A bibliometric analysis and comparison on three information science journals: JASIST,IPM, JOD, 1998–2008

Employing a citation analysis, this study explored and compared the bibliometric characteristics and the subject relationship with other disciplines of and among the three leading information science journals, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information Processing and Management and Journal of Documentation. The citation data were drawn from references of each article of the three journals during 1998 and 2008. The Ulrich’s Periodical Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading, retrieved from the WorldCat, and LISA database were used to identify the main class, subclass and subject of cited journals and books. Quantitative results on the number of JASIST, IPM and JOD literature references, average number of references cited per paper, document type of cited literature and the journal self-citation rate are reported. Moreover, the highly cited journals and books, the main classes and subclasses of cited journals and books in papers of the three journals, the highly cited subjects in journals and books of library and information science were identified and analyzed. Comparison on the characteristics of cited journals and books confirmed that all the three journals under study are information science oriented, except JOD which is library science orientation. JASIST and IPM are very much in common and diffuse to other disciplines more deeply than JOD.     

Some methodological problems in ranking scientists by citation analysis

A sample of 80 Hungarian scientists, authors or co-authors of a total number of 6273 papers—published between 1930–1976—has been analysed. Citation data to eachpaper were collected form the 1964–76 SCI's by manual search. Citation counts were distinguished with respect to the following categories: (I) the set of cited authors has element(s) common with the set of citing authors (self citation), (II) condition I is not satisfied, but the cited author under study and at least one of the citing authors were co-authors prior to the publication of the cited paper, (III) none of the former criteria is satisfied. The yearly average citation frequency of a paper was not corrected for obsolescence, since there is no evidence that the decay of citation frequency with time is independent of the absolute citedness of the paper. Individual performance has been measured (a) by the sum of the vearly average typeIII fractional citation frequencies over all of the author's papers, (b) by the sum of the yearly average citation frequency normalized to one single-authored paper per year over the period of the author's activity, (c) by the same as ina, but summed up only over the most highly cited papers scattering upwards from the individual's own average, (d) by the fractional authorship, and (e) by the number of items in the author's publication list. The first three parameters seem to be applicable in measuring the utility of the individual's scientific contribution with slightly different emphasis on different aspects. These parameters are uncorrelated with those measuring the output of individuals.     

Analysis of the scientific productivity of researchers from the Republic of Croatia for the period 1990–1992

The scientific production of researchers from the Republic of Croatia, consisting of the published papers with addresses of the institutions from Croatia only, was analyzed for the period 1990–1992, covering 2047SCI, SSCI, andA&HCI registered papers. The source index ofSCI has registered 1912 (92.50% of total number of published articles) papers,SSCI 118 (5,71%), andA&HCI 37 (1.79%) papers, respectively. The papers were published in more than 700 different journals, covering 122 scientific subfields. The most frequently used journals are the nationalPeriodicum Biologorum, Croatica Chemica Acta andCollegium Antropologicum with 236 published papers or 11.5%. The largest number of papers have been published in scientific subfields:Biology (146 papers),Chemistry (107), andPhysics of Condensed Matter (102). The average paper was published by 3.57 researchers, but subfields ofNuclear Physics (7.40 authors per paper),Immunology (5.67), andHematology (5.60) were with the highest authorship. The partial contributions of institutions were also determined, and the most productive were Ruder Bokovi Institute with 645.0, the Faculty of Medicine with 396.7, and the Faculty of Science and Mathematics with 201.7 published papers, respectively. The average quality of the used journals were estimated; Institute of Physics, Ruder Bokovi Institute, and the Faculty of Science and Mathematics published their papers in journals with bigger impact factor (higher quality) than average institutions. Publications were divided by the type of papers, most frequent being articles (1778 publications, 86.85%), notes (117, 5.71%) and letters (56, 2.74%), respectively. Scientific subfield distribution of papers published by the most productive institutions were also analyzed.     

Scientometric analysis of the research activities of chemists from the “Rugjer Bošković” Institute (Yugoslavia), 1976–1985

The research activity of chemists from the Rugjer Bokovi Institute (RBI, Zagreb, Yugoslavia) was analyzed for the period 1976–1985, covering 2018 research years of scientific work, and 1149 SCI registered papers (0.57 publications per research year). At the average, one paper was published by 3.05 scientists. The papers were published in 235 different journals, most frequently is the nationalCroatica Chemica Acta (171 papers). The publications were divided into two groups: for the periods 1976–1980 and 1981–1985, and for each paper citations were collected in the respective time period. An average publication had 2.58 citations. Chemical papers from the second period had 2.73 citations per paper, which is 85% of the expected value, and this was considerably more than for Yugoslav papers (66%) in general. The papers were classified according to the subfields used in theJournal Citation Reports, and the results compared with the data published bySchubert, Glänzel andBraun. The distribution of citations was also analyzed.     

