Access to third world science in international scientific and technical bibliographic databases

For the past eight years, the author has been examining trends in access to international scientific literature in major international bibliographic databases available on various information systems. A major portion of the research program examined and compared the languages of documents and countries of publication for items published between 1970–1990 and recorded on MEDLINE, PsycInfo, BIOSIS, Chemical Abstracts, and other databases on the DIALOG system. The second phase of this study examines the remaining scientific databases on DIALOG, including MATHFILE and AGRICOLA. A comparison of the international range of MEDLINE and EMBASE has also recently been completed. In order to attempt to assess actual amounts of literature produced, the Unesco statistics for literature production have been studied. In the course of this research, the author encountered a variety of system attributes that affect the ways in which Third World science can be identified. Some of the policies and procedures of database development that affect the inclusion of Third World science have been identified.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990.     

A comparative study of research performance in computer science

The paper compares the research performance in computer science of four major Western countries, India and China, based on the data abstracted from INSPEC database during the period 1993–2002. A total of 9,632 computer science papers recorded in INSPEC database were used for the comparison. The findings indicate that, on the one hand, the number of papers produced in China has considerably increased in the past few years. Particularly, in recent years, China occupies a remarkable high position in terms of counts of papers indexed by the INSPEC database. On the other hand, Chinese scientists preferred to publish in domestic journals and proceedings and shares of SCI-papers to the total journal papers for China have still remained the lowest. This indicates that the research activities of Chinese scientists in computer science are still rather “local” and suffer from a low international visibility. Various scientometric indicators, such as Normalized Impact Factor, ratio of papers in high quality journals are further adopted to analyze research performance and diverse finding are obtained. Nevertheless, for these surrogate indicators, China has optimistically achieved great progress, characterized with “low level of beginning and high speed of developing”. The policy implication of the findings lies in that China, as well as other less developed countries in science, can earn relative competitive advantages in some new emerging or younger disciplines such as computer science by properly using catch-up strategy. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Bibliometric Study of the Publication Patterns in the Sciences of South African Scholars 1981–96

The paper is a bibliometric study of the publication patterns and impact of South African scientists 1981–96, with special emphasis on the period 1992–96. The subject fields surveyed are Physics; Chemistry, Plant and Animal Sciences; and Biochemistry/Microbiology. Scientists were selected from the ten universities of the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZulu Natal, which vary considerably, with respect to standards of education, quantity of publications, development and overall progress. The general purpose is two-fold: 1) to observe the publication and citation trends during 1981–96, a period which covers significant policy changes in the country, in particular the end of apartheid 1994; within this context 2) to investigate the patterns used by scientists 1992–96 from these different institutions in publishing the results of their research in the form of conference papers or (inter)national journals. The study collected two sets of data through a scientometric analysis of Science Citation Index and a questionnaire. With the exception of Physics, the results demonstrate a decreasing South African world share, in particular for Plant & Animal Sc. publications, and a similar decline of citations starting in 1986/87. Further, the citation impact relative to the world, after a substantial drop 1985–93 probably representing the international embargo period, in 1994–96 reaches the same level as observed in 1985–89. Also, the study shows that there is a direct relation between academic position, research experience and productivity among South African Scientists in the four scientific disciplines.     

Periodical literature of information science as reflected in Referativnyj Zhurnal,section 59, informatika

The paper presents results of a study of information science periodical literature included intoRZh-Informatika in the period 1977–1983. The distribution of papers among periodicals and their language pattern are shown. The list of 95 periodicals that rendered at least 12 papers per year is also presented. The results are compared with some data taken from theSSCI-JCR database. Connections between information science and scientometrics are investigated by the overlap of periodical literature in both fields.     

Scientometric indicators for a specialty in theoretical high-energy physics: Monte Carlo methods in lattice field theory

Publication and citation data are used to analyse the dynamics of the theoretical highenergy physics specialty Monte Carlo methods in lattice field theory. The present study is based on a comprehensive bibliography of the given subject area for the six-year period 1979–1984 and the 1979–1985 citations to these papers. The application of a recently introduced set of scientometric indicators provides clues to undertanding the growth of a new research specialty from a core body of seminal literature.     

