Making sense of the evolution of a scientific domain: a visual analytic study of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey research

We introduce a new visual analytic approach to the study of scientific discoveries and knowledge diffusion. Our approach enhances contemporary co-citation network analysis by enabling analysts to identify co-citation clusters of cited references intuitively, synthesize thematic contexts in which these clusters are cited, and trace how research focus evolves over time. The new approach integrates and streamlines a few previously isolated techniques such as spectral clustering and feature selection algorithms. The integrative procedure is expected to empower and strengthen analytical and sense making capabilities of scientists, learners, and researchers to understand the dynamics of the evolution of scientific domains in a wide range of scientific fields, science studies, and science policy evaluation and planning. We demonstrate the potential of our approach through a visual analysis of the evolution of astronomical research associated with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using bibliographic data between 1994 and 2008. In addition, we also demonstrate that the approach can be consistently applied to a set of heterogeneous data sources such as e-prints on arXiv, publications on ADS, and NSF awards related to the same topic of SDSS.     

Scientometrics of computer science research in India and China

Summary An analysis of 2058 papers published by Chinese authors and 2678 papers published by Indian authors in the field of computer science during 1971-2000 indicates that India's output is significantly higher than the Chinese output. However, China is catching up fast. Chinese researchers prefer to publish their research results in domestic journals, while Indian researchers prefer to publish their research results in journals published in the advanced countries of the West. Also the share of papers in journals covered by SCI for India was higher than from China. However, no significant difference has been observed in the impact of the research output of the two countries as seen by different impact indicators. Team research is more common in India as compared to China.     

The big challenge of Scientometrics 2.0: exploring the broader impact of scientific research in public health

In the present study we discuss the challenge of “Scientometrics 2.0” as introduced by Priem and Hemminger (2010) in the light of possible applications to research evaluation. We use the Web of Science subject category public, environmental and occupational health to illustrate how indicators similar to those used in traditional scientometrics can be built, and we also discuss their opportunities and limitations. The discipline under study combines life sciences and social sciences in a unique manner and provides usable metrics reflecting both scholarly and wider impact. Nonetheless, metrics reflecting social media attention like tweets, retweets and Facebook likes, shares or comments are still subject to limitations in this research discipline as well. Furthermore, Usage metrics clearly point to the manipulation proneness of this measure. Although the counterparts of important bibliometric indicators proved to work for several altmetrics too, their interpretation and application to research assessment requires proper context analysis.

     

Informetrics of Scientometrics abstracts: a rhetorical move analysis of the research abstracts published in Scientometrics journal

Scientometrics - The research abstracts have significant functions in the process of conveying information about each research. This is much important in the scientometrics field due to the...     

Scientometrics for management of science: collaboration and knowledge structures and complexities in an interdisciplinary research project

Scientometrics - Scientific research has been facing the problem of increase in size and complexity. Hence, the utilization of scientometric methodology for management of science has been expected...     

A small country in a world of big science a preliminary bibliometric study of science in Singapore

An analysis of 258 papers published from Singapore and covered inScience Citation Index (SCI) 1979 and 1980 indicates that (1) much of R&D in Singapore pertains to medical research, (2) almost all the papers are published in English language periodicals published from the western world, (3) nearly two-thirds of Singapore's publication output is accounted for by the University of Singapore, and (4) by and large papers from Singapore are rarely cited, even if many of them have appeared in journals having impact factor greater than one.     

Characteristics and impact of grant-funded research: a case study of the library and information science field

This paper reports on a bibliometric study of the characteristics and impact of research in the library and information science (LIS) field which was funded through research grant programs, and compares it with research that received no extra funding. Seven core LIS journals were examined to identify articles published in 1998 that acknowledge research grant funding. The distribution of these articles by various criteria (e.g., topic, affiliation, funding agency) was determined. Their impact as indicated by citation counts during 1998–2008 was evaluated against that of articles without acknowledging extra funding and published in the same journals in the same year using citation data collected from Scopus’ Citation Tracker. The impact of grant-funded research as measured by citation counts was substantially higher than that of other research, both overall and in each journal individually. Scholars from outside LIS core institutions contributed heavily to grant-funded research. The two highest-impact publications by far reported non-grant-based research, and grant-based funding of research reported in core LIS journals was biased towards the information retrieval (IR) area, particularly towards research on IR systems. The percentage of articles reporting grant-funded research was substantially higher in information-oriented journals than in library-focused ones.     

