Do lead articles signal higher quality in the digital age? Evidence from finance journals

Citations are regarded as measures of quality yet citation rates vary widely within each of the top finance journals. Since article ordering is at the discretion of editors, lead articles can be interpreted as signals of quality that academics can use to allocate their attention and assert the value of their publications. Advances in electronic journal access allow researchers to directly access articles, suggesting article ordering may be less relevant today. We confirm the past importance of lead articles by examining citation rates from published papers as well as the wider source of papers that are listed in Google Scholar. Our findings also confirm using Google Scholar as a citation source provides congruent results to using citations from articles published in ISI-listed journals, with the additional benefit of it potentially being more timely since it includes wider citation sources, inclusive of working and conference papers.     

Academic in-group bias in the top five economics journals

Scientometrics - This paper studies academic in-group bias in the top five economics journals. We examine citation counts for articles published in these journals during the years 2006–2015,...     

A citation report for Thai academic journals published during 1996-2000

This article aimed to report Journal Impact Factor (J-IF) and Journal Immediacy Index (J-II) of 68 Thai academic journals during the past five years (from 1996 to 2000) using the calculation method given by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). This was the first time that the citation indexes of Thai academic journals were established. With respect to the journal impact factor, the results showed that only six journals have been cited continuously during the past five years, this being 8.8% of the total journal number selected in this work. It was also noticeable that articles published in longer journal age tended to have greater opportunity to be cited and higher journal impact factor. The average impact factor of the 68 journals was relatively low, this being of 0.069, suggesting that the possibility of an article published in a national journal to be cited was only 6.9%. In terms of the immediacy index, it was found that the average immediacy index value was 0.063, which was again very low. No significant relationship between the journal age and the immediacy index could be observed. 47% of the journals have never been able to produce the immediacy index in the past five years, suggesting that articles in the Thai academic journals were hardly cited within the same years they were published. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Data Envelopment Analysis of OR/MS journals

Summary This paper presents the results of a Data Envelopment Analysis of Operations Research/ Management Science journals on two questions: the duration of the refereeing/publication process and the relation between the length of the articles published and their impact. The second question uses data publicly available through the ISI Journal Citation Reports database and through the journals contents while for the first question data had to be gathered from the journal editors through an e-mail survey. The analysis gives cues about the amount each journal should aim to reduce their lead times, setting efficiency targets both on the average time from submission to first editorial decision and on the time from final editorial decision to publication. Similarly, for each journal, efficiency targets for the average article length are obtained. Our promoting of refereeing efficiency and paper length efficiency assumes that no loss of quality in the peer review process or in the knowledge transmission process needs to happen.     

Developing English-language academic journals of China

Many academic journals of China began to be published in English when China opened door to the world more than 20 years ago. Tsinghua University started to publish an academic journal, the Tsinghua Science and Technology since 1996. We made statistical analyses on the regional distribution on the authors and of the references cited by the articles of Tsinghua Science and Technology from 1996 to 2002. The results show that although the authors are mainly from the Tsinghua University, the number of authors from other regions, especially the number of overseas authors, are increasing in recent years; the average number of references cited by every article are increasing from 6.9 in 1996 to 13.4 in 2002. The results suggest that we must learn the successful experiences from well-known journals. Attracting high-level articles and realizing the internationalization of the journal will help us to develop the journal. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Characteristics of monographic special issues in Ibero-American psychology journals: visibility and relevance for authors and publishers

This paper aims to determine the existence of differential characteristics between monographic special issues and regular non-monographic issues published by psychology journals according to different bibliometric indicators. The materials studied consisted of a total of 1120 articles published in 10 Ibero-American psychology journals included in the JCRs from 2013 to 2015. The number of monographic articles was 286 and the non-monographic works were 834. The results indicate that the articles published in monographic special issue journal receive a higher number of citations and that their publication times are shorter. A greater presence of journal committee members as authors of the papers in monographic special issues was also observed, and the number of authors per paper was lower compared to articles published in non-monographs. As a conclusion, publishing papers in monographic special issues versus non-monographic in the reviewed journals has some advantages for both journals and authors, such as greater international visibility and shorter publication times.     

Assessing internationality of scholarly journals through foreign authorship patterns: the case of major journals in information science,and scientometrics

This article reports findings from a study of patterns of foreign authorship of articles, and international composition of journal editorial boards in five leading journals in the field of information science, and scientometrics. The study covers an American journal and four European journals. Bibliographic data about foreign authors and their national affiliation from five selected years of publication were analyzed for all journals. The foreign input of articles were extremely high in Information Processing & Management, and Scientometrics, and were relatively low in the other three journals. The number of foreign countries contributing in all journals have increased rapidly since 1996. Canada, England, Belgium, Netherlands, China, and Spain were the countries with high contributions in JASIST. The authors from the USA have dominated the foreign-authored articles in all European journals. A simple linear regression analysis showed that 60% of variation in the proportion of foreign-authored articles in the set of five journals over the selected years could be explained by the percentage of foreign members on the editorial boards of the journals. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Scopes of accounting journals and published papers: what do they signalize?

