Globalization and de-globalization in nanotechnology research: the role of China

The share of nanotechnology publications involving authors from more than one country more than doubled in the 1990s, but then fell again until 2004, before recovering somewhat during the latter years of the decade. Meanwhile, the share of nanotechnology papers involving at least one Chinese author increased substantially over the last two decades. Papers involving Chinese authors are far less likely to be internationally co-authored than papers involving authors from other countries. Nonetheless, this appears to be changing as Chinese nanotechnology research becomes more advanced. An arithmetic decomposition confirms that China??s growing share of such research accounts, in large part, for the observed stagnation of international collaboration. Thus two aspects of the globalization of science can work in opposing directions: diffusion to initially less scientifically advanced countries can depress international collaboration rates, while at the same time scientific advances in such countries can reverse this trend. We find that the growth of China??s scientific community explains some, but not all of the dynamics of China??s international collaboration rate. We therefore provide an institutional account of these dynamics, drawing on Stichweh??s [Social Science information 35(2):327?C340, 1996] original paper on international scientific collaboration, which, in examining the interrelated development of national and international scientific networks, predicts a transitional phase during which science becomes a more national enterprise, followed by a phase marked by accelerating international collaboration. Validating the application of this approach, we show that Stichweh??s predictions, based on European scientific communities in the 18th and 19th centuries, seem to apply to the Chinese scientific community in the 21st century.     

The relationship between scientists’ research performance and the degree of internationalization of their research

Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research collaboration. However the underlying determinants of collaboration are not completely clear. In particular, the literature lacks studies that, taking the individual researcher as the unit of analysis, attempt to understand if and to what extent the researcher’s scientific performance might impact on his/her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues. The current work examines the international collaborations of Italian university researchers for the period 2001–2005, and puts them in relation to each individual’s research performance. The results of the investigation, which assumes co-authorship as proxy of research collaboration, show that both research productivity and average quality of output have positive effects on the degree of international collaboration achieved by a scientist.     

Scientific production in psychology: a gender analysis

This study aims to identify possible gender inequalities in the scholarly output of researchers in the field of psychology in Spain. A sample of 522 papers and reviews published in 2007 was extracted from the Thomson ISI Web of Science. The presence of women, the collaboration pattern and the impact of these scientific publications were analyzed. The results show that the average number of female researchers per paper was 0.42 (SD 0.33) and that 42.3 % of the papers had a female researcher as the first author. Moreover, the proportion of female authors of a paper was statistically significantly higher when the first author was female. Studies carried out in cooperation with other Spanish or international institutions had fewer female authors than studies conducted at a single center. The impact of the papers, measured by the journal impact factor and the number of citations, was independent of the authors’ gender or the proportion of female authors. In summary, the study highlights a gender imbalance in Spanish scientific output in Psychology, and a higher proportion of male researchers in international networks.     

Scientific collaboration in Brazilian researches: a comparative study in the information science,mathematics and dentistry fields

This study attempts to describe, in a comparative way, scientific collaboration and co-authoring activities and understanding of Brazilian researchers of productivity level 1 at the National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq). In order to do so, a questionnaire was sent to the researchers of productivity level 1 at CNPq in the Mathematics, Dentistry and Information Science fields, with questions about scientific collaboration and co-authoring activities. We analyzed the scientific production of the researchers who answered the questionnaire and we have identified that 78% of the participants consider that scientific collaboration and co-authorship are different activities, and the potential and usual number of research collaborators is between 2 and 3 in Mathematics and Information Science, and between 5 and 6 collaborators in Dentistry. Differences among fields were pointed out by identifying main collaborators and co-authors. The reasons for collaborating vary according to the nature of the research, however, the percentages are high in these three areas: “training of researchers and students”, “desire to increase their own experience through the experience of others” and “increased productivity.” From the analysis of the scientific production declared in their Lattes Curriculum, we have found that the average number of authors per publication in the field of Information Science is 2.2 authors, in Mathematics is 2.8 authors per publication, and in Dentistry the average is 5.3 authors per publication. We have concluded that scientific collaboration and co-authorship are terms assigned to different activities for the analyzed fields.     

