Toward a classification of Spanish scholarly journals in social sciences and humanities considering their impact and visibility

Scientometrics - The characteristics of the production and dissemination of scientific activity in social sciences and humanities make such endeavours less visible than other areas in international...     

The evolution of scientific disciplines in applied sciences: dynamics and empirical properties of experimental physics

Scientometrics - High quality research infrastructure is required to conduct S&T activities which may help to address national challenges and contribute to innovation processes. Given this,...     

Citations among communication journals and other disciplines: a network analysis

This article describes the results of a network analysis based on the citation among Communication journals and those academic disciplines that are cited by those journals labeled as “Communication” by the Web of Science. The results indicate that the journals indexed solely as Communication rather than those also tagged as another social science are more central in the citation network. Further, a cluster analysis of the cited disciplines revealed three groupings, a micro psychological cluster, a macro socio-political group and a woman’s studies clique. A two-mode network analysis found that the most central Communication journals cited multiple clusters, while the peripheral journals cited only one, suggesting that the structure of influence on the field of Communication is more complex than suggested by Park and Leydesdorff (Scientometrics 81(1):157–175, 2009). Also, the results indicate that the macro cluster is about twice as influential as the micro cluster, rather than as Park and Leydesdorff suggest that Psychology is the discipline’s primary influence.     

Co-authorship networks in social sciences: The case of Turkey

We analyse the co-authorship networks of researchers affiliated at universities in Turkey by using two databases: the international SSCI database and the Turkish ULAKBIM database. We find that co-authorship networks are composed largely of isolated groups and there is little intersection between the two databases, permitting little knowledge diffusion. There seems to be two disparate populations of researchers. While some scholars publish mostly in the international journals, others target the national audience, and there is very little intersection between the two populations. The same observation is valid for universities, among which there is very little collaboration. Our results point out that while Turkish social sciences and humanities publications have been growing impressively in the last decade, domestic networks to ensure the dissemination of knowledge and of research output are very weak and should be supported by domestic policies.     

The earth and planetary sciences in science during the twentieth century

The earth and planetary sciences have shown remarkable changes during the present century. The relative coverage of earth and earth-planetary science in the journalScience (from the USA) was studied quantitatively at 5-year intervals for the period 1900–1976. Similar data, but more widely spaced, (10-year intervals) were obtained from the journalNature (from Great Britain) as corroboration.It was found in both journals that the relative attention given to earth science and to the combination of earth and planetary sciences dropped through the century to a low point about 1955. Thereafter the trend reversed, with both of these elements rising almost twice as rapidly as they had previously fallen. A comparison with previous work on the production of American periodical literature showed similar trends but a consistently greater proportion of coverage of these subjects inScience than that in the literature, suggesting that the former is reflecting a wider spectrum of impact of these subjects than is the latter. General science journals may be a better indicator of impact of a science than is the specialized literature.The similarity of results in the two journals indicates that the idea of patterns in world science is a valid one, in which the USA and Great Britain belong to a common pattern.     

Highly cited Soviet journals in the physical and life sciences: A study of the function of journals

The research developed from the identification of the most highly cited Soviet journals in the physical and life sciences. Several measures of growth and citedness were taken at the beginning and end of a recent five-year period, 1982–87, in order to generally assess the functions of these journals. The research involved making comparisons among these groupings of journals and control groupings of journals with similar content, but not published in the Soviet Union. Differences in citedness could be related, in the physical sciences, to the scale of Russophone science within world sciences, but not in the life sciences. In the physical sciences, there are increases in the citedness across Soviet and Western journals; but in the Soviet journals the increase is several times greater than in the control grouping. In sharp contrast, the largest, most cited, Western life sciences' journals have increased in citedness and other groupings, including Soviet journals, have declined. The measures on control groups show that the extreme levels of improvement in citedness on the part of Soviet physical sciences' journals reflect local, i.e. Soviet, developments. The decrease in citedness of Soviet life sciences' journals seems, instead, tied broadly to events in the world life sciences' literature. There has been, apparently a centralizing of attention within those discipline on those few journals publishing major findings while leaving the rest of the world literature behind. In addition, the research developed several findings on the formal properties of the measures used.     

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.     

