Interdisciplinarity and the intellectual base of literature studies: citation analysis of highly cited monographs

This article studies interdisciplinarity and the intellectual base of 34 literature journals using citation data from Web of Science. Data from two time periods, 1978–1987 and 1998–2007 were compared to reveal changes in the interdisciplinary citing of monographs. The study extends the analysis to non-source publications; using the classification of monographs to show changes in the intellectual base. There is support for increased interdisciplinary citing of sources, especially to the social sciences, and changes in the intellectual base reflect this. The results are explained using theories on the intellectual and social organization of scientific fields and the use of bibliometric methods on the humanities is discussed. The article demonstrates how citation analysis can provide insights into the communication patterns and intellectual structure of scholarly fields in the arts and humanities.     

Altmetrics analysis of highly cited academic papers in the field of library and information science

Scientometrics - In this study, altmetrics for LIS research papers, and whether OA affects the altmetrics, were analyzed. In addition, by analyzing the differences in the altmetrics in 10 major...     

The significance of the number of highly cited papers as an indicator of scientific prolificacy

After presenting arguments that the number of highly cited papers (HCPs, 25 or more citations) has some advantages as an indicator of an author's scientific impact, the paper discusses citation data of 338 university professors in departments of medicine in the Netherlands. An analysis of the distribution of HCPs over the years provides support for the following conclusions: (1) prolific researchers with a large number of HCPs usually manifest themselves already in their Ph.D. work, apparently almost independent of the scientific setting; (2) it cannot be taken for granted that a successful Ph.D. student with some HCPs connected with his/her doctoral thesis will become a prolific successful researcher; (3) it is unlikely that an unsuccessful Ph.D. student without HCPs connected with his/her doctoral thesis will turn out to be a prolific successful researcher; and (4) for researchers, just as for artists, sportsmen, etc., talent is the most decisive factor in being successful.     

Influence of researchers’ international mobilities on publication: a comparison of highly cited and uncited papers

Using curriculum vitae (CVs) or Short Bios in published resources such as the Internet enables us to analyze many issues concerning researchers’ careers. However, analysis of CVs or Short Bios concerning researchers’ life history, such as movement between countries, has rarely been conducted. In this paper, we pursue two purposes: to demonstrate which conditions (citation impact, countries or sectors) are favorable for the analysis, and to show structures of production of highly cited papers. To grasp more obvious tendencies, we compare two “extreme” samples: highly cited and uncited papers. First, we assess the identification rates of researchers’ origin broken down by researchers’ affiliation (countries and sectors). Then, we analyze the influence of these researchers’ international movement based on their origin. The results show the full landscape of the movement’s influence on national publication, the characteristics of each country in terms of researchers’ countries of origin and the research experience of both internationally moved and domestic researchers. Moreover, we analyze the contributions of researchers who returned from abroad to their home countries. Finally, we assess the limitations of our research method and the topic to be addressed concerning this method.     

A bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers in the field of Economics and Business based on the Essential Science Indicators database

We explain how to determine automatically the e-mail address of the corresponding author in a Web of Science record. Next, we distinguish two types of e-mails used by corresponding authors of academic papers: institutional e-mails and non-institutional ones. We investigate differences between papers with an institutional e-mail address and those with a non-institutional one. It is found that, on average, papers with an institutional e-mail address receive more citations than other ones.     

Patterns of annual citation of highly cited articles and the prediction of their citation ranking: A comparison across subjects

High citation is associated with research quality and consequently findings on highly cited articles are useful to increase understanding of the factors that produce high quality research. This study explores highly cited articles in six subjects, focusing on late citation and peak citation years. Longitudinal citation patterns were found to be highly varied and, on average, different from the remaining articles in each subject. For four of the six subjects, there is a correlation of over 0.42 between the percentage of early citations and total citation ranking but more highly ranked articles had a lower percentage of early citations. Surprisingly, for highly cited articles in all six subjects the prediction of citation ranking of from the sum of citations during their first six years was less accurate than prediction using the sum of the citations for only the fifth and sixth year.     

Citation context analysis and aging patterns of journal articles in molecular genetics

To compare citation history and contextual importance, eleven highly cited articles, 4 slowly aging (Type 1) and 7 quickly aging (Type 2), were ranked using an aggregate citation context measure, the Mean Utility Index. Based on citations in late (PY 6 & 7) source articles, methods papers consistently ranked higher than papers cited for research results and theoretical implications, and Type 1 methods papers ranked above all Type 2 papers. A Type 1 paper representing an important theoretical concept could not be distinguished from Type 2 papers using citation context alone.     

