A new approach to measuring scientific production in JCR journals and its application to Spanish public universities

Scientific production has been evaluated from very different perspectives, the best known of which are essentially based on the impact factors of the journals included in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This has been no impediment to the simultaneous issuing of warnings regarding the dangers of their indiscriminate use when making comparisons. This is because the biases incorporated in the elaboration of these impact factors produce significant distortions, which may invalidate the results obtained. Notable among such biases are those generated by the differences in the propensity to cite of the different areas, journals and/or authors, by variations in the period of materialisation of the impact and by the varying presence of knowledge areas in the sample of reviews contained in the JCR. While the traditional evaluation method consists of standardisation by subject categories, recent studies have criticised this approach and offered new possibilities for making inter-area comparisons. In view of such developments, the present study proposes a novel approach to the measurement of scientific activity, in an attempt to lessen the aforementioned biases. This approach consists of combining the employment of a new impact factor, calculated for each journal, with the grouping of the institutions under evaluation into homogeneous groups. An empirical application is undertaken to evaluate the scientific production of Spanish public universities in the year 2000. This application considers both the articles published in the multidisciplinary databases of the Web of Science (WoS) and the data concerning the journals contained in the Sciences and Social Sciences Editions of the Journal Citation Report (JCR). All this information is provided by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), via its Web of Knowledge (WoK).     

Neophilia ranking of scientific journals

The ranking of scientific journals is important because of the signal it sends to scientists about what is considered most vital for scientific progress. Existing ranking systems focus on measuring the influence of a scientific paper (citations)—these rankings do not reward journals for publishing innovative work that builds on new ideas. We propose an alternative ranking based on the proclivity of journals to publish papers that build on new ideas, and we implement this ranking via a text-based analysis of all published biomedical papers dating back to 1946. In addition, we compare our neophilia ranking to citation-based (impact factor) rankings; this comparison shows that the two ranking approaches are distinct. Prior theoretical work suggests an active role for our neophilia index in science policy. Absent an explicit incentive to pursue novel science, scientists underinvest in innovative work because of a coordination problem: for work on a new idea to flourish, many scientists must decide to adopt it in their work. Rankings that are based purely on influence thus do not provide sufficient incentives for publishing innovative work. By contrast, adoption of the neophilia index as part of journal-ranking procedures by funding agencies and university administrators would provide an explicit incentive for journals to publish innovative work and thus help solve the coordination problem by increasing scientists’ incentives to pursue innovative work.     

Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals

Results are presented on journal growth dynamics at both the micro and macro levels, showingthat journal development clearly follows researcher behaviour and growth characteristics. At thesubject discipline level, the journal system is highly responsive to research events. Overall journalgrowth characteristics clearly show the predominance of 3.3% compound annual growth under anumber of different socio-political climates. It is proposed that this represents a lower limit tojournal growth rates and that this growth is the outcome of a self-organizing information systemthat reflects on the growth and specialization of knowledge. Potential models are suggested whichcould form attractive theoretical further lines of enquiry.     

Multivariate evaluation of Spanish educational research journals

This paper informs about an evaluation of Spanish educational research journals using the modality of reputation inferred from survey data. Univariate and multivariate patterns are offered. Specifically cluster analysis and non-parametric multidimensional scaling reveal themselves as useful methods to inquire the complexity of this scientometric question which is the evaluation of periodical series. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Citation analysis significance of scientific journals

The application of methods of quantitative analysis makes it possible to evaluate the impact of scientific journals on one another. These methods are used to determine the significance of similar scientific journals by their cross-citations, taking into account data from theJournal Citation Reports (JCR). They also help to improve theJournal Citation Reports structure and widen its uses for the evaluation of scientific journals. The above methods are applied to analyse critically the principles of ranking journals in package 1 and the tabular contents ofJCR's packages 2 and 3, as well as to study frequency distributions of the journals both in time and space.     

The subject composition of the world's scientific journals

A country by subject count of the serial periodical collection at the British Library Lending Division (BLLD) in 1973 is reported and compared to previous counts. Approximately 25 000 periodicals have titles indicating that they are scientific journals in nine fields of the physical and biological sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The overall subject distribution of the journals appears to be remarkably stable when compared to a similar count byHulme 60 years ago, although the number of journals appears to have doubled in the last 60 years. A major shift was found in the national origin of the journals, when compared withHulme's counts, with a notable rise in the number and percent of U.S. journals, and a sharp decline in the percentage of French and German journals.     

