Analysis of publication patterns in Korean library and information science research

This study assessed research patterns and trends of library and information science (LIS) in Korea by applying bibliometric analysis to 159 Korean LIS professors?? 2,401 peer-reviewed publications published between 2001 and 2010. Bibliometric analysis of publication data found an increasing trend for collaboration, robust publication patterns, increasing number of international publications, and internationalization of LIS in Korea. The maturation and internalization of LIS research was evidenced in increased number of publications in high impact journals (e.g., SSI, SSCI), growing participation in leading international conferences (e.g., ASIST, TREC), increasing proportion of Korean LIS faculty with international degrees, and high publication rates by professors with international degrees. Though limited in its evaluative power without citation data, publication data can be a rich source for bibliometric analysis as this study has shown. The analysis of publication patterns conducted by the study, which is a first step in our aim to establish a multi-faceted approach for assessing the impact of scholarly work, will be followed up in a future study, where the question of quantity versus quality will be examined by comparing publication counts with citation counts.     

The scientific impact and partner selection in collaborative research at Korean universities

This study seeks to bridge the gap between scientometrics literature on scientific collaboration and science and technology management literature on partner selection by linking scientists’ collaborator preferences to the marginal advantage in citation impact. The 1981–2010 South Korea NCR (National Citation Report), a subset of the Web of Science that includes 297,658 scholarly articles, was used for this research. We found that, during this period, multi-author scientific articles increasingly dominated single-author articles: multi-university collaboration grew significantly; and the numbers of research publications produced by teams working within a single institution or by a single author diminished. This study also demonstrated that multi-university collaboration produces higher-impact articles when it includes “Research Universities,” that is, top-tier university schools. We also found that elite universities experienced impact degradation of their scientific results when they collaborated with lower-tier institutions, whereas their lower-tier partners gained impact benefits from the collaboration. Finally, our research revealed that Korean universities are unlikely to work with other universities in the same tier. This propensity for cross-tier collaboration can be interpreted as strategic partner selection by lower-tier schools seeking marginal advantage in citation impact.     

The role of Chinese universities in enterprise–university research collaboration

In this paper the role of Chinese universities in enterprise–university research collaboration is investigated. This study focuses on a special aspect of the collaboration—co-authored articles. The two cases are analyzed: (1) research collaboration between Baosteel Group Corporation and Chinese universities; (2) research collaboration between China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation and Chinese universities. The co-authorship data over the period 1998–2007 were searched from CNKI database, the largest Chinese publication and citation database. The main findings are as follows: the number of articles co-authored by enterprise and university scientists has been increasing rapidly; the share of co-authored articles has been growing; the authors from universities are more possible to be the first authors; as a whole, enterprise–university co-authored articles tend to receive more citations and get downloaded more frequently; a mathematical orientation emerges in the enterprise–university articles. To reveal and describe such a trend the methods of keywords analysis and co-occurrence analysis are applied. The Chinese government’s policy instruments and substantial supports for pushing and improving enterprise–university research collaboration are introduced and analyzed.     

Driving factors of external funding and funding effects on academic innovation performance in university–industry–government linkages

This study focuses on analyzing the driving factors of government and industry funding and the effects of such funding on academic innovation performance in the Taiwan’s university–industry–government (UIG) collaboration system. This research defines the relationships of the triple helix in the UIG collaboration system as a complex intertwined combination that covers demography, financial support, and innovation performance. These relationships are simultaneously modeled by a multivariate technique, structural equation modeling, to investigate the causal-effect relationship among the antecedent factors on the subsequent ones. This model will enable us to investigate three questions: (1) Is government funding or industry funding tied to university demography, to university innovation performance, or to both? (2) Does government funding lead industry funding? (3) Is government funding or industry funding conducive to more university innovation performance? In addition to verifying the model against all participating universities in the UIG collaboration, we also categorize them into two tiers in terms of whether or not universities have been selected for the incentive programs of UIG collaboration so as to explore groups’ differences.     

