The growth of knowledge and literature in neuroscience

Knowledge and literature of neuroscience started growing steadily during the last few centuries. This paper aims to study the growth of knowledge in neuroscience as well as its literature. The first part of the paper, enumerates a historical survey of the growth of knowledge based on published data. This is done in view of the fact that a consolidated information at one place will be of great value to the students of scientometrics and also to the research scholars who are desirous to undertake research in this discipline. The second part of the paper is entirely based on experimental data which were collected to analyse the growth of literature of the subject.Neuroscience is notable for its wide range of approaches and techniques. In no other branch of research such a manysided approach is so essential. As a consequence last few decades have witnessed an accelerated research tempo and unprecedented growth of the literature on the subject covering its different sub-fields with gradual and systematic transgression of the conventional boundaries between them. To cope with the growth of literature, a new bibliometric technique has been applied to rank periodicals in the field based on 5785 citation data collected from the bibliographic data base published in the source journal namely,Annual Review of Neuroscience. It is expected that this list will reflect the impact of literature on the advancement of knowledge in the field of neuroscience. A striking feature of this study is the comparatively small contribution (8.8%) coming from the application of biochemical techniques and concepts to neuroscience research which differs from what we had noted earlier in the case of other biomedical disciplines. High position occupied by multidisciplinary science journals brings out the significance of new neuroscience research to science as a whole and confirms the importance of this category of journals in the dissemination of knowledge for the overall growth of science. Relatively low proportion, of citations of journals of medicine, both general as well as specialities, in spite of direct relevance of much work in this field to neurological and mental illness reflects the preponderance of interest in the funcamental aspects of neuroscience research. Like other biomedical disciplines neuroscience literature also exhibits English as the most-preferred lingua franca of the subject; dominance of journals published from USA, UK, Germany and the Netherland; a wide scatter of cited literature showing the multidisciplinary approach characteristic of present-day neuroscience research. The results of this study support Bradford's Law of Scattering and also Sengupta's Law of Bibliometrics. It is expected that the present ranking list will be of great help to the working neuroscientists to select a handful of core periodicals in the field for regular browsing from the viewpoint of their importance and significance as these core journals identify maximum segment of contemporary literature on the topics of direct relevance to their day to day research in the field.     

A weightage formula to rerank periodicals in the field of microbiology

Ranking lists of periodicals in different scientific disciplines are generally based on the total number of citations derived from a group of source journals with equal weightage given to all citations irrespective of chronology. As a result, in all these ranking lists, the position occupied by the post-war journals, may not be an accurate index of their demand or usefulness to research workers in the concerned field. This may happen because the quantum of published literature in the new journals is limited by the period for which they have been in existence, which is in many cases less than 20 years. Moreover, many of the post-war journals appearing in all these recent ranking lists have started publication even after 1960s, and their enumerated citations cover in fact a variable period of less than 20 years unlike in the case of pre-war journals. To avoid such discriminating against new journals which necessarily have fewer citation credits Sengupta suggested earlier an off-setting weightage formula which has been applied in this paper to rerank microbiology periodicals. A revised ranking list in the field of microbiology has been recommended in preference to the earlier one compiled by Sengupta. Results and findings, after application of the weightage formula, have been presented and discussed in this paper.     

Citedness and uncitedness of cancer articles

There is a rapid growth of cancer literature. Thousands of papers are being regularly published every year not only in speciality journals, but also in journals of other disciplines. Citation studies are nowadays considered a major basis of science indicators for ascertaining the importance of a scientific journal and that of the published articles on a particular subject. In oncological research the journalCancer is considered as one of the top most journals and is universally well known for its high standard and excellence. In this paper an attempt has been made to find out the importance of all the articles published in it for a particular year. Side by side bibliometric analysis was made to ascertain various other aspects like time lag between publication and first citation of articles, average citation time, subject scattering and identification of most important journals in the field etc. It is believed that this study would be of help to the working oncologists, librarians and information scientists to assess the importance of articles published in a top ranking journal of cancer and also that of different journals publishing oncological research results.     

A deductive approach to select or rank journals in multifaceted subject, Oceanography

Whether singleton approach (citation analysis of identified source journals) used by Gross and Gross (Science 66(1713):385?C389, 1927) or differential approach (citation analysis of articles in specific subject field) applied by Bradford (Engineering 137:85?C86, 1934) suitable to select or rank journals in multifaceted subject????Oceanography?? is presented. This study discusses both the approaches analyzing citations of published literature in oceanography from 30 countries. The ranking correlation of journals showed better positive correlation (lowest ???=?0.662 for 2005?C2009 to highest ???=?0.817 for 1995?C1999) when top ranked journals from the list generated complying Gross and Gross approach (GA) were correlated with same journal titles of the list generated complying Bradford approach than the other way (lowest ???=?0.588 for 2005?C2009 to highest ???=?0.726 for 1990?C1994). Both the approaches matched similar number of journals to country-wise lists and give unbiased choice in preferring a ranking list. The journals distribution graphs showed typical Bradford?CLeimkuhler curves in both the approaches for all the datasets. But the groos droop appears comparatively early with shorter straight line in GA. The high clustering of literature to limited number of journals is a disadvantage in multifaceted subject. So the differential approach used by Bradford is being considered suitable for multifaceted subject like, ??Oceanography??.     

