Global performance of traditional Chinese medicine over three decades

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is divided into three subfields, including Chinese medicine, Chinese herb and acupuncture, attracts increasing attentions due to its challenging and significant medical values. This study employs bibliometric analysis to examine the profile of publication activity in TCM field as well as its subfields. The data are retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded database during 1980–2009, and 16,536 papers are identified for analysis. Generally speaking, proportions of papers in subfield of acupuncture decreased dramatically, while the proportions of papers of Chinese medicine and Chinese herb rose increasingly. This study finds that East Asia has the largest number of TCM papers, followed by North America and Europe. Furthermore, while China is ranked first in terms of the amount of TCM publications, USA gains the highest percentage of citations. As for regional specialty, mainly, scholars in East Asia publish intensively in Chinese medicine, while most of the scholars in North America and Europe probe into the study of acupuncture. In the latest two decades, China took the first place over Japan in subfields of both Chinese medicine and Chinese herb, while the US has always kept the largest share in acupuncture with a marked upward trend. Regarding the top-ranked TCM institution, Chinese Academy of Sciences located in China, is ranked first in the subfields of Chinese medicine and Chinese herb as well. As for Kyung Hee University, which is located in South Korea, is ranked first in the number of acupuncture papers and Harvard University is ranked first in number of acupuncture citations.     

International collaboration in science: Participation by the Asian giants

Science in the last few years has become increasingly global and collaborative. The number of internationally coauthored papers has been increasing steadily. We have counted internationally jointly authored papers involving authors from the advanced countries and the Third World countries, usingSCI 1991. We have looked at the number of papers resulting from collaboration among authors residing in the countries of the North (e.g. EC and OECD countries), authors residing in the South (e.g. India and Bangladesh, Mexico and Brazil, China and Pakistan) and papers resulting from collaboration between authors residing in the countries of the South and the North (e.g. India and UK, China and USA). Despite its late start, China has published many more collaborative papers with most Asian countries and the advanced countries of the West except the UK than India — confirming the effectiveness of the open door policy of post-Mao China. Both India and China collaborate with USA much more often in physics than in other areas, followed by clinical medicine. However, India collaborates more with USA in chemistry than China. In Indo-US and Sino-US collaborations, collaborating institutions are mostly universities and institutes of higher learning in India and USA, whereas in China several institutions under the Academies also take part. The percentage of collaborative papers involving authors from India is even smaller than the percentage of journal articles originating from India. In general, papers resulting from international collaboration appear in better journals and are cited more often than papers that are the outcome of local research.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

Investigating different types of research collaboration and citation impact: a case study of Harvard University’s publications

This study aims to investigate the influence of different patterns of collaboration on the citation impact of Harvard University’s publications. Those documents published by researchers affiliated with Harvard University in WoS from 2000–2009, constituted the population of the research which was counted for 124,937 records. Based on the results, only 12% of Harvard publications were single author publications. Different patterns of collaboration were investigated in different subject fields. In all 22 examined fields, the number of co-authored publications is much higher than single author publications. In fact, more than 60% of all publications in each field are multi-author publications. Also, the normalized citation per paper for co-authored publications is higher than that of single author publications in all fields. In addition, the largest number of publications in all 22 fields were also published through inter-institutional collaboration and were as a result of collaboration among domestic researchers and not international ones. In general, the results of the study showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the number of authors and the number of citations in Harvard publications. In addition, publications with more number of institutions have received more number of citations, whereas publications with more number of foreign collaborators were not much highly cited.     

Evolution of the publications in clinical neurology: scientific impact of different countries during the 2000–2009 period

We analyzed the productivity and visibility of publications on the subject category of Clinical Neurology by countries in the period 2000–2009. We used the Science Citation Index Expanded database of the ISI Web of Knowledge. The analysis was restricted to the citable documents. Bibliometric indicators included the number of publications, the number of citations, the median and interquartile range of the citations, and the h-index. We identified 170,483 publications (84.9 % original articles) with a relative increase of 28.5 % throughout the decade. Fourteen countries published over 2,000 documents in the decade and received more than 50,000 citations. The average of citations received per publication was 8 (interquartile range: 3–20) and the h-index was 261. USA was the country with the highest number of publications, followed by Germany, Japan, the UK and Italy. Moreover, USA publications had the largest number of citations received (44.5 % of total), followed by the UK, Germany, Canada, and Italy. On the other hand, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK had the highest median citations for their total publications. During the period 2000–2009 there was a significant increase in Clinical Neurology publications. Most of the publications and citations comprised 14 countries, with the USA in the first position. Interestingly, most of the publications and citations originated from only 14 countries, with European countries with relatively low population, such as Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in this top group.     