Highly cited research papers and the evaluation of a research university: A case study: Peking University 1974–2003

The academic level and scientific reputation is the most important merit of a research university. Publication of the scientific achievement in the world leading scientific journals is the key to asses a university's overall performance. Peking University is a leading university among the Chinese research universities, and the number of papers published in Science Citation Index (SCI) indexed journals has been on the top of the national list. In this paper, based on our long-term experience and practice in scientific management, we use scientometrics and informetrics method to analyze the academic performance of the researchers, departments and schools of Peking University, mainly using the citations of publications. Highly cited papers are specially important to the reputation of our university. We compare those data with some selected world well-known universities, hence, some important information can be deduced for the policy decision of the university. The results presented here is not only an academic survey, but also a guideline for the future strategic development of Peking University. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The most highly cited Library and Information Science articles: Interdisciplinarity,first authors and citation patterns

Highly cited articles are interesting because of the potential association between high citation counts and high quality research. This study investigates the 82 most highly cited Information Science and Library Science’ (IS&LS) articles (the top 0.1%) in the Web of Science from the perspectives of disciplinarity, annual citation patterns, and first author citation profiles. First, the relative frequency of these 82 articles was much lower for articles solely in IS&LS than for those in IS&LS and at least one other subject, suggesting that that the promotion of interdisciplinary research in IS&LS may be conducive to improving research quality. Second, two thirds of the first authors had an h-index in IS&LS of less than eight, show that much significant research is produced by researchers without a high overall IS&LS research productivity. Third, there is a moderate correlation (0.46) between citation ranking and the number of years between peak year and year of publication. This indicates that high quality ideas and methods in IS&LS often are deployed many years after being published.     

Patents cited in the scientific literature: An exploratory study of 'reverse' citation relations

This paper reports on a new approach to study the linkage between science and technology. Unlike most contributions to this area we do not trace citations of scientific literature in patents but explore citations of patents in scientific literature. Our analysis is based on papers recorded in the 1996-2000 annual volumes of the CD-Edition of Science Citation Index (SCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and patent data provided by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Almost 30,000 US patents were cited by scientific research papers. We analysed the citation links by scientific fields and technological sectors. Chemistry-related subfields tended to cite patents more than other scientific area. Among technological sectors, chemical clearly dominates followed by drugs and medical patents as the most frequently cited categories. Further analyses included a country-ranking based on inventor-addresses of the cited patents, a more detailed inspection of the ten most cited patents, and an analysis of class-field transfers. The paper concludes with the suggestions for future research. One of them is to compare our 'reverse' citation data with 'regular' patent citation data within the same classification system to see whether citations occur, irrespectively of their directionality, in the same fields of science and technology. Another question is as to how one should interpret reverse citation linkages.     

Comparing the scatter of citing and cited literature

Using the subjects desalination and educational psychology, the scatter of periodical articles over periodical titles was compared at two levels, the second level being a random sample of periodical articles cited by the first level. Several measures were used to compare the extent of scatter at the two levels. Some methods commonly used in bibliometrics produced conflicting evidence on whether the citing literature (first-level) or the cited (second-level) was more scattered. A computer-intensive sampling procedure, known as the Bootstrap method, was then used to estimate the scatter of the total cited population from the scatter of the empirical sample. Cumulative distributions were prepared to show what percentage of periodicals accounted for various percentages of articles at each level of scatter. Only at the 90th percentile of articles did the percentage of periodical titles in the cited literature significantly exceed that of the citing literature. At the tail-end of the Bradford-type distribution, the cited literature appears to be more scattered than the literature citing it.     

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).     

Modeling the obsolescence of research literature in disciplinary journals through the age of their cited references

There are different citation habits in the research fields that influence the obsolescence of the research literature. We analyze the distinctive obsolescence of research literature in disciplinary journals in eight scientific subfields based on cited references distribution, as a synchronous approach. We use both negative binomial (NB) and Poisson distributions to capture this obsolescence. The corpus being examined is published in 2019 and covers 22,559 papers citing 872,442 references. Moreover, three measures to analyze the tail of the distribution are proposed: (i) cited reference survival rate, (ii) cited reference mortality rate, and (iii) cited reference percentile. These measures are interesting because the tail of the distribution collects the behavior of the citations at the time when the document starts to get obsolete in the sense that it is little cited (used). As main conclusion, the differences observed in obsolescence are so important even between disciplinary journals in the same subfield, that it would be necessary to use some measure for the tail of the citation distribution, such as those proposed in this paper, when analyzing in an appropriate way the long time impact of a journal.