Quantitative study on Australian academic science

As at the end of 2009, 50 million scholarly papers were in existence, and changes in the global higher education sector are seeing this number grow rapidly. With the impact of university ranking schemes, dramatic changes have occurred in the academic publication system; both the number of publications, and the number of scholars, are increasing rapidly. In this research, we conduct a focused study on the quantitative relationships in Australian academic science. Sample data is selected from three institutions, representing three types of universities in Australia: a leading university, a middle-tier university, and a non-comprehensive university. For our analysis, bibliometric data for 32,056 scholars and 353,334 publications are downloaded. The results show that varying growth rates for scholars (5.6, 6.1, and 7.7%) and journal publications (6.7, 7.4, and 9.7%) for the leading university, the middle-tier university, and the non-comprehensive university respectively. We also evaluate how scholarly publications differ across these three Australian universities types from six aspects: average number of publications per scholar, percentage of first-authored publications, collaboration pattern, average SJR score of publishing journals, percentage of Quartile category of publishing journals, and average citation per publication. Lastly, we consider how the scholarship life-cycle varies in Australian universities in terms of publishing age, thus establishing the quantitative relationship between scholarship life-cycle and publishing performance in Australian universities.     

Citations and departmental research ratings

A recent extensive review of research in British universities has produced a research rating for each university department based primarily on peer review of the department's publications. In this preliminary study, we compare these ratings with publication and citation data for the chemistry departments at two British universities. The results underline the importance of the most productive researchers in departments. This point is supported by citation data from a chemical engineering department.     

Quintuple helix structure of Sino-Korean research collaboration in science

The Triple Helix Model has been used for science-mapping in research collaboration since the 1980s. As knowledge-producing activities have rapidly expanded and become interrelated, the triple helix framework is limited in uncovering a broader range of stakeholders and multilateral collaborative activities. In this vein, the present study employs the N-tuple Helix Model as a suitable alternative to analyze the structure of scientific collaboration networks beyond university–industry–government (UIG) relations. The networks of N-tuple Helix relations embedded in Sino-Korean research collaboration are examined in terms of five actors, such as universities, industries, governments, hospitals, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The results found that the quintuple helical network exists in Sino-Korean research collaboration. While traditional UIG actors play a pivotal role, hospital and NGO sectors emerge as new drivers for knowledge production and innovation. Each sector is significantly associated with the others and plays distinctive roles and functions. The overall findings provide new insight into a possible change in the traditional Triple Helix framework by demonstrating an alternative “five-helix model” of innovation as a new evolving structure and new dynamic of international collaboration in science.     

Contradicting incentives for research collaboration

This study describes the Danish publication award system (BFI), investigates whether its built-in incentives have had an effect on publication behavior at the University of Southern Denmark, and discusses the possible future implications on researcher incentives should universities wish to measure BFI on the individual level. We analyzed publication data from the university CRIS system (Pure) and from SciVal. Several studies indicate that co-authored scholarly journal articles attract more citations than single author articles. The reason for this are not clear, however, research collaboration across institutions and countries is commonly accepted in the research community and among university managements as one way of increasing the researcher’s and institution’s reputation and impact. The BFI system is designed to award scholarly publication activity at Danish universities, especially publication in international journals of high status. However, we find that the built-in incentives leave the researcher and his or her institution with a dilemma: If the researchers optimize their performance by forming author groups with external collaborators, the optimal way of doing so for the researchers is not the optimal way seen from the perspective of the university. Our analysis shows that the typical article has 6.5 authors, two of which are internal, and that this has remained stable since the introduction of the BFI. However, there is variation across the disciplines. While ‘the Arts and Humanities’ and ‘the Social Sciences’ seem to compose author groups in a way which does not optimize the performance of the institution, both ‘Health’ and ‘the Natural Sciences’ seem to optimize according to criteria other than those specified in the BFI.     

Use of citation per publication as an indicator to evaluate contingent valuation research

This is the first article using bibliometrics to study the field of contingent valuation research. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the contingent valuation research performance based on all the related articles in SCI and SSCI databases from 1991 to 2005. An indicator named citation per publication (CPP) was presented in this study to assess the impact of article output per year, different countries, institutes, and authors from the worldwide. Publication per institute (PPI) in a country was used to be an indicator to compare institute’s research performance by country. Citation analysis was made to select the most frequently cited articles since publication to 2005 of each year. A citation model was applied to describe the relationship between the cumulative number of citations and article life. The results indicate that with the increase article output per year, the CPP decreased slightly since 1997. The USA produced 55% of all pertinent articles. Institutes from the UK had a higher PPI. The most prolific institutes and authors, and the most frequently cited articles per year were all listed. In addition, a citation model was successfully applied to evaluate performance of each year, and the most frequently cited articles of each year were also compared by the model.     

The application of bibliometric analyses in the evaluation of social science research. Who benefits from it, and why it is still feasible

Summary The paper discusses an application of bibliometric techniques in the social sciences. While the interest of policy makers is growing, the topic is getting more and more attention from bibliometricians. However, many efforts are put into developing tools to measure scientific output and impact outside the world of the Social Sciences Citation Index, while the use of the SSCI for bibliometric applications is covered with obscurity and myths. This study attempts to clarify some of the topics mentioned against the application of the SSCI for evaluation purposes. The study will cover topics like the existing publication and citation culture within the social sciences, the effect of variable citation windows, and the (geographical) origin of citation flows.     