Number of references in biochemistry and other fields; A case study of the Journal of Biological Chemistry throughout 1910–1985

Large samples of papers published in theJournal of Biological Chemistry in all decades and in some mid-decades werechecked in order to study the referencing pattern, throughout the period 1910–1985, in an internationally leading journal, with especially high citation impact. All measures show that there has been a significant growth in the number of references per paper, during most of the period, but mainly from the 1950's on, refuting Meadows' upper limit. A detailed comparison to a wide range of fields shows theJBC rates to be among the highest. Eight factors affecting the number of references are discussed, and some projections for the future are made.     

The highly cited papers of professors as an indicator of a research group's scientific performance

In the first part of the paper the citations in 1986 and 1987 of 3938 papers published in 1985 by 324 research groups in the faculties of science and of medicine of eight universities in the Netherlands are analyzed. Because of the large statistical spread of (1) the number of short-term citations of papers cited equally frequently over a long period, and (2) the number of citations over a long period of papers by the same author, short-term citation scores appear to be an unreliable indicator of a research group's contribution to science. In the second part of the paper an alternative approach is presented, based on a subdivision of the 3938 papers in papers authored by professors with 0–2, 3–8, or 9 highly cited papers (HCPs, 25 citations) to their name. Very large citation score differences were found for the three categories. For example: for papers first-authored by a professor, the average number of citations per person in 1986 and 1987 for 1985 papers was for 161 professors with 9 HCPs a factor 14 larger than for 575 professors with only 0–2 HCPs; for papers co-authored by professors, this factor was 6.6. These findings justify the conclusion that the number of HCPs scored by the professors (and other senior scientists) during their entire career is a much more reliable predictor of the performance of a research group than the number of short-term citations of the articles published by the group within a short period. A research group's contribution to science is primarily determined by the individual scientifictalents of its members.     

Reference standards for citation based assessments

One of the most crucial points of citation-based assessments is to find proper reference standards to which the otherwise meaningless plain citation counts can be compared. Using such standards, mere absolute numbers can be turned into relative indicators, suitable for cross-national and cross-field comparisons. In the present study, three possible choice of reference standards for citation assessments are discussed. Citation rates of publications under study can be compared to the average citation rates of the papers of the publishing journals to result inRelative Citation Rate (RCR), an indicator successfully used in several comparative scientometric analyses (see, e.g. Refs 1–5). A more customized reference set is defined by therelated records in the new CD Edition of theScience Citation Index database. Using the socalled bibliographic coupling technique, a set of papers with a high measure of similarity in their list of references is assigned to every single paper of the database. Beside of being an excellent retrieval tool, related records provide a suitable reference set to assess the relative standing of a given set of papers as measured by citation indicators. The third choice introduced in this study is specifically designed for assessing journals. For this purpose, the set of journals cited by the journal in question seems to be a useful basis to compare with. The pros and cons of the three choices are discussed and several examples are given.     

The citation impact of letters to the editor; The case of Lancet

Letters to the editor published in theLancet during the first half of 1980 were less cited than the corresponding papers. The average number of citations per letter was larger if the letter contained some substantive information. The longer the letter the more frequently it was cited. Letters that react to some previous publication tend to be shorter than spontaneous letters. Reacting letters tend to be less cited than spontaneous letters if they are short, more cited if they are longer. Letters with substantive information tend to originate outside the UK in which case they are also more cited.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. Moravcsik     

An Analysis of the Articles in the Journal of Engineering Education

Twenty issues of the Journal of Engineering Education from 1993 through 1997 were analyzed. The most common keywords used were teaching, design, and computers. An average of 10.4 percent of the articles require discipline specific knowledge for complete understanding. Approximately 60 percent of the articles included a teaching component, and most of these articles included an assessment. Only 13.4 percent of the articles used an educational theory. Women comprised 22 percent of all authors, but only 15.3 percent of authors who had a degree in engineering, computer science or engineering technology were women. The average number of usable references per article was 15.2. The mean number of times a source was cited is one. Only 20 sources were cited five or more times. Twenty-four authors or organizations were cited 10 or more times. Of the most-cited authors 48 percent do not have a degree in engineering, computer science or engineering technology. The keyword and citation analyses showed that the Journal has great breadth of both content and sources for references. The mean number of times articles published in the Journal during 1993 and 1994 were later cited in the Journal was zero. The content of the Journal has become more professional and the quality has improved in the five years studied.     