Publication and cooperation patterns of the authors of neuroscience journals

Characteristics of publication activity and co-authorship in neurosciences are analysed. The present study aims at describing the common, as well as the distinguishing features of productivity and co-publication patterns of four types of authors. For this purpose, authors are classified according to their anterior and posterior records. The role of the author types in the process of documented scientific communication, the relation between co-authorship and publication activity, as well as collaboration between the four types is studied. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in library and information science in Argentina: a case study

The paper introduces the use of blockmodeling in the micro-level study of the internal structure of co-authorship networks over time. Variations in scientific productivity and researcher or research group visibility were determined by observing authors?? role in the core-periphery structure and crossing this information with bibliometric data. Three techniques were applied to represent the structure of collaborative science: (1) the blockmodeling; (2) the Kamada-Kawai algorithm based on the similarities in co-authorships present in the documents analysed; (3) bibliometrics to determine output volume, impact and degree of collaboration from the bibliographic data drawn from publications. The goal was to determine the extent to which the use of these two complementary approaches, in conjunction with bibliometric data, provides greater insight into the structure and characteristics of a given field of scientific endeavour. The paper describes certain features of Pajek software and how it can be used to study research group composition, structure and dynamics. The approach combines bibliometric and social network analysis to explore scientific collaboration networks and monitor individual and group careers from new perspectives. Its application on a small-scale case study is intended as an example and can be used in other disciplines. It may be very useful for the appraisal of scientific developments.     

Global knowledge management research: A bibliometric analysis

The present study characterizes the dynamic publication activity of global knowledge management (KM) by data collected through a search restricted to articles in ISI Web of Science.A total of 2727 unique authors had contributed 1407 publications since 1975. The overwhelming majority (2349 or 86%) of them wrote one publication. The productive authors, their contribution and authorship position are listed to indicate their productivity and degree of involvement in their research publications. The sum of research output of the first or responsible authors from USA, UK and Germany reaches 57% of the total productivity. The distribution of articles is rather widespread - they published in 462 titles of serials, spanning 110 Journal Citation Reports subject categories. The higher quality journals make publication of findings more visible. A Pearson's correlation coefficient is statistically found to be significant between citation frequency of article and impact factor of journal, instead of authorship pattern. The results also indicate that R&D expenditures were actually not proportional to research productivity or citation counts. As the subject highly interacts with other disciplines, the field of KM has not yet developed its own body of literature. KM might have been evolving an interdisciplinary theory that is developing at the boundaries of scientific disciplines. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Comparison of Iranian Scientific Publications in the Science Citation Index: 1985–1989 and 1990–1994

Iranian scientific publications in the Science Citation Index for two five-year periods, 1985–1989 and 1990–1994, were compared. Distributions of various attributes of the publication output for the two periods were obtained primarily through the Rank command of the Dialog Online System. Results include: productivity by publication year and by ranked order of the most productive Iranian authors; influence or impact of the most productive Iranian authors by ranking them as cited authors; collaboration of Iranian scientists with scientists from other countries; and the journals Iranian scientists published in and the journals they cite in their papers. The subject areas of Iran's scientific publications were examined vis-à-vis the world's publication output and that of the Third World Countries (TWC).     

The generalized propensity score methodology for estimating unbiased journal impact factors

The journal impact factor (JIF) proposed by Garfield in the year 1955 is one of the most commonly used and prominent citation-based indicators of the performance and significance of a scientific journal. The JIF is simple, reasonable, clearly defined, and comparable over time and, what is more, can be easily calculated from data provided by Thomson Reuters, but at the expense of serious technical and methodological flaws. The paper discusses one of the core problems: The JIF is affected by bias factors (e.g., document type) that have nothing to do with the prestige or quality of a journal. For solving this problem, we suggest using the generalized propensity score methodology based on the Rubin Causal Model. Citation data for papers of all journals in the ISI subject category ??Microscopy?? (Journal Citation Report) are used to illustrate the proposal.     

A hypergraph model for representing scientific output

Representation and analysis of publication data in the form of a network has become a common method of illustrating and evaluating the scientific output of a group or of a scientific field. Co-authorship networks also reveal patterns and collaboration practices. In this paper we propose the use of a hypergraph model—a generalized network—to represent publication data by considering papers as hypergraph nodes. Hyperedges, connecting the nodes, represent the authors connecting all their papers. We show that this representation is more straightforward than other authorship network models. Using the hypergraph model we propose a collaboration measure of an author that reflects the influence of that author over the collaborations of its co-authors. We illustrate the introduced concepts by analyzing publishing data of computer scientists and mathematicians in Romania over a 10 year period.     

Dual approach to multiple authorship in the study of collaboration/scientific output relationship

This paper presents an empirical study of the relations between scientific output and collaboration performed on two scales: (1) an individual scale, for members of a study model, and (2) a group scale, for three samples varying in the level of productivity. The rank approach was applied in the preparation of the study model resulting in the selection of a set of the most prolific authors. In the course of that process, multiple authorship problem was solved by a dual approach, consisting of normal count and modified straight count procedures. As shown by the analysis of collaborative patterns, either on individual or on group scales, scientific output is highly dependent on the frequency of collaboration among the same authors. Expressed as the collaboration measure, it might serve as an indicator in comparative analyses of scientific productivity in a given field of science.     