Ski accidents and legal responsibility: The Spanish case

This study classifies and analyzes Spanish court rulings on responsibility for ski accidents¹ occurring within ski resort boundaries, and refers to court cases to propose guidelines aimed at assisting skiers and ski resort managers. Six main trends emerged from the study: (a) Spanish courts resolved lawsuits arising from four clearly identifiable categories of ski accidents. (b) Although lawsuits involving ski accidents were heard in both civil and criminal procedures, civil actions were more extensively brought than criminal ones. (c) The majority of the sentences ending legal proceedings resulted in acquittals, although the cost to defendants in the minority of cases where convictions were made exceeded one million euros in total. (d) No single lawsuit, either civil or criminal, was settled in a Court of First Instance; the vast majority were heard in Provincial Courts and only a small proportion reached the High Court. (e) The defendant was the ski resort operator in the great majority of cases. (f) Court decisions were consistently grounded only on the presence or otherwise of the factors necessary to prove either damages as a result of negligence, according to civil law, or misdemeanor or criminal injuries, in criminal lawsuits.     

Regularity and irregularity in the development of scientific disciplines: The case of mathematical logic

We report on results from an analysis of mathematical logic from 1874 to the present time, covering about 15,000 authors with 50,000 publications. Frequency distributions in terms of contributions or in terms of the number of special areas dealt with exhibited a well-known lognormal form. A dynamic version of Price's inverse square (or power) law of elitism seems to be corroborated. The idea of a general exponential growth law is not convincing, however: All forms of growth of logic areas occur. In this contribution we apply, in addition, Goffman's epidemic model, contained in one of the rate theories of scientific dynamics, to the development of logic and formulate ex-post-ante prognoses of some areas of logic. The outcome casts doubts on the applicability in scientometrics of the epidemic theory in the form suggested byGoffman.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

The impact of basic research in the social sciences: The case of education

Recent expert evaluations of the condition and funding of educational research in the USA assume that basic research in the social sciences is a crucial factor in increasing our understanding and ultimately improving the practice of education (see, for example, the 1977 report¹ of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Fundamental Research Relevant to Education). Past tests of this assumption, however, have generally relied upon argument by example or anecdote. In the present study, we analyze citation patterns in the education literature to test the corollary proposition that basic research in the social sciences has had a substantial impact on the literature in education. Empirical data collected on citation patterns in the education literature are found to be largely consistent with this proposition.     

International and domestic co-publishing and their citation impact in different disciplines

This paper studies disciplinary differences in citation impacts of different types of co-publishing. The citation impacts of international, domestic inter-organizational and domestic intra-organizational co-publications, and single-authored publications, are compared. In particular, we examine the extent to which the number of authors explains the potential differences in citation impacts when compared to the influence of different types of international and domestic collaborations. The analysis is based on Finland’s publications in Thomson Reuters Web of Science database in 1990–2008. Finland is a small country, thus, it has fewer opportunities to find collaborators inside own country when compared to larger countries. Finland’s science policy has underlined internationalization and research collaboration as key means to increase the quality and impact of Finnish research. This study indicates that both international and domestic co-publishing have steadily increased during the past two decades in all disciplinary groups. International co-publications gain on average more citations than domestic co-publications. In natural sciences and engineering, co-authorship explains only a small proportion of variability in publications’ citation rates. When the effect of the number of authors is taken into account there are no big differences in citation impacts between international and domestic co-publications. However, international co-publications by ten authors or more gather significantly more citations than other publications. In humanities, the difference in citation impacts between co-authored publications in relation to single-authored publications is significant. However, international co-publications are not on average more highly cited in relation to domestic co-publications in humanities.     

Effects of disciplines and countries on citation habits. An analysis of empirical papers in behavioural sciences

The theoretical introductions in empirical journal articles have been analyzed looking for factors determining citation habits. Own-country-biases and English-American predominance in citations were not regularly found. Preferred language of the cited publications and absolute citation frequencies were dependent upon both the disciplines and the countries where the journals are published. However, relative citation frequencies (citations related to the length of the text available) have been found to be rather constant across countries (within psychology and psychiatry, respectively) which indicates no such dependence.     

Comparison of citation and usage indicators in research assessment in scientific disciplines and journals

Scientometrics - Proceeding from the results of an earlier pilot study usage and citation impact data from the 2013 annual volume of the Web of Science Core Collection were collected and...     