Scientometric indicators for identification of technology system life cycle phase

This paper presents a methodology of analysis of scientometric data reflecting dynamics of technology-oriented R & D. The data base contains a range of articles, patents and standards in the field of welding technologies world-wide and covers the period from 1961 to 1989. The methodology allows to identify the current phase of a technology life cycle in a given country or company and to compare it to that of the leading countries. These data allow to make more motivated decisions in science policy and R & D management.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

OLAP and bibliographic databases

The application of online analytical processing (OLAP) technology to bibliographic databases is addressed. We show that OLAP tools can be used by librarians for periodic and ad hoc reporting, quality assurance, and data integrity checking, as well as by research policy makers for monitoring the development of science and evaluating or comparing disciplines, fields or research groups. It is argued that traditional relational database management systems, used mainly for day-to-day data storage and transactional processing, are not appropriate for performing such tasks on a regular basis. For the purpose, a fully functional OLAP solution has been implemented on Biomedicina Slovenica, a Slovenian national bibliographic database. We demonstrate the system's usefulness by extracting data for studying a selection of scientometric issues: changes in the number of published papers, citations and pure citations over time, their dependence on the number of co-operating authors and on the number of organisations the authors are affiliated to, and time-patterns of citations. Hardware, software and feasibility considerations are discussed and the phases of the process of developing bibliographic OLAP applications are outlined. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Searching for adverse drug reactions at the margin of scientific fields

Results are presented of a scientometric analysis focusing on peripheral dynamics in a scientific field. We evaluate different techniques on their appropriateness for detecting relations between aspects that seem to be not of central interest but are important in innovative research. We do so in order to quantify the role that adverse drug reactions can play as trigger points in innovative drug research.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

Bibliometric analysis of AIDS literature

In accordance with high incidence of AIDS cases, there is an epidemic growth of its literature. This unprecedented growth of literature calls for serious scientometric study. Such a study will not only help the scientometrists, information scientists, but also will be very useful to the related research workers. With this in view an attempt has been made to analyse AIDS literature published during the period 1976–1986 to identify its international channel of communication, medium of communication, contributing countries, authorship trends etc. This study is based on data printed in a source document entitledCollected Papers on AIDS Research, 1976–1986 published by BIOSIS which is a retrospective bibliography incorporating valuable references to research on AIDS from 9,000 source titles monitored in BIOSIS data base. The findings of this study have also been compared to those ofWyatt andSelf, Filardo andLancaster.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. Moravcsik     

Science cited in patents: A geographic "flow" analysis of bibliographic citation patterns in patents

The interplay and cross-fertilization between science and technology, but also the specific role of science for technological development, have received ample attention in both the research and the policy communities. It is in this context that the concepts of absorptive capacity and knowledge spillovers play an important role. We operationalize the science-technology link by quantifying and modeling bibliographic references to the scientific literature as they occur in patents. This approach allows exploring the associative patterns between science creation (as emerging from the scientific literature) and technology development (as emerging from the patent literature). In the current paper, we focus on an analysis of the geographic distribution of the science citation patterns in patents, singling out two fields of (different) technological development, namely biotechnology and information technology. In both fields, the science citation flows from the European, Japanese and US science bases into USPTO and EPO-patents are explored and modeled. Intensive geographic citation flows between the regions are identified, pointing (amongst others) to the strength of both the US and the European science bases as sources for technological activity and creativity around the world.     

The state of social science research on COVID-19

Research on COVID-19 has proliferated rapidly since the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of 2019. Many articles have aimed to provide insight into this fast-growing theme. The social sciences have also put effort into research on problems related to COVID-19, with numerous documents having been published. Some studies have evaluated the growth of scientific literature on COVID-19 based on scientometric analysis, but most of these analyses focused on medical research while ignoring social science research on COVID-19. This is the first scientometric study of the performance of social science research on COVID-19. It provides insight into the landscape, the research fields, and international collaboration in this domain. Data obtained from SSCI on the Web of Science platform was analyzed using VOSviewer. The overall performance of the documents was described, and then keyword co-occurrence and co-authorship networks were visualized. The six main research fields with highly active topics were confirmed by analysis and visualization. Mental health and psychology were clearly shown to be the focus of most social science research related to COVID-19. The USA made the most contributions, with the most extensive collaborations globally, with Harvard University as the leading institution. Collaborations throughout the world were strongly related to geographical location. Considering the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this scientometric study is significant for identifying the growth of literature in the social sciences and can help researchers within this field gain quantitative insights into the development of research on COVID-19. The results are useful for finding potential collaborators and for identifying the frontier and gaps in social science research on COVID-19 to shape future studies.