Measuring the use of public research in firm R&D in the Hsinchu Science Park

Knowledge flow between public and private sectors is widely recognized as a way to stimulate innovation and regional development, particularly in science parks. This work employs a bibliometric approach, based on patent citation, non-patent citation, and public?Cprivate co-authorship of scientific publications to measure the use of public research in Hsinchu Science Park (HSP) in Taiwan. The result shows that the number of jointly published papers has increased constantly, implying the collaboration between HSP and universities has become more common. However, from the aspect of co-patenting, patent citation, and non-patent reference, technological innovation stemming from public research needs to be enhanced.     

Scientometrics of laser research in India during 1970-1994

An analysis of 952 publications published by Indian scientists and abstracted by Journal of Current Laser Abstracts during 1970-1994 indicates that laser research in India picked up during 1978-1994 and reached its peak in 1980. The Indian output in the field of laser research forms an integral part of the mainstream science as reflected by the pattern of publications and their citations in the international literature. Laser research performed in India improved considerably during 1985-1994 as compared to 1970-1984 as seen by different impact indicators such as citation per paper, proportion of high quality papers, and publication effective index. The publication output is concentrated among few institutions and there is a similarity in the activity and attractively profile of the highly productive institutions. India"s citation rate per paper for highly productive authors is at par with the world citation rate per paper. The study indicates that the proportion of mega authored papers increased during 1990-1994 and the international collaboration is mainly with the USA.     

Knowledge integrators or weak links? An exploratory comparison of patenting researchers with their non-inventing peers in nano-science and technology

Summary Policy-makers in many countries emphasize the importance of non-publication output of university research. Increasingly, policies are pursued that attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in universities and public research institutes. Apart from generating spin-out companies, technology licensing, and collaborative research, attention is focused on patenting activities of researchers. Some analysts suggest that there is a trade-off between scholarly publication and patenting activity. This paper explores this relationship drawing on a data set of nanoscience publications and nanotechnology patents in three European countries. In particular, this study examines whether researchers who both publish and patent are more productive and more highly cited than their peers who concentrate on scholarly publication in communicating their research results. Furthermore, this study investigates the collaborative activity of inventor-authors and their position in their respective networks of scientific communication. The findings suggest that overall there seems to be no adverse relationship between publication and patenting activity, at least not in this area of science and technology. Patenting scientists appear to outperform their solely publishing, non-inventing peers in terms of publication counts and citation frequency. However, while they are considerably over-represented in the top performance class, the data indicates that inventor-authors may not occupy top positions within that group. An analysis of co-authorship links indicates that patenting authors can also play a prominent role within networks of scientific communication. The network maps also point to groups where inventor-authors occur frequently and others where this is not the case, which possibly reflects cognitive differences between sub-fields. Finally, the data indicates that inventor-authors account only for a marginal share of publishing scholars while they play a substantial role amongst inventors.     

The relationship between research performance and international collaboration in chemistry

The number of internationally co-authored articles have significantly increased in recent years and now receive more citations than domestic works. Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629–643, 2011b) investigated scholars in Italian universities and found a positive correlation between their research performance and degree of internationalization. This study uses a data set in chemistry to examine the robustness of the results presented by Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629–643, 2011b) and the relationship between international collaboration and mobility among researchers. The results confirmed the robustness of the previous study and raised the possibility that the higher citation rate of international papers is not solely explained by the higher performance of researchers. Therefore, international research collaboration seems to exert some kind of “bonus” effect because of internationalization. The results also indicate that researchers who collaborate internationally accumulate science and technology human capital through collaboration. A positive relationship between the international mobility of researchers and their performance is also shown although the direction of the cause and effect is not yet clear.     

Korean journals in the Science Citation Index: What do they reveal about the intellectual structure of S&T in Korea?

During the last decade, we have witnessed a sustained growth of South Korea’s research output in terms of the world share of publications in the Science Citation Index database. However, Korea’s citation performance is not yet as competitive as publication performance. In this study, the authors examine the intellectual structure of Korean S&T field based on social network analysis of journal-journal citation data using the ten Korean SCI journals as seed journals. The results reveal that Korean SCI journals function more like publication places, neither research channels nor information sources among national scientists. Thus, these journals may provide Korean scholars with access to international scientific communities by facilitating the respective entry barriers. However, there are no citation relations based on their Korean background. Furthermore, we intend to draw some policy implications which may be helpful to increase Korea’s research potential.     