Our main objective is to create a framework to analyze signals sent from academic journals. The signals chosen for the framework were: journal’ scopes; and the latest published papers. We apply the framework to the field of accounting with the main focus of categorizing the journal scopes and the latest published articles into research topics by using text mining techniques. We analyze the published papers of research topics in accounting journals during the 2016–2018 period. Another objective is to compare research topics from the last published papers with research topics identified in accounting journal scopes. We found a majority of journals with a broader scope in terms of accounting research areas, but we see a concentration on specific research topics by analyzing the papers. In addition, the most signaled accounting areas in scopes are financial accounting and auditing. The framework helps us categorize 5270 research papers into accounting research topics correctly, faster than manually reading titles, abstracts, and keywords. While specific scopes may carry the risk of missing new research trends, broad scopes may require more reviewers from different research areas. Diversity can be seen as applying other methodological choices, theoretical lenses, and conceptual or empirical research approaches. We believe that academic diversity is for the benefit of accounting research.

     

Self-citation: comparison between Radiology,European Radiology and Radiology for 1997–1998

This study investigates the incidence of self-citation (authors citing their own work) for scholarly articles in ten journals published by the American Physiological Society. We analysed authorship and referencing practices of all original research articles published in the first ordinary issue of each journal in both 2000 and 2010, comprising 271 and 212 articles, respectively. Self-citation is common in these journals and represents a total of 17.75% of all citations. Only 9 (1.86%) of the articles analysed did not self-cite. Author position significantly influenced the rate of self-citation with last authors being self-cited significantly more than any other author. This was likely a result of the cumulative nature of scientific research within a specific discipline and the necessary desire to promote ones own work for associated academic benefit. The country in which the work was conducted also influenced the rate of self-citation, with last authors based in North America self-citing more than last authors from Asian countries. A comparison of self-citation rates between decades (2000 and 2010) revealed an increase in the number of authors and number of citations per article between 2000 and 2010, however the mean percentage of self-cited articles did not differ between the years. Finally, there were no differences in the percentage of self-citation between the different journals analysed.     

Article-by-article citation analysis of medical journals

An article by article analysis produced by ISI has been investigated to see whether this form of feedback might be useful to the editors. The data highlight the different roles of two medical journals, which are often regarded as similar. They also allow a parallel examination of the citation pattern of other items besides the standard scientific research articles.     

Chinese communication studies: A citation analysis of Chinese communication research in English-language journals

The study employs citation analysis method to identify the disciplines and active research areas in communication studies on communication systems in China. Moreover, the study seeks to contribute to the methodological issues of citation analysis by including new variables in the analysis. Using Chinese communication research in 11 Chinese/Asian studies journals and 13 journalism/communication journals published in English since 1931, the study found that there were little exchanges between Chinese studies and communication scholars. Howerver, the study showed that by including two variables—theme of articles and academic affiliation of authors, the findings can more accurate demonstrate the relationship between the research activities and disciplines cited.     

Interlocking editorship. A network analysis of the links between economic journals

The exploratory analysis developed in this paper relies on the hypothesis that each editor possesses some power in the definition of the editorial policy of her journal. Consequently if the same scholar sits on the board of editors of two journals, those journals could have some common elements in their editorial policies. The proximity of the editorial policies of two scientific journals can be assessed by the number of common editors sitting on their boards. A database of all editors of ECONLIT journals is used. The structure of the network generated by interlocking editorship is explored by applying the instruments of network analysis. Evidence has been found of a compact network containing different components. This is interpreted as the result of a plurality of perspectives about the appropriate methods for the investigation of problems and the construction of theories within the domain of economics.     

The nature and relationship between the productivity of journals and their citations in semiconductor literature

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between journals" productivity and their citations in the field of semiconductors. Journal samples were gathered from the INSPEC database, 1978 to 1997 while the data of citation frequency, impact factor, cited half-life and citing half-life were obtained from Science Citation Index, Journal Citation Reports 1997 CD-ROM edition. One thousand and eight hundred and seventy seven journals publishing articles on semiconductors were retrieved. The nature for the data of journal productivity, impact factor, cited half-life and citing half-life are explored. Among these journals, only 672 journals that were covered in JCR were compared. Moreover, statistical tests of more productive journals with cumulative publication in semiconductor >100 were also conducted on the basis of all articles they published annually (for 1997). The results of the study showed that there is a significant correlation between journal productivity and citation frequency and between journal productivity and impact factor. However, there are no associations between journal productivity and cited half-life and between journal productivity and citing half-life. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Current use of effect size or confidence interval analyses in clinical and biomedical research

The isolated use of the statistical hypothesis testing for two group comparison has limitations, and its combination with effect size or confidence interval analysis as complementary statistical tests is recommended. In the present work, we estimate the use of these complementary statistical tests (i.e. effect size or confidence interval) in recently published in research articles in clinical and biomedical areas. Methods: The ProQuest database was used to search published studies in academic journals between 2019 and 2020. The analysis was carried out using terms that represent five areas of clinical and biomedical research: “brain”, “liver”, “heart”, “dental”, and “covid-19”. A total of 119,558 published articles were retrieved. Results: The relative use of complementary statistical tests in clinical and biomedical publications was low. The highest frequency usage of complementary statistical tests was among articles that also used statistical hypothesis testing for two-sample comparison. Publications with the term “covid-19” showed the lowest usage rate of complementary statistical tests when all article were analyzed but presented the highest rate among articles that used hypothesis testing. Conclusion: The low use of effect size or confidence interval in two-sample comparison suggests that coordinate measures should be taken in order to increase the use of this analysis in clinical and biomedical research. Their use should be emphasized in statistical disciplines for college and graduate students, become a routine procedure in research laboratories, and recommended by reviewers and editors of scientific journals.