Bibliometric analysis of complementary and alternative medicine research over three decades

This study applies bibliometric analysis to investigate the quantity and citation impact of scientific papers in the field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The data are collected from 19 CAM journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) database during 1980–2009, and 17,002 papers are identified for analysis. The study analyzes the document types, geographical and institutional distribution of the authorship, including international scientific collaboration. This study suggests that the major type of document is original article. The CAM papers are mostly published by North America, East Asia, and European countries, of which publications authored in East Asia are cited most. Country-wise, major contributors of CAM papers are from USA, People’s Republic of China, India, England and Germany. India has the highest CPP value, attracting high attentions in CAM community. This article also finds that international co-authorship in the CAM field has increased rapidly during this period. In addition, internationally collaborated publications generate higher citation impact than papers published by authors from single country. Finally, the research identifies productive institutions in CAM, and China Medical University located in Taiwan is the most productive organization.     

A bibliometric analysis of publications by the School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University, South Korea

This study presents an in-depth survey of research and citation performance of the School of Biological Sciences (SBS) 39-member faculty at Seoul National University (SNU), the most prestigious university in South Korea, for the years 2004–2009. Thirty-nine faculty members published a total of 640 publications during the period, representing an average of 16.4 publications per scientist. Among the 640 publications, 521 (81.4 %) were cited 9,204 times, an average of 14.4 citations per publication. More publications co-authored by the SBS faculty with foreign researchers (mostly from the U.S.A.) were published in mainstream journals than publications by three other co-authorship types. Accordingly, publications by international co-authorships received more citations compared to citation levels of three other co-authorship types in terms of the average citations per publication. The study has found a concentration effect, whereby quite a small number of publications received approximately one-third of the citation performance generated by the SBS faculty at SNU. The results demonstrate that the citation performance of the SBS at SNU can be influenced considerably by the presence and productivity of ‘star’ scientists.     

Is the United States losing ground in science? A global perspective on the world science system

Based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded web-version, the USA is still by far the strongest nation in terms of scientific performance. Its relative decline in percentage share of publications is largely due to the emergence of China and other Asian nations. In 2006, China has become the second largest nation in terms of the number of publications within this database. In terms of citations, the competitive advantage of the American “domestic market” is diminished, while the European Union (EU) is profiting more from the enlargement of the database over time than the USA. However, the USA is still outperforming all other countries in terms of highly cited papers and citation/publication ratios, and it is more successful than the EU in coordinating its research efforts in strategic priority areas like nanotechnology. In this field, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become second largest nation in both numbers of papers published and citations behind the USA.     

Classic articles on social work field in Social Science Citation Index: a bibliometric analysis

This study aimed to identify and analyze characteristics of classic articles published in the Web of Science social work subject category from 1856 to 2011. Articles that have been cited at least 50 times were assessed regarding publication outputs, distribution of outputs in journals, publications of authors, institutions, countries as well as citation life cycles of articles with the highest total citations since its publication up to 2011 and the highest citations in 2011. Five bibliometric indicators were used to evaluate source countries, institutions, and authors. Results showed that 721 of the most highly referenced articles, published between 1957 and 2008, had been cited at least 50 times. Child Abuse & Neglect and American Journal of Community Psychology published the most classic articles. USA produced 89 % of classic articles and also published the most number of single, internationally collaborative, first author, and corresponding author classic articles. The top 38 productive institutions were all located in the US. The University of Illinois was the most productive institution for the total classic articles while University of California, Los Angeles produced the most inter-institutionally collaborative articles and Arizona State University published the most single institution articles. Furthermore, a new indicator, Y-index was successfully applied to evaluate publication characteristics of authors and institutions. High percentage of authors had the same numbers of first author and corresponding author status of classic articles in social work field.     

Mapping of Indian computer science research output, 1999�C2008

The research output of India in computer science during 1999?C2008 is analyzed in this paper on several parameters including total research output, its growth, rank and global publication share, citation impact, share of international collaborative papers and major collaborative partner countries and patterns of research communication in most productive journals. It also analyses the characteristics of most productive institutions, authors and high-cited papers. The publications output and impact of India is also compared with China, South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.     