Influence of a performance indicator on Danish research production and citation impact 2000–12

This paper analyses the patterns of Danish research productivity, citation impact and (inter)national collaboration across document types 2000–2012, prior to and after the introduction of the Norwegian publication point-based performance indicator in 2008. Document types analysed are: research articles; conference proceedings papers excluding meeting abstracts; and review articles. The Danish Research & Innovation Agency’s basic statistics combined with Web of Science (WoS) are used for data collection and analyses. Findings demonstrate that the research article productivity increases steeply (37 %) after the start of the performance indicator and the citation impact progresses linearly over the entire period, regardless the introduction of the performance indicator. Academic staff progression is only 24 % during the same time period. The collaboration ratio between purely Danish and internationally cooperated research articles remains stable during the period, the number of collaborative countries increases while the ratio declines significantly for proceedings papers. The citation impact of internationally cooperated research articles increases since 2009 but drops for proceedings papers; also their productivity declines slightly from 2009 according to Research Agency statistics. Since 2006 the WoS indexing of proceedings papers is fast declining; as a consequence the ratio between Danish proceedings papers and research articles declines in WoS. According to Research Agency statistics a decline likewise takes place, starting from 2009. The positive growth in research articles mainly derives from the Science and Technology fields published in prestigious Level 2 journals; the development of articles published in less prestigious Level 1 journals derives from all fields. Three of the eight Danish universities have significantly altered their research publication profiles since 2009. The publication performance model is regarded as the significant accelerator of these processes in recent years.     

Important institutions of interinstitutional scientific collaboration networks in materials science

Interinstitutional scientific collaboration plays an important role in knowledge production and scientific development. Together with the increasing scale of scientific collaboration, a few institutions that positively participate in interinstitutional scientific collaboration are important in collaboration networks. However, whether becoming an important institution in collaboration networks could be a contributing factor to research success and how these important institutions collaborate are still indistinct. In this paper, we identified the scientific institutions that possess the highest degree centrality as important institutions of an interinstitutional scientific collaboration network in materials science and examined their collaboration preferences utilizing several network measures. We first visualized the appearance of these important institutions that had the most positive collaborations in the interinstitutional scientific collaboration networks during the period of 2005–2015 and found an obvious scale-free feature in interinstitutional scientific collaboration networks. Then, we measured the advantages of being important in collaboration networks to research performance and found that positive interinstitutional collaborations can always bring both publication advantages and citation advantages. Finally, we identified two collaboration preferences of these important institutions in collaboration networks—one type of important institution represented by the Chinese Academy of Science plays an intermediary role between domestic institutions and foreign institutions with high betweenness centrality and a low clustering coefficient. This type of important institution has better performance in the number of publications. The other type of important institution represented by MIT tends to collaborate with similar institutions that have positive collaborations and possess a larger citation growth rate. Our finding can provide a better understanding of important institutions’ collaboration preferences and have significant reference for government policy and institutional collaboration strategies.     

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.     

Bibliometric monitoring of research performance in the Social Sciences and the Humanities: A Review

Summary This paper addresses research performance monitoring of the social sciences and the humanities using citation analysis. Main differences in publication and citation behavior between the (basic) sciences and the social sciences and humanities are outlined. Limitations of the (S)SCI and A&HCI for monitoring research performance are considered. For research performance monitoring in many social sciences and humanities, the methods used in science need to be extended. A broader range of both publications (including non-ISI journals and monographs) and citation indicators (including non-ISI reference citation values) is needed. Three options for bibliometric monitoring are discussed.     

Does the higher citation of collaborative research differ from region to region? A case study of Economics

Many studies have found that collaborative research is, in general, more highly cited than non-collaborative research. This paper describes an investigation into the extent to which the association between high citation and collaboration for Economics articles published in 2000 varies from region to region and depends on the choice of indicator of citation level. Using data from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) for 18 countries, 17 American states and four indicators of citation level the citation levels of the collaborative articles are compared with the citation levels of the non-collaborative articles. The main findings are that: (a) for every country and every indicator the mean citation level of the collaborative articles was at least as high as that for the non-collaborative articles, but for five US states and for at least one other indicator the citation level of collaborative articles was lower than that of non-collaborative articles, and (b) the extent to which collaborative articles were more highly cited varied considerably from country to country, from state to state, and from indicator to indicator. This indicates the importance of using multiple indicators when investigating citation advantage since the choice of indicator can change the results.