Bibliometric analysis of homeopathy research during the period of 1991 to 2003

Summary Homeopathy has been applied to clinical use since it was first presented 200 years ago. The use of the bibilometric analysis technique for examining this topic does not exist in the literature. The objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of all homeopathy-related publications in Science Citation Index (SCI). A systematic search was performed using the SCI for publications during the period of 1991 to 2003. Selected documents included Homoeopathy, Homoeopathic, Homeopathy, or Homeopathic as a part of the title, abstract, or keywords. Analyzed parameters included authorship, patterns of international collaboration, journal, language, document type, research address, number of times cited, and reprint authors address. Citation analysis was mainly based on the impact factor as defined by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and on citations per publications (CPP), which is used to assess the impact relative to the entire field and is defined as the ratio between the average numbers of citations per publications in a certain period. Of total articles, 49% had a single author. The UK, the US, and Germany produced 71% of the total output, while European countries as a whole also contributed 65% of the total share of independent publications. English remains the dominant language, it comprised only 76%, while German contributed 18%, and the remaining where distributed among 8 European languages. More document types and languages, and fewer pages have appeared in homeopathy research. 3.5% of papers were cited more than 10 times in three years after publication, and 60% were never cited. Small-group collaboration was a popular method as co-authorship. The top 3 ranking countries of publication were the UK, the US, and Germany. The US dominated citation followed by the UK, and then Germany. In addition, a simulation model was applied to describe the relationship between the cumulative number of citations and the paper life.     

Location of zinc in a conventional dental amalgam matrix

The location of zinc in a conventional dental amalgam matrix has been studied by electroetching, scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. It has been shown that zinc is randomly and non-uniformly distributed in the matrix phases. The major portion of zinc is segregated as an intergranular structure at ₁, and ₂ grain boundaries. A zinc-containing substructure has been observed in ₂ but not in ₁. A small amount of zinc may exist as solid solution in both phases.     

World literature on thorium research: A scientometric study based on Science Citation Index

Summary This paper attempts to highlight quantitatively the growth and development of world literature on thorium in terms of publication output as per Science Citation Index (1982-2004). During 1982-2004 a total of 3987 papers were published by the scientists in the field 'thorium'. The average number of publications published per year were 173. The highest number of papers 249 were published in 2001. The spurt in the literature output was reported during 1991-2004.There were 94 countries involved in the research in this field. USA is the top producing country with 1000 authorships (21.11%) followed by India with 498 authorships (10.51%). Authorship and collaboration trend was towards multi-authored papers. Intensive collaboration was found during 1990-2004.One paper 'Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research - A 406 (3) (1998) 411-426' had 64 collaborators. There were 586 international collaborative papers. Bilateral collaboration accounted for 80.55 percent of total collaborative papers. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (India) topped the list with 153 authorships followed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) with 105 authorships.The most preferred journals by the scientists were: Journal of Radioanalytical Nuclear Chemistry with 181 papers, Radiochimica Acta with 139 papers, Journal of Radioanalytical Nuclear Chemistry -Articles with 127 papers, Geochimica Cosmochimica Acta with 96 papers, Health Physics with 91 papers, Applied Radiation and Isotopes with 88 papers, Journal of Alloys and Compounds with 65 papers, Earth and Planetary Science letters with 59 papers and Chemical Geology, Indian Journal of Chemistry -A, Radiation Protection Dosimetry with 55 papers each. English was the most predominant language used by the scientists for communication. The high frequency keywords were: Thorium (500), Uranium (284), Separation (94), Thorium Isotopes (90), Thorium (IV) (86), Seawater (73), Solvent Extraction (70), and Rare Earth Elements (68).     

Sadhana – Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences: A scientometric analysis

This study presents a scientometric analysis of 253 articles published in Sadhana during the year 2005–2009. Five volumes of the journal are taken up to observe the distribution of contribution, authorship pattern, institution-wise distribution, geographical distribution of contribution, average length of paper, tables and illustrations used and citation pattern in each volume. Results indicate that highest number of papers have been written by two authors. The contributions received in this journal are more from India than from the other countries. Foreign documents show their more representation in references cited. Journals are referred more frequently than other documents.The average number of references per article is 23.72 and 200.602 per volume.     

Interface fluctuations and kinetics of nucleation in helium at ultralow temperatures

Interface fluctuations and kinetics of nucleating droplets are studied in⁴He and³He-⁴He mixtures at ultralow temperatures in the dissipationless regime. We firstly discuss the droplet number density arising as quantum fluctuations and secondly derive the Rayleigh-Plesset equation for a droplet in a metastable fluid. This equation, which is well-known in classical hydrodynamics, governs kinetics of domain growth at very low temperatures. Thirdly, the quantum nucleation rate is shown to be much enhanced by high-frequency acoustic or electric field, however small its amplitude is, when the period of oscillation 2/ is shorter than the time _s of tunnelling through the potential barrier. Fourthly, we examine equilibrium fluctuations of a planar interface which macroscopically separates two phases. The correlation function of the interface displacement is shown to cross over from the classical expression into a newly found quantum expression as the temperature is lowered.     