Studies in scientific collaboration Part III. Professionalization and the natural history of modern scientific co-authorship

A review of selected parameters of the growth of scientific collaboration over the last century provides further confirmation of the dependency of teamwork on the increasing professionalization of science. Analysis reveals significant inaccuracies in current views of the recency and prevalence of collaborative research, and affords a more correct picture of twentieth century developments. A change in the growth rate of the practice of scientific collaboration at about the time of World War I, and indications of associations of teamwork with financial support and research publication in leading journals are discussed. Characteristics of the natural history of scientific collaboration signify that collaboration reflects relationships of dependency within a hierarchically stratified professional community, and serves as a means of professional mobility. As such, it continues to fulfil its original functions.     

Major factors affecting China's inter-regional research collaboration: Regional scientific productivity and geographical proximity

On the basis of the measured frequency distribution of China"s inter-regional co-authored papers covered by the Chinese Science Citation Database, this paper shows the pattern of China"s inter-regional research collaboration (IRRC), and analyzes how the collaborative pattern was formed. A new method is used to calculate the expected value matrix based on an observed value matrix of IRRC, which is asymmetric and has no diagonal elements. The results fall into three groups. 1) Regional scientific productivity affects both the collaborative preference and ranking of authors" name; 2) geographical proximity is an important factor determining the pattern of IRRC; 3) when using Salton"s measure, regional mean collaborative strength increases as the regional productivity increases, and as the distance between two regions decreases.     

Comparisons of content and scientific quality indicators across peer-reviewed journal articles with more or less gender perspective: gender studies can do better

The field of gender studies has faced criticism for poor scholarship and methodology, both from within and outside academia. Here, we compare indicators of scientific quality across three samples of peer-reviewed journal articles with more, less and no gender perspective, on the assumption that gender studies tend to apply a gender perspective. The statements in the articles were content-analysed with respect to subject matter, their level of support in surrounding text, and other indicators of scientific quality. The higher the level of gender perspective, the lower was the scientific quality for seven out of nine indicators. Support was higher for the no gender perspective group, but did not differ across the two higher levels. We suggest that the impact of the field can be increased by implementing established research methods employed in other disciplines, especially in terms of bringing about desired social and societal change.     

Quantifying scientific collaboration impact by exploiting collaboration-citation network

Despite the growing interest in exploring the collaboration patterns and the structure of collaboration networks, the impact of collaboration associated with time-varying scholarly networks is hardly known. This paper investigates collaboration and productivity in a science career and quantifies the impact of collaboration in the collaboration-citation network. Moreover, this paper also investigates collaboration patterns and examines the typical duration of research collaborations. A SCIRank model is proposed to quantify the impact of scientific collaboration, which not only reveals the impact of co-author pairs but also identifies scholarly papers with the outstanding impact that leads to Nobel Prize awards.

     

Women,peace and security state-of-art: a bibliometric analysis in social sciences based on SCOPUS database

To the best of our knowledge, there is no work that has focused on analysing the development of the scientific production on women, peace and security. The main objective of this paper is to cover this research gap through a bibliometric analysis, that covers 95 years (1918–2013), of articles published in peer-reviewed journals extracted from the SCOPUS database. Bibliometric indicators and laws have been applied to better understand the patterns that govern the scientific literature on this realm. A gender perspective has also been implemented in the analysis. The analysis provides quantitative results based on 321 articles published by 478 authors in 210 scientific journals. The data showed the high dispersion of the literature, both in terms of authors and journals focused on the topic, and a low level of collaboration among both authors and institutions. Regarding the research topic, half of the papers were related to the impact of conflict on civilians and civil society. The implementation of a gender perspective shows that most of the first, second and third authors of the papers are women. In terms of methodologies, qualitative methodologies are the most relevant and women are more prolific applying these methodology. In terms of geographical region of the research, most of the studies have been performed by authors from institutions in Anglo-Saxon countries, and most of the fieldwork has been focused on the United States and the main areas of conflict in the world throughout history. Finally, important research opportunities are identified.     

Authors’ sources of information: a new dimension in information scattering

The purpose of this study is to determine the usage patterns of core journals by scholars, and to address the differences among various academic disciplines. Thus, the references of 11,230 corresponding authors for the past 35?years from the world??s top five highly cited universities and institutions were analyzed. To build robust models of information scattering, we need a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. The results show that core journals usage is a social phenomenon, in exactly the same way as Bradford??s law, Zipf??s law and Lotka??s law. The analysis of author references shows that if core scientific journals are arranged in order of decreasing productivity, then they could be divided into a small group of highly cited periodicals and a large group of minimally cited ones. Scholars may do browsing and similar information-seeking activities to form their core journals, and the findings may support Bates??s hypothesis that Bradford??s core zone is best searched by browsing. Bradford??s law and relevant research may consequently help to solve many of the practical problems that practitioners of the profession face, particularly in collection development in libraries, and help users to gather highly scattered information.