Citer analysis as a measure of research impact: library and information science as a case study

The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers per publication an author’s research has been able to attract, as opposed to the more traditional measure of citations. A focus on citers provides a complementary measure of an author’s reach or influence in a field, whereas citations, although possibly numerous, may not reflect this reach, particularly if many citations are received from a small number of citers. In this exploratory study, Web of Science was used to tally citer and citation-based counts for 25 highly cited researchers in information studies in the United States and 26 highly cited researchers from the United Kingdom. Outcomes of the tallies based on several measures, including an introduced ch-index, were used to determine whether differences arise in author rankings when using citer-based versus citation-based counts. The findings indicate a strong correlation between some citation and citer-based measures, but not with others. The findings of the study have implications for the way authors’ research impact may be assessed.     

The evolution of data science and big data research: A bibliometric analysis

Scientometrics - In this study the evolution of Big Data (BD) and Data Science (DS) literatures and the relationship between the two are analyzed by bibliometric indicators that help establish the...     

Using text mining techniques for identifying research gaps and priorities: a case study of the environmental science in Iran

This study aims to observe the researchers’ behavior in Iranian scientific databases to determine the research gaps and priorities in their field of research. Text mining and natural language processing techniques were used to identify what researchers are looking for and to analyze existing research works. In this paper, the information about the behavior of researchers who work in the field of environmental science and existing research works in the Iranian scientific database are processed. The search trends in all areas are evaluated by analyzing the users’ search data. The trend analysis indicates that in the period of February 2013 to July 2015, the growth of the researchers’ requests in some domains of the environment such as Industry, Training, Assessment, Material, Water and Pollution was 1.5 up to 2 times more than the overall requests. A Combination of the trend analysis and clustering of queries led to shaping four priority zones. Then, the research priorities for each environmental research area were determined. The results show that Training, Pollution, Rangeland, Management and Law are those domains in the environmental research which have the most research gaps in Iran, but there are enough research in Forest, Soil and Industry domains. At the end, we describe the steps for the implementation of a decision support system in environmental research management. Researchers, managers and policy makers can use this proposed “research demand and supply monitoring” system or RDSM to make appropriate decisions and allocate their resources more efficiently.     

Scientific linkage of science research and technology development: a case of genetic engineering research

In this study, the author tried to demonstrate the linkage between science research and technology development through non-patent citation analysis to reveal that the important knowledge resources from science research had significant impact on technology development. Genetic engineering technology was the field examined in this study. From the references listed in the patents, it was observed that the technology development in genetic engineering was influenced heavily by the research done by public sector. Over 90% of the citations were non-patent literatures, and the majority of non-patent citations were journal articles. Citing preferences, such as country preference and institute preference were observed from the data included in this study.     

Scientometrics of laser research in India and China

An analysis of 1223 papers published by India (347papers) and China (876papers) at conferences and in journals during 1993 and 1997 in the field of laser S&T indicates that China"s output was twice to that of India. However, Activity Indices for both the countries in 1993 and 1997 were almost the same. Chinese scientists preferred to publish in domestic journals, while Indian scientists published in foreign journals. The number of papers by Indian scientists in SCI covered journals and journals with high-Normalized Impact Factors was more than for China, and, thus India was better connected to the mainstream science compared to China. The impact made by Indian papers was more than for Chinese papers, as reflected by normalized impact per paper, proportion of papers in high quality journals, and publication effective index. Indian papers also got more citations per paper than Chinese papers. Team research appears to be better in China than in India, as reflected by the number of mega-authored papers produced by the two countries. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reliable multicast for the Grid: a case study in experimental computer science

In its simplest form, multicast communication is the process of sending data packets from a source to multiple destinations in the same logical multicast group. IP multicast allows the efficient transport of data through wide-area networks, and its potentially great value for the Grid has been highlighted recently by a number of research groups. In this paper, we focus on the use of IP multicast in Grid applications, which require high-throughput reliable multicast. These include Grid-enabled computational steering and collaborative visualization applications, and wide-area distributed computing. We describe the results of our extensive evaluation studies of state-of-the-art reliable-multicast protocols, which were performed on the UK's high-speed academic networks. Based on these studies, we examine the ability of current reliable multicast technology to meet the Grid's requirements and discuss future directions.     