     

Characterizing a scientific elite (B): publication and citation patterns of the most highly cited scientists in environmental science and ecology

Science is principally driven by the efforts of a vanishingly small fraction of researchers publishing the majority of scientific research and garnering the majority of citations. Despite this well-established trend, knowledge of exactly how many articles these researchers publish, how highly they are cited, and how they achieved their distinctive accomplishments is meager. This article examines the publication and citation patterns of the world’s most highly cited environmental scientists and ecologists, inquiring into their levels of scientific productivity and visibility, examining relationships between scientific productivity and quality within their research programs, and considering how different publication strategies contribute to these distinctive successes. Generally speaking, highly cited researchers are also highly productive, publishing on average well over 100 articles each. Furthermore, articles published by this group are more highly cited on average than articles published in premier generalist journal like Nature and Science, and their citation to publication ratios are more equitably distributed than is typical. Research specialization and primacy of authorship are important determinants of citation frequency, while geographic differences and collaborative propensity matter less. The article closes with a set of suggestions for those wishing to increase the use of their research by the scientific community.     

A study of polymer fracture surface features and their relationship to toughness

The aim of this study was to research fracture surface features for polymers of different toughness and type. The materials chosen provided for an interesting comparison of fracture surfaces. Two brittle amorphous thermoplastics (SAN & PMMA) of the same toughness had very different fracture surfaces. An amorphous thermoplastic (PC) exhibited similar features as both SAN and PMMA but had a higher toughness. Two semi-crystalline thermoplastics (PE1 & PE2) had similar fracture surface features but one was twice the toughness of the other. A rubber toughened polymer (ABS) showed a very different fracture surface to SAN (the host material) and all the other polymers studied. A particular interest was to use the comparison of the fracture surfaces of the above materials to investigate the toughening effects of rubber particles in ABS.     

Publication delays in the science field and their relationship to the ageing of scientific literature

This article presents an exploratory analysis of publication delays in the science field. Publication delay is defined as the time period between submission and publication of an article for a scientific journal. We obtained a first indication that these delays are longer with regard to journals in the fields of mathematics and technical sciences than they are in other fields of science. We suggest the use of data on publication delays in the analysis of the effects of electronic publishing on reference/citation patterns. A preliminary analysis on a small sample suggests that—under rather strict assumptions—the cited half-life of references may be reduced with a factor of about 2 if publication delays decrease radically.     

Collaboration patterns in patent networks and their relationship with the transfer of technology: the case study of the CSIC patents

The aim of this article is to observe differences between research areas when it comes to establish collaboration ties with local, national or international partners. It also intends to determine in what extent the collaboration can influence the patent transfer. A collaboration network between CSIC researchers and their external collaborators was built. Several statistical tests were used to find significant differences between research areas. A multiple regression model was also utilized in order to know what type of collaboration is more successful to transfer a patent. The results show that there are two well defined groups. A “Bio” group with a high international collaboration pattern but less national participation; and a “Physicist” group supported by a high proportion of national partners but with few international connections. The regression analysis found that the national collaboration is the variable that most increase the patent transfer.     

Highly cited old papers and the reasons why they continue to be cited. Part II., The 1953 Watson and Crick article on the structure of DNA

Reports the results of a citation study on Watson and Crick's 1953 paper announcing the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The paper has been cited more than 2,000 times since 1961, and there is no sign of any obsolescence to this article. An analysis was undertaken of the journals in which the citations appeared, and of mistakes in the bibliographic citations provided by citing articles. Watson and Crick themselves have only cited their own paper twice since 1961. An analysis was also undertaken of the reasons why the paper was cited; 100 citing articles were identified and read. The reasons for citing were then categorised using the Oppenheim and Renn method. Compared to earlier studies, it was found that a greater proportion of citations were for historical reasons, a smaller proportion of citing articles were actively using the Watson and Crick article, and a similar, but low proportion were criticising the Watson and Crick article. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.