International visibility of Chinese scientific journals

We discuss the internationalisation and the visibility of Chinese journals covered by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Attention is focused on physics and chemistry journals. For these journals the country of origin of published papers and their citation patterns are analysed. As an indicator of internationality we further consider the composition of their editorial boards. It is concluded that even those Chinese journals that are covered by ISI are still rather "local" and suffer from a low visibility in the world. Yet we are optimistic about the future of Chinese science and its scientific journals. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

How do journals on the periphery compare with mainstream scientific journals?

Based on the premise that citations in scientific journals can tell us a lot about the journals, we have compared Indian journals in the fields of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, geology and ecology with leading world journals. The two criteria compared are the age of references and the journals often cited in each of the journals considered. Our results show that although overall Indian science is mediocre, parts of India's scientific enterprise are cognitively better related to world science. The peripherality is not uniform across the board, but some areas like astronomy and to some extent physics are closer to the central or mainstream science than others. Although citation analysis is not normally used for cross-field comparisons, this paper demonstrates that, if used judiciously, citation analysis can yield valuable insights into issues involving many fields.     

Determination of influence weights for scientific journals

A new citation matrix is proposed for the computation of journal influence weights applying Geller's methodology. Instead of self-citations, references to fringe journals are introduced and the proportions of all references (without self-citations) are used as matrix elements. On the basis of the determined weights, relative weights for fringe journals are calculated, i.e. the initial set (core) of journals is extended and simultaneously a rank order is obtained (by total influence and influence per article). The procedure is examplified on elementary particle physics (EPP) journals. Using first a reference/citation criterion, eight core journals were determined by iteration and then influence weights were calculated. A ranking by total influence and influence per article is presented for core and fringe journals in EPP.     

Hypothetical influence of non-indexed Spanish medical journals on the impact factor of the Journal Citation Reports-indexed journals

The purpose of this study is to analyze the hypothetical changes in the 2002 impact factor (IF) of the biomedical journals included in the Science Citation Index-Journal Citation Reports (SCI-JCR) by also taking into account cites coming from 83 non-indexed Spanish journals on different medical specialties. A further goal of the study is to identify the subject categories of the SCI-JCR with the largest increase in their IF, and to estimate the 2002 hypothetical impact factor (2002 HIF) of these 83 non-indexed Spanish journals. It is demonstrated that the inclusion of cites from a selection of non SCI-JCR-indexed Spanish medical journals in the SCI-JCR-indexed journals produces a slight increase in their 2002 IF, specially in journals edited in the USA and in the UK. More than half of the non-indexed Spanish journals has a higher 2002 HIF than that of the SCI-JCR-indexed journal with the lowest IF in the same subject category.     

State of the art of macro-defect-free composites

Macro-defect-free (MDF) composites, developed and patented by scientists from Imperial Chemical Industries in the early 1980s, are very high strength cement–polymer composites. The preparation of MDF composites is different from the production of conventional cement paste in that high shearing with a roller mill as well as moderate pressure (about 5 MPa) and moderate temperature (about 80–100 °C) are applied during the production. Very low water/cement ratio (w/c) levels are achieved (as low as 0.10) in this composite, much lower than in other cement-based materials. Of the many unique properties exhibited by MDF composites, surely the most remarkable is their high flexural strength. This is generally attributed to their low porosity and to cross-linking reactions between cement and polymer. MDF composites may reach a flexural strength of 200–300 MPa levels, whereas ordinary cement pastes have generally around 5–10 MPa. However, serious durability problems are observed in MDF composites, particularly their significant reductions in strength when immersed in water. Comprehensive information about MDF composite research will help in understanding the reasons behind the high strength, microstructure and water sensitivity of MDF composites. This review summarizes the materials, production methods, properties, microstructure, hydration reactions, durability and potential application areas of MDF composites as published since 1981.     

Fuel cells: State of the art

A review of the works of the last decade (1946–1956) is given. Reviews of extensive literature on this topic were published in 1922 [4], 1933 [5], 1945 [6]. In Russian, a large body of review material is contained in O. K. Davtyan's monograph [7]. This article was first published in Inzh.-Fiz. Zh., No. 2, 1958.