Relation of seminal nanotechnology document production to total nanotechnology document production — South Korea

This study evaluates trends in quality of nanotechnology and nanoscience papers produced by South Korean authors. The metric used to gauge quality is ratio of highly cited nanotechnology papers to total nanotechnology papers produced in sequential time frames. In the first part of this paper, citations (and publications) for nanotechnology documents published by major producing nations and major producing global institutions in four uneven time frames are examined. All nanotechnology documents in the Science Citation Index [SCI, 2006] for 1998, 1999–2000, 2001–2002, 2003 were retrieved and analyzed in March 2007. In the second part of this paper, all the nanotechnology documents produced by South Korean institutions were retrieved and examined. All nanotechnology documents produced in South Korea (each document had at least one author with a South Korea address) in each of the above time frames were retrieved and analyzed. The South Korean institutions were extracted, and their fraction of total highly cited documents was compared to their fraction of total published documents. Non-Korean institutions that co-authored papers were included as well, to offer some perspective on the value of collaboration.     

An overview of selective laser sintering and melting research using bibliometric indicators

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of published research in selective laser sintering/melting (SLS/M), by using bibliometric indicators. Bibliometrics is the quantitative statistical analysis of written publications, such as articles or books. It is useful for displaying and classifying information according to selected variables, such as authors, journals, citations, countries, and institutions. This type of review provides a clear picture of research in a targeted area, such as the most cited research, author with most publications, journal with most published papers, and universities and countries producing the largest amount of research in the target area. The Web of Science database was used to collect data on the topic of interest. The results reveal that the Rapid Prototyping journal is the most productive journal in this field, where the Huazhong University Science Technology is the most effective institution. Also China is the most productive country, whereas USA is the most influential country.     

An exploratory study on collaboration profiles of Chinese publications in Molecular Biology

Summary As science has become much complex and sophisticated, greater attention is paid to scientific collaboration within recent bibliometric studies. A total of 6538 publications in Molecular Biology from China during 1999-2003, as indicated by data collected from database of the Science Citation Index Expanded - Web Edition, have been analyzed. A large proportion of publications have been authored by more than 3 scientists. The composition of publications grouped by collaboration patterns are: 1.58% non-collaborative papers, 42.43% local papers, 34.37% domestic papers and 21.62% international papers on average during the studied period. The countries with which China has collaborative links and their frequencies are all itemized to indicate the intensity of international collaboration in the field of Molecular Biology. Finally, the differences between the impact of wholly indigenous papers and internationally collaborative papers have been compared. The results indicate that foreign collaboration does contribute a lot to the improvement of the mainstream connectivity and international visibility.     

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.     

Difference in the impact of open-access papers published by China and the USA

We analyze the impact of open-access (OA) articles published by China and the USA by using Web of Science (WoS) data covering a period of 5 years (2011–2015), five indexes (citation and four altmetric indexes), five disciplines, and three types of articles. With regard to article type, Type I papers are those wherein the authors are all from China or the USA. Type II are those in which the first author is from China or the USA. Type III includes those in which the first author is not from China or the USA. We found that the proportion of OA papers in WoS has been growing in recent years. In terms of citations and altmetric indexes, the mean value of the USA is larger than that of China in general; Type II articles possess the highest value among all papers in the USA, whereas Type III has the highest value in China. Compared with the scenario in citations, social sciences and humanities possess larger altmetric values in China and the USA. The correlation among indicators is similar for the OA papers from China and the USA. Generally, citations cannot effectively represent the altmetric indexes. The gap between China and the USA is the largest in the altmetric attention score and Type I, and the smallest in citations and Type III. Measuring the international impact of OA papers using only citations underestimates the gap between China and the USA.     

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.     

Research and citation impact of publications by the Chemistry Division at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

The paper analyses the citations to 1733 publications published during 1970–1999 by the Chemistry Division at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, using Science Citation Index 1982–2003 as the source data. The extent of citations received, in terms of the number of citations per paper, yearwise break up of citations, domainwise citations, self-citations and citations by others, diachronous self-citation rate, citing authors, citing institutions, highly cited papers, the categories of citing documents, citing journals and distribution of citations among them etc. are determined. During 1982–2003 chemistry Division publications have received a total of 11041 citations. The average number of citations per year was 501.86. The average number of citations per publication was 6.37. The highest number of citations received were 877 in 2001. The citation rate was peaked during 1990–2003 as maximum 9145 (82.82%) citations were received during the period. Total self-citations were 3716 (33.66%) and citations by others were 7325 (66.34%). Mean diachronous self-citation rate was 36.16. Citation time lag was zero for 144 (15.52%) papers and one year for 350 (37.72%) papers. Single authored publications (168) have received 456 (4.13%) citations and 1565 multi-authored publications have received 10585 (95.87%) citations. The core citing authors were: J. P. Mittal (695) followed by V. K. Jain (524), H. Mohan (471), T. Mukherjee (307), R. M Iyer (253), H. Pal (251), J. V. Yakhmi (211), A. V. Sapre (174), D. K. Palit (161), N. M. Gupta (128), and S. K. Kulshrestha (116). Citation life cycles of four highly cited papers was discussed. The core journals citing Chemistry Division publications were: J. Phys. Chem.-A (436 citations), Chem. Phys. Lett. (372), J. Phys. Chem. (355), J. Chem. Phys. (353), J. Organomet. Chem. (285), J. Phys. Chem.-B (279), J. Photochem. Photobiol.-A (263), Langmuir (245), J. Am. Chem. Soc. (226), Physica-C (225), Radiat. Phys. Chem. (217), Inorg. Chem. (215) and Indian J. Chem.-A (207).     

