis provides a roadmap for future research, abstracts technology trends and facilitates knowledge accumulations so that data mining and CRM researchers can save some time since core knowledge will be concentrated in core categories. This implies that the phenomenon “success breeds success” is more common in higher quality publications.     

Where demographics meets scientometrics: towards a dynamic career analysis

In computer science, as opposed to many other disciplines, papers published in conference and workshop proceedings count as formal publications when evaluating the scholarship of an academic. We consider the relationship between high quality journals and conferences in the computer vision (CV) subfield of computer science. We determined that 30% of papers in the top-3 CV journals base their work on top-3 conference papers by the same authors (which we call priors (See “Methods” section for the definition of a prior)). Journal papers with priors are significantly more cited than journal papers without priors. Also the priors themselves are cited more than other papers from the conferences. For a period of 3–5 years after the journal paper publication, the priors receive more citations than the follow-up journal paper. After that period, the journal paper starts receiving most of the citations. Furthermore, we found that having the prior conference paper did not make it any easier (faster) to publish in a journal. We also surveyed journal authors and based on their answers and the priors analysis, we discovered that authors seem to be divided into different groups depending on their preferred method of publication.     

A bibliometric study of the trend in articles related to eutrophication published in Science Citation Index

A keyword analysis was applied in this work to evaluate research trends of eutrophication papers published between 1991 and 2010 in any journal of all the subject categories of the Science Citation Index compiled by Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, USA. Eutrophication was used as a keyword to search parts of titles, abstracts, or keywords. The published output analysis showed that eutrophication research steadily increased over the past 20 years and the annual publication output in 2008, 2009, 2010 were about four times that of 1991. The whole paper published by China ranked at 3rd, but these papers’ IF were lower than the average of the world. “Water Framework Directive” and “Life Cycle Assessment” were two of the most frequently used author keywords in the period between 1999 and 2010 whilst they did not appear before 1998. These new conception indicated eutrophication research trend was changing to policy and management from technological researches.     

Relation of the title length of a journal article to the length of the article

The great importance of titles being highly informative is almost unanimously accepted in literature, assuming that the more informative titles are, the more effectively they serve their functions. The most common measure of title “informativeness” has been the number of “significant” (i.e., non-trivial) words included in it, and one of the factors which might be associated with it is the length of the paper, measured by its number of pages. The present study attempted to test, in a large group of journals from different areas and over six decades, the hypothesis that a paper with more pages will have more “significant” words in its title. Large samples of original research papers were drawn from each decade year of twenty-four leading journals selected from the sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. For each paper, the number of “significant” words in the title was correlated with the number of pages. Findings indicate a difference between the scientific journals on the one hand, and the social sciences and humanities journals on the other. A moderate positive correlation was found in most scientific journals for many periods. In the social sciences journals, and to a greater extent, in the humanities journals, a significant positive correlation was limited to only a few periods, while the rest showed a very low correlation, or even a negative one. The different findings for the sciences are perhaps attributable to their unique inherent features. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Estimate of global research trends and performance in family therapy in Social Science Citation Index

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the global progress and quantitative assessment of current research trends on family therapy, using a bibliometric approach and exploring related literature in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database from 1992 to 2009. This study used the bibliometric arrropach to learn about the subject categories, core journals, top countries and leading research institutes in publication, most frequently used author keywords, and most frequently used KeyWords Plus. Also, this study used a “word cluster analysis” method to locate research hot topics. A majority of the subject categories were located in clinical psychology and family studies. The core journals for family therapy located in Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Contemporary Family Therapy, and Journal of Family Therapy. The US ranked as the top country of world articles with the highest h-index, followed distantly by the UK and Germany. The leading research institutes were Purdue University, University of Miami, and Brigham Young University. “Adolescents” and “adolescent” were highly used words in article titles. Next, the top three most frequently used author keywords were “anorexia nervosa”, “adolescents”, and “psychotherapy”. Finally, the top three most frequently used KeyWords Plus were “psychotherapy”, “children”, and “intervention”. Based on “word cluster analysis” to determine the research hotspots, the research hot topics of family therapy fall into three categories: treated subjects, treated matters, and treatment issues. The research trend in family therapy seems to involve the therapist often treating adolescents or children for eating disorders, substance abuse, depression, or schizophrenia. During treatment or therapy, therapists and researchers must pay attention to the issues of gender, training, and therapeutic alliance.     

Citation expectations: are they realized? Study of the Matthew index for Russian papers published abroad

We consider the “Matthew effect” in the citation process which leads to reallocation (or misallocation) of the citations received by scientific papers within the same journals. The case when such reallocation correlates with a country where an author works is investigated. Russian papers in chemistry and physics published abroad were examined. We found that in both disciplines in about 60% of journals Russian papers are cited less than average ones. However, if we consider each discipline as a whole, citedness of a Russian paper in physics will be on the average level, while chemistry publications receive about 16% citations less than one may expect from the citedness of the journals where they appear. Moreover, Russian chemistry papers mostly become undercited in the leading journals of the field. Characteristics of a “Matthew index” indicator and its significance for scientometric studies are also discussed.