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.     

Comparative analysis of journals on social sciences and humanities in Ukraine and the world

Summary This article analyses the changes in development of journals on social sciences and humanities in Ukraine and shows the results of the comparative analysis of journals on social sciences and humanities in Ukraine, and journals in the world included in relevant databases of the US Institute for Scientific Information (Philadelphia).     

Scholarly publishing in social sciences and humanities, associated probabilities of belonging and its spectrum: a quantitative approach for the Spanish case

In this study, differences between Spanish social sciences and humanities journals are examined using a quantitative approach. Firstly, using a set of 144 psychology journals and 69 philosophy journals, statistically significant differences have been identified in 11 characteristics/indicators. Secondly, a logistic regression was carried out on the dichotomous response variable “belonging to the social sciences” or “belonging to the humanities”, on 777 Spanish social sciences journals, 563 humanities journals that have been previously classified and 17 existing predictor variables. The regression model reached an overall correct classification of 78.8 %. The explanatory variables considered in the model are analyzed and interpreted taking into account the change in the odds ratio and the indication of their contribution to the correct classification rate in the two response values. Finally the average associated probability of belonging to the social sciences group is calculated for each discipline and reflected in a spectrum of the probability of belonging to the social sciences or the humanities.     

Unraveling the attitudes on entrepreneurial universities: The case of Croatian and Spanish universities

The objective of this paper is to present evidence that there are different types of supportive faculty members. We conducted a case study on a sample of Croatian and Spanish universities by using an already tested ENTRE-U scale for measuring the faculty members' attitudes. These two scenarios are quite different in terms of their innovation systems, economic context and university system. We tested and found no evidence of any statistically significant difference due to the country. These two facts suggest the possible existence of an isomorphic trajectory when implementing entrepreneurial universities regardless the context. University managers should be aware of the existence of three different types of supportive individuals. Each of these groups requires a certain program of human resource development. This shifts the debate to how entrepreneurial universities should manage the tensions arising from the need of some degree of specialization in any of the three roles of the faculty members, namely teaching, researching and transfer of the knowledge stemming from research results.     

Spanish scientific and technical journals. State of the art

This article analyses the current situation in the field of scientific and technical journals published in Spain, by determining the following scientific indicators for each: I: Specifications. II: Scientific production covered. III: Visibility and accessibility. The first section provides a qualitative and quantitative study of the journals, asking what subjects they cover, who publishes them, how often they are published, how up to data they are and whether the way they are presented meets international publishing standards. The second section analyses scientific production by research sectors and the percentage of articles collected in the ICYT database compared with the total number of papers published in the journals studied. It also studies the reference habits of the authors published therein to identify whether the literature referred to is of local origin or international. Finally, the third section deduces these journals' degree of visibility by analysing how they are distributed amongst the usual media, i.e. international periodicals directories and databases, and how efficiently they work as vehicles for the diffusion of research by foreign authors. The study covers 10 years (1980–1989), thus enabling to recognise past and current trends in Spanish scientific literature.     

Impact factors and peer judgment: The case of regional science journals

Summary This paper discusses the relationship between Journal Impact Factors and the scientific community's judgment of the quality of journals in regional science, a discipline closely related to economics and geography. The paper compares the results of a survey inquiring the quality of journals in the discipline with the impact factors of these journals for a total of five years. The comparison shows that no significant positive correlation between the impact factors and the peer judgments can be found. In many cases the correlation turns out to be negative - in some cases even significantly.     

The role of domestic markets in international technological innovation systems

This paper explores how countries in non-leadership positions can couple onto globally developing technological innovation systems (TISs) for renewable energy. The paper contributes to recent debates on relations between TISs and context, with a focus on how industries located in one country relate to the international TIS. Based on a survey of 102 firms in the offshore wind industry in Norway and semi-structured interviews, we find that even though Norwegian firms link up with international TISs, the lack of a domestic market represents a barrier. However, firms with activities in related industries and large firms are less exposed to this barrier. This poses a challenge as the offshore wind industry in Norway mainly consists of smaller firms. We therefore suggest that policies should aim to stimulate interaction between smaller suppliers and larger firms that potentially can act as intermediaries and provide access to international markets.