Bibliometric indicators of Indian research collaboration patterns: A correspondence analysis

International collaboration is becoming an increasingly significant issue in science. During the last few years, a large number of bibliometric studies of co-authorships have been reported. Mostly, these studies have concentrated on country-to-country collaboration, revealing general patterns of interaction. In this study we analyze international collaborative patterns as indicated in the Indian publications by tracking out multi author publications as given in Science Citation Index (SCI) database. Correspondence analysis is used for analysis and interpretation of the results. According to correspondence analysis of the data set, Physics, Chemistry, Clinical medicine are the first, second and third largest subjects having international collaboration. USA, Italy, Germany, France, England are the top five countries with which India is collaborating. The data set shows an association between Physics and Italy, Switzerland, Algeria, Finland, South Korea, Russia, Netherlands contrasting an association between Biology & Biochemistry, Immunology, Ecology & Environment, Geosciences, Multidisciplinary subjects and England, Japan, Canada. It also shows an association between Agriculture and Philippines, Canada, Denmark in contrast to an association between Chemistry and Malaysia, Germany, France. An association between Clinical medicine, Astrophysics and England, Sweden, USA, New Zealand in contrast to an association between Agriculture and Canada, Philippines, Denmark is shown. An association between Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, Neuroscience and Singapore, Canada, USA in contrast to an association between Chemistry, Astrophysics and Malaysia, Spain is shown. This association of collaborating countries and disciplines almost tallies with the publication productivity of these countries in different disciplines.     

A bibliometric analysis of physics publications in Korea, 1994-1998

This study examined research performance of Korean physicists, comparing Korean-authoredpapers versus internationally co-authored papers, indexed in SCI, 1994-1998, and using thenumber of citations received by internationally co-authored papers covered by the SCI CD-ROM.For the study, 4,665 papers published from the researchers affiliated with the physics departmentsor physics-associated laboratories at Korean universities and indexed by SCI were analyzed.Korean authored papers tended to be published in Korean, Japanese, and UK journals, whileinternationally co-authored papers were more likely to appear in German, Dutch, and Swissjournals. Among the 18 authorship countries (on the basis of first author), 93 internationally co-authored papers by U.S. researchers had the highest citation rate, an average 15.9 citations perpaper. Of the eight countries that published over 5 papers, there was no correlation between theaverage number of citations per paper and the total number of citations. However, an ANOVAindicated a significant difference between the average number of citations per paper according tocountry (F = 5.84, p < 0.0005). In other words, papers by the U.S. and French researchers tendedto be cited more frequently than papers by the Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Germanresearchers.     

The h-index and its alternatives: An application to the 100 most prolific economists

The h-index is a recent but already quite popular way of measuring research quality and quantity. However, it discounts highly-cited papers. The g-index corrects for this, but it is sensitivity to the number of never-cited papers. Besides, h- or g-index-based rankings have a large number of ties. Therefore, this paper introduces two new indices, and tests their performance for the 100 most prolific economists. A researcher has a t-number (f-number) of t (f) if t (f) is the largest number for which it holds that she has t (f) publications for which the geometric (harmonic) average number of citations is at least t (f). The new indices overcome the shortcomings of the old indices.     

Evaluation of Moroccan research using a bibliometric-based approach: investigation of the validity of the h-index

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the national research system in Morocco. The exercise focuses on the period 1997–2006 and includes a comparison with South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Portugal and Greece. Ratings of highly ranked researchers are developed on the basis of their number of publications, number of citations and also their ‘h-index’ (or Hirsch index). Finally, we examine the empirical model set by Glänzel that related the h-index to the number of publications and the mean citation rate per paper for these ‘upper-class’ researchers. The use of this model confirms that the h-index is likely to reflect the importance and the quality of the scientific output of a given researcher.