     

Reflection of co-authorship networks in the Web: Web hyperlinks versus Web visibility rates

About ten years ago a new research field called “webometrics” emerged. Similarities between methods used in webometrics and scientometrics or informetrics are evident from the literature. Are there also similarities between scientometric and Web indicators of collaboration for possible use in technology policy making? Usually, the bibliometric method used to study collaboration is the investigation of co-authorships.In this paper, Web hyperlinks and Web visibility indicators are examined to establish their usefulness as indicators of collaboration and to explore whether similarities exist between Web-based structures and bibliographic structures.Three empirical studies of collaboration between institutions and individual scientists show that hyperlink structures at the Web don’t reflect collaboration structures collected by bibliographic data. However Web visibility indicators of collaboration are different from hyperlinks and can be successfully used as Web indicators of collaboration.     

Scientometric analysis of nature, the journal

300,000 reports inNature during the 1869–1998 period have been reviewed. The distribution of articles by subfields was determined. Additional sources of information were several journals on analytical chemistry and papers at the Pittsburg conference series during 1950–1999. The methodology used is based on the analysis of the average age of employed instruments. The agreement between scientometric data from various sources of information depends on the development stage of the field of science. Calculated and measured scientometric curves were compared. One of the key trends in the development of basic sciences, namely, the increase of articles dealing with instrumental analytical chemistry, inNature is revealed. The research was supported by the Russian Foundation of Basic Research (Project No. 97-06-80163a) and State Target Programme "Integracia" (Project No. 670).     

Thermodynamic properties of vanadium

This work reviews and discusses the data and information on the various thermodynamic properties of vanadium available through March 1985. These include the heat capacity and enthalpy, enthalpy of melting, vapor pressure, and enthalpy of vaporization. The existing data have been critically evaluated and analyzed, and the recommended values for heat capacity, enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs energy function covering the temperature range from 1 to 3800 K have been generated. These values are referred to temperatures based on IPTS-1968. The units used for various properties are joules per mole (J · mol^–1). The estimated uncertainties in the heat capacity are ±3% below 15 K, ±10% from 15 to 150 K, ±3% from 150 to 298.15 K, ±2% from 298.15 to 1000 K, ±3% from 1000 to the melting point (2202 K), and ±5% in the liquid region.Paper presented at the Ninth Symposium on Thermophysical Properties, June 24–27, 1985, Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.     

Bibliometric Analysis of the Welfare Topic

The article is reporting the results of the first part of an extensive informetric analysis of the Welfare topic, carried out in 1998–1999. The aim was to analyse the structure of the literature of international Welfare research, to provide a detailed picture of its basic theoretical and empirical concepts and the mutual relations existing between these concepts.The approach is novel in that through the application of quantitative (i.e., bibliometric) techniques it tries to reduce subjectivity in domain analysis and in the mapping of the developments and segmentation in special topical areas.The analysis used the technique of co-ordinated online searches in a cluster of international bibliographic databases in DIALOG. The identified 13 sub-topics have been in detail analysed, in three time intervals. By measuring trends and developments in the number of publications, term occurrences, similarity between the subject terms and formation of clusters among the subject segments the analysis provides a comprehensive review of such a complex research field as the Welfare State is. The study, which primary aim is to improve the methodology of quantitative analysis in the so called "soft" sciences, will increase the interest among social scientists, scholars of the humanities and library and information science to use databases as analytical tools and to apply the modern text mining techniques for the extraction of knowledge from bibliographic data.     