     

The relation between the quality of research,researchers’ experience,and their academic environment

This article investigates to what extent researchers’ experience and the solidity of their academic environment influence the quality of their research. The hypotheses are derived from the assumptions that experience matters for quality research and that there are great intellectual synergies to be obtained from interacting with many colleagues who are active researchers. All articles published between 2000 and 2006 in five leading transportation journals are included in the analysis, and their research quality is measured by the number of times each article is cited by August 2016. Controlling for other factors influencing citations, such as article age and the number of references, the most important finding is that both experience and academic environment matter for performing quality research. When the authors’ experience, measured by the number of previous publications, increases by 1% from its average level, their published articles are expected to garner 0.31% more citations. Moreover, when the research activity at the unit to which the authors are affiliated, measured by the unit’s total number of publications, increases by 1% from its average level, the number of times their articles are cited will increase by 0.19%. This signals that, relatively speaking, the researchers’ own experience and merits mean more than the academic environment with regard to producing high-quality research. The above results enable us to discuss how researchers’ experience can compensate for working in less active academic communities holding research quality constant.     

The role of domestic journals in geographically-oriented disciplines: The case of Spanish journals on earth sciences

The role of domestic journals in disseminating research results in the filed of Earth Sciences in Spain is discussed. The analysis is based on bibliometric indicators of Spanish scientific production, as well as on the opinion of Spanish researchers in this field, obtained through a specially designed survey. A reasonable correspondence has been found between the results of bibliometric analysis and scientists' judgements. Results show that 69% of Spanish articles in Earth Sciences were published in Spanish journals during the period 1990–1994. Scientists use both national and international journals to communicate, their research results, although due to the nature of the discipline, geographically oriented and therefore mostly devoted to local problems, they use basically domestic journals. In terms of international visibility, although none of the Spanish journals in this field is covered by the SCI, most of them are covered by some of the most representative international databases in the field concerned. The study points out the importance of domestic journals in the field of Earth Sciences in Spain.     

The visibility of Italian journals

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the Italian journals indexed in the 2000 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) (Philadelphia, USA). The performance and the visibility of these journals were evaluated in terms of Impact Factor (IF), mean IF from citing journals and cited journals, and self-citing and self-cited rates. Seventy-three Italian journals were indexed in the JCR, 14 of which achieved an IF equal to or higher than one. Most citing journals were European and American, thus showing a fairly good visibility of the articles published in the 14 journals analyzed. The self-citing and self-cited rates showed a wide variation. The journal that appeared to perform best was theJournal of High Energy Physics, an electronic publication whose success seemingly confirms Internet circulation as an effective means to enhance the visibility and consequently the quality, in term of citations, of a journal. Italy's low overall expenditure on research & development (R&D) and low number of researchers compared to countries with longstanding high publishing standards and traditions are no doubt partly to blame for its poor performance in scientific publishing. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Scholarly research in LIS open access electronic journals: A bibliometric study

Using 17 fully open access electronic journals published uninterruptedly during 2000–2004 in the field of Library and Information Science the present study investigated the trend of LIS Open Access e-journals’ literature by analysing articles, authors, institutions, countries, subjects, & references. Quantitative content analysis was carried out on the data, data were analysed in order to project literature growth, authorship pattern, gender pattern, cited references pattern and related bibliometric phenomena. The analysis indicates that there were as many as 1636 articles published during 2000–2004 with an average increment of 23.75 articles per year. The authorship pattern indicates that team research has not been very common in LIS OA publishing and male authors were keener than female authors. Authors from academic institutions were paid more interest in OA publishing and most of them were from developed nations. The subject coverage of these OA e-journals was very vast and almost all facets of information and library science were covered in these articles. There were 90.10% of articles of these e-journals contained references and on an average an article contained 24 references. Of these, 38.53% of references were hyperlinked and 87.35% of hyperlinked references were live during investigation. The analysis of data clearly indicates that OA e-journals in LIS are rapidly establishing themselves as a most viable media for scholarly communication.     

Citation patterns of editorial gatekeepers in international chemistry journals

A significant correlation was found between the mean number of citations to the editors of international chemistry journals and the impact factor of the journals in question. A much weaker correlation was found if citations to the editor(s)-in-chief only were considered; this suggests that the professional profile of the journal is determined by the editorial board rather than the person of the editor(s)-in-chief. The number of citations to the editors of international chemistry journals may be used for characterizing a country's chemical research activity.