A lexical and syntactic study of research article titles in Library Science and Scientometrics

Title of a research article is an abstract of the abstract. Titles play a decisive role in convincing readers at first sight whether articles are worth reading or not. Not only do research article titles show how carefully words are chosen by authors, but also reflect disciplinary differences in terms of title words and structure between hard sciences and soft sciences. This study examined the lexical density and syntactic structure of 690 research article titles chosen from five Library Science and Scientometrics journals, aiming to reveal disciplinary differences. The result suggested both Library Science and Scientometrics have almost the same title length and the prevalent usage of Nominal Phrase (NP) to govern the title structure. The result also stated some disciplinary differences: Library Science demonstrates more punctuation complexity, particularly a greater frequency in using colons; but Scientometrics shows more involvement of words related to research methods, which is an indicator to papers’ scientific value, and more usage of declarative Full Sentence (FS) structure, which were mostly discovered in the research articles in hard sciences.

     

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.     

Indicators for the dynamics of research organizations: a biomedical case study

This paper reports results on a bibliometric case study of the long-term development of research organizations, using an internationally leading biomedical institute as example. Using scientometric concepts, small group theory, organizational ecology, and process-based organizational theory, we developed a life cycle based theoretical model for analyzing long-term development of research groups and institutes. Three bibliometric indicators are proposed for growth, activity profile stability, and focus. With these, the research dynamics of the case institute are described. First, overall output growth matches developments internationally in developmental biology and stem cell research, and, in line with this, journal article output increasingly dominates the institute’s activity profile. Second, superposed on the overall growth curve, a stepwise development is observed, consisting of long phases of growth and stabilisation. These steps reflect local conditions and events. Historical sources from the Institutes’ archive and interviews with the current staff of the institute suggest that the pattern of life cycles reflects a strong influence of pioneering individuals. But once settled, pioneering directors who remain in function for many years delay adaptation of the institutes’ mission to field developments. Furthermore, national science policies on PhD training, and on priority areas have influenced the life cycles, as did merging with other institutes. As in a social science case, also in this case study stabilized local conditions lead to adaptation to research field dynamics in a delayed fashion. In the present case stable output periods lasted at most 15 years, when local impulses led to new growth of research output and thus prevented onset of a lifecycle decline. The continued growth in the larger field both promoted and legitimized these local impulses.     

Determinants of success for biomedical researchers: a perception-based study in a health science research environment

New institutions are coming to the fore as stakeholders in research, particularly hospitals and clinical departments involved in providing health care. As a result, new environments for research are gaining importance. This study aims to investigate how different individual characteristics, together with collective and contextual factors, affect the activity and performance of researchers in the particular setting of hospitals and research centres affiliated with the Spanish National Health System (NHS). We used a combination of quantitative science indicators and perception-based data obtained through a survey of researchers working at NHS hospitals and research centres. Inbreeding and involvement in clinical research is the combination of factors with the greatest influence on scientific productivity, because these factors are associated with increased scientific output both overall as well as in high-impact journals. Ultimately, however, satisfaction with human resources in research group combined with gender (linked in turn to leadership) is the combination of factors associated most clearly with the most relevant indicator of productivity success, i.e. the number of articles in high-impact journals as principal author. Researchers’ competitiveness in obtaining research funding as principal investigator is associated with a combination of satisfaction with research autonomy and involvement in clinical research. Researchers’ success is not significantly related with their age, seniority and international experience. The way health care institutions manage and combine the factors likely to influence research may be critical for the development and maintenance of research-conducive environments, and ultimately for the success of research carried out in hospitals and other settings within the national public health system.     

Scientometrics and bibliometrics in the Warsaw University curriculum of library and information science: Place and field structure

The paper describes the curriculum subject matter and its placement in the didactic processes at the Institute of Library and Information Science (Instytut Bibliotekoznawstwa i Informacji Naukowej IBIN) at the Warsaw University comparing some elements with other academic schools in Poland. Bibliographic traditions, and traditions in teaching the history of science are indicated as the basis for the present state of affairs. In addition to the discussion of classes and topics dealing with bibliometrics and scientometrics, also problems of reading list repertoire and subject matter of research work, connected with the didactic activity considered, are discussed. In the conclusions it is stated that inadequate explicitness of the scope and object of bibliometrics bears on the dispersion and lack of self-subsistence of bibliometrics substance.