Measuring regional science networks in China: a comparison of international and domestic bibliographic data sources

Bibliographic databases are frequently used and analysed for the purpose of assessing the capacity and performance of individual researchers or entire research systems. Many of the advantages and disadvantages are the subject of continued discussion in the relevant literature, although only rarely with respect to the regional dimension of scientific publication activity. The importance of the regional dimension of science is reflected in many theoretical concepts, ranging from innovation system theories to territorial cluster concepts and learning regions. This article makes use of the extensive information found in bibliographic data and assesses the reliability of this information as a proxy indicator for the spatial dimension of scientific collaboration in emerging economies. This is undertaken using the example of the emerging field of biotechnology in China from 2000 onwards. Two data sets have been prepared: (1) the frequently used ISI Web of Knowledge database (SCI-Expanded) and (2) the domestic Chinese Chongqing VIP database. Both data sources were analysed using a variety of bibliometric and network scientific methods. The structural and topological similarity of networks, built from co-authorship data, is apparent between the two databases. At an abstract level, general network forces are present, resulting in similar network sizes, clustering, or assortativity. However, introducing additional complexity through regional subdivision reveals many differences between the two data sources that must be accounted for in the analytic design of future scientometric research in dynamic spaces.     

Some scientometric measures of publishing performance for 85 Hungarian research institutes

A sample comprising the three years publication output (1976–1978) of 85 Hungarian research institutes was subjected to scientometric analysis. Values of and correlations between some measures of publishing performance, scientific manpower, and citation impact were compared across the following research fields: mathematical and physical sciences, chemical sciences, biological and medical sciences, agricultural sciences, and engineering. A new quality measure of publishing performance, thetotal impact of the journal papers of individual institutes has been suggested.     

Visualizing the research on pervasive and ubiquitous computing

The aim of this paper is to identify the research status quo on pervasive and ubiquitous computing via scientometric analysis. Information visualization and knowledge domain visualization techniques were adopted to determine how the study of pervasive and ubiquitous computing has evolved. A total of 5,914 papers published between 1995 and 2009 were retrieved from the Web of Science with a topic search of pervasive or ubiquitous computing. CiteSpace is a java application for analyzing and visualizing a wide range of networks from bibliographic data. By use of it, we generated the subject category network to identify the leading research fields, the research power network to find out the most productive countries and institutes, the journal co-citation map to identify the distribution of core journals, the author co-citation map to identify key scholars and their co-citation patterns, the document co-citation network to reveal the ground-breaking literature and detect the co-citation clusters on pervasive and ubiquitous computing, and depicted the hybrid network of keywords and noun phrases to explore research foci on pervasive and ubiquitous computing over the entire span 1995–2009.     

Technological Relevance of Science: An Assessment of Citation Linkages between Patents and Research Papers

Patent citations to the research literature offer a way for identifying and comparing contributions of scientific and technical knowledge to technological development. This case study applies this approach through a series of analyses of citations to Dutch research papers listed on Dutch-invented and foreign patents granted in the US during the years 1987–1996.First, we examined the general validity and utility of these data as input for quantitative analyses of science-technology interactions. The findings provide new empirical evidence in support of the general view that these citations reflect genuine links between science and technology. The results of the various analyses reveal several important features of industrially relevant Dutch science: (1) the international scientific impact of research papers that are also highly cited by patents, (2) the marked rise in citations to Dutch papers on foreign-invented patents; (3) the large share of author-inventor self-citations in Dutch-invented patents; (4) the growing relevance of the life sciences, (5) an increase in the importance of scientific co-operation. We also find significant differences between industrial sectors as well as major contributions of large science-based multinational enterprises, such as Philips, in domestic science-technology linkages.The paper concludes by discussing general benefits and limitations of this bibliometric approach for macro-level analysis of science bases in advanced industrialised countries like the Netherlands.     

Teletraffic conferences: Studying a field of engineering science

Titles of 925 conference papers contained in the first ten International Teletraffic Conferences (1955–1983) are analyzed in terms of word distributions. The aim is to determine how information about changing word frequencies and word patterns relates to the kind of information gained through the more traditional approach of intellectual history. Additionally, we consider what each approach can reveal about the information flows involved in the production and utilization of knowledge in teletraffic. In terms of methodology, the goal of this dual approach is to understand how the analysis of word and document structures can be used both as a scientometric tool and as a tool for historical research. We also comment more generally on the significance of conferences as an object for scientometric analysis, particularly with respect to the emergence and growth of the engineering and industrial sciences.