Research evaluation of research-oriented universities in Taiwan from 1993 to 2003

Publications have been regarded as the most significant output indicating the research performance of universities. This paper uses ISI Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database to investigate the academic performance of research-oriented universities in Taiwan, adopting the bibliometric method from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The data cover the time span for 11 years from 1993 to 2003. The performance indicators applied in this study includes the number of papers, the number of citations, the average citations per paper, the number of highly cited papers, the number of hot papers, and the number of top papers. The research performance and the strength of those universities are revealed in this study, and it is found that National Taiwan University leads among these universities though each university still shows strengths in various specific fields.     

Shannon's entropy as a measure of the “life” of the literature of a discipline

The paper is divided in two parts. Part I deals with the novel use of the concept ofentropy H (measured in nepers) of the ageT of references cited in the literature of a specialty, and the derived parameterS=exp(H) (measured in years). We have proposed to useS (orH) as a measure of the obsolescence of the literature. The concept of entropy comes from the Theory of Information (Shannon) where its mathematical properties have been widely studied and are thus available.H andS have been calculated for the log-normal probability density functions (which model the empirical distributions ofT) of some IEEE journals and for the 58-year collection of an electronics journal, and then they have been compared to the total utility function, this latter defined in the literature. Part II recalls and discusses the mean residual life,M(T), and the expected lifeE(T), of a reference of ageT (concepts borrowed from lifetime data analysis). Besides their intrinsic applications, another possible application of these concepts may be in defining quantitatively the age of historical papers. Examples taken from the literatures of the XX and XIX centuries have been reported.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

The size and impact of the elite set of publications in scientometric assessments

Several scientometric impact indicators [total citations, h, g, and π-index, percentage rank position (PRP), weighted citation share (WCS)] of 190 elite papers of 15 members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences active in three different fields were calculated. From the indices the PRP indicator proved to be independent of the citation practices in the fields. The PRP index of a journal paper can be calculated in per cent as unity minus (the rank number of the paper by citation frequency within the publishing journal minus one divided with the total number of papers in the journal) times hundred. The sum of the PRP index of the elite papers of a scientist may characterize his or her total publication performance. The size of the elite set of journal papers within the total was calculated by different methods. The h-index and g-index corresponds to the size of the elite, i.e. number of the elite papers according to the h-statistics and g-statistics, respectively. The number of papers in the π-set is equal to the square root of total papers. The π-index equals to one hundredth of citations to the π-set papers. In the present paper the size of the elite set is determined as the number of papers in the h-set, g-set, or π-set, and as 10 % of total papers, or number of papers cited 2, 3, or 5 times the mean citation rate (MCR) of the publishing journal. The π-citation threshold model is presented for demonstrating how MCR and the distribution of citations over the papers may influence the size of the elite set and the corresponding π-index. It was found that the scientific performances concluded from the π-index obtained from elite sets of different size are in good agreement.     

Measurement of social stratification. A contribution to the dispute on the ORTEGA hypothesis

Some discussion papers about the ORTEGA hypothesis were published inScientometrics. One aspect of these discussions was the necessity for the future extension of empirical research to gain a better foundation for the acceptance or refutation of the Ortega hypothesis which states that the research done by average scientists substantially contributes to the advance of science. In this direction an empirical study about the stratification in coauthorship networks is represented in this paper. It was tested whether the extent of stratification decreases with the increasing number of coauthors per paper.     

Zero-temperature attenuation and transverse spin dynamics in fermi liquids. III. Low spin polarizations

This is the third in a series of papers on microscopic theory of transverse dynamics in spin-polarized Fermi liquids. In the lowest order in polarization our exact general theory of Ref. 1 reproduces the conventional Landau-Silin-Leggett theory of Fermi liquids. The next term in polarization expansion contains a zero-temperature attenuation with the magnitude that does not depend on polarization. This attenuation results in a finite relaxation time in transverse spin dynamics at zero temperature and is responsible for anomalous temperature behavior of spin diffusion. The zero-temperature attenuation is determined by two angular harmonics of the derivatives of the mass operators and the irreducible vertex in off-shell directions, and cannot be expressed via standard Fermi liquid harmonics. At high polarizations, the parameters of transverse spin dynamics are calculated as an expansion in polarization. The expansion involves complex values of interaction function and energy on a set of isoenergetic surfaces with the radii between the Fermi momenta for up and down spins,p andp. The results explain recent experimental data on spin diffusion in spin-polarized liquid³He and³He-⁴He mixtures. The comparison with experimental data indicates that the superfluid transition temperature for³He in³He-⁴He mixtures may be much lower than the current estimates.