Three new parameters in bibliometric research and their application to rerank periodicals in the field of biochemistry

Ranking of scientific periodicals by the method of citation counting provides valueable information about the degree of importance of the ranked periodicals. But such lists suffer from some inherent limitations. This paper discusses various pitfalls of traditional ranking lists and suggests, as a remedial measure, three new bibliometric parameters, namely, (1) scientific interest of a journal in relation to total number of articles published; (2) compactness of information content in a scientific periodical; and (3) scientific value of the papers in relation to compactness of presentation. It is believed that these new parameters, whenever applied to any traditional ranking list, will help to identify the accurate positions of different scientific journals of the parent list in order of their usefulness and importance. As a case study these parameters have been applied to the first ten core journals of biochemistry identified earlier and a revised reranked order of the titles presented and discussed.     

An item-by-item subject classification of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals using reference analysis

A serious shortcoming of bibliometric studies based on the(Social) Science (s) Citation Index is the lack of an universally applicable subject classification scheme as individual papers are concerned. Subject classification of papers on the basis of assigning journals to subject categories (like those found in the various supplements of ISI databases) works well in case of highly specialised journals, but fails for multidisciplinary journals such asNature, Science andPNAS—and so far as subfields are taken into consideration-also for “general” journals (e.g.JACS orAngewandte Chemie). This study presents the results of a pilot project attempting to overcome this shortcoming by delimiting the subject of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals by an item-by-item subject classification scheme, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subject classification of reference literature. The results clearly confirmed the conclusions of earlier studies by the authors in the field of reference analysis. For the really important journals (sufficiently high number of annual publications and high impact with respect to the field), the share of classifiable papers was surprisingly high, and the assignment proved reliable as well. Since papers in the leading general and multidisciplinary journals are frequently citing general and multidisciplinary journals, an iterated application of the procedure is expected to increase the number of classifiable publications. The results of the new methodology may improve the validity of bibliometric studies for research evaluation purposes.     

Research activities in life sciences in Japan

The purpose of this survey is to study the present state and an evaluation of research activities in the field of life sciences in Japan. Based on the 5,107 papers from Japan in 1989 CD-ROM ofExcerpta Medica, a quantitative analysis to determine the present state of research activities in life sciences was conducted. There were 7 journals in which more than 50 papers by Japanese authors were published.Brain Research stood first. The ranking list of contributed papers demonstrates a preference of Japanese researchers' interest in international journals from commerical publishers rather than in society journals for the publication of their papers overseas. In view of the number of papers and the paper output per head, research activities of organizations were evaluated. The three national medical schools in Kyushu, Osaka, and Kyoto hold ranked high. A comparison between national medical schools and private medical schools shows that the former have higher productivities. Private medical schools were generally inactive, and they emphasized clinical activities more than research activites.     

Periodical literature of information science as reflected in Referativnyj Zhurnal,section 59, informatika

The paper presents results of a study of information science periodical literature included intoRZh-Informatika in the period 1977–1983. The distribution of papers among periodicals and their language pattern are shown. The list of 95 periodicals that rendered at least 12 papers per year is also presented. The results are compared with some data taken from theSSCI-JCR database. Connections between information science and scientometrics are investigated by the overlap of periodical literature in both fields.     

Review and perspective on soft matter modeling in cellular mechanobiology: cell contact,adhesion, mechanosensing,and motility

Mechanical interactions between cells and extracellular matrix are known to regulate cellular processes ranging from cell signaling, spreading, migration, tissue morphogenesis, to cell differentiation, which may even alter cell phenotype and change physical properties of cells. Moreover, understanding cell contact, adhesion, and cellular mechanotransduction has great significance to cell cultures, muscle growth, and wound healing, and some related diseases such as cancer and fibrosis. For these reasons, cell mechanobiology research has become a focal point in the field of molecular and cell biology research receiving much attention from both biologists and biophysicists in recent years. In fact, cellular mechanobiology is an emerging multidisciplinary field that encompasses molecular cell biology, cell developmental biology, bioengineering and biophysics, and soft matter physics and mechanics. In this document, we would like to present an overview on the recent research developments on mechanics of cells and cellular mechanotransduction through the viewpoint of soft matter physics and biophysics, particularly from the perspective of mechanics of soft materials. Specifically, we review the recent research activities in mechanics of soft matter contact and cell behaviors involving experimental observations, mathematical modeling, and computational methods. Finally, the paper provides author’s perspectives on future issues and challenges on modeling and computational aspects.     

The subject composition of the world's scientific journals

A country by subject count of the serial periodical collection at the British Library Lending Division (BLLD) in 1973 is reported and compared to previous counts. Approximately 25 000 periodicals have titles indicating that they are scientific journals in nine fields of the physical and biological sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The overall subject distribution of the journals appears to be remarkably stable when compared to a similar count byHulme 60 years ago, although the number of journals appears to have doubled in the last 60 years. A major shift was found in the national origin of the journals, when compared withHulme's counts, with a notable rise in the number and percent of U.S. journals, and a sharp decline in the percentage of French and German journals.     

Bradford's law in relation to the evolution of a field. A case study of solar power research

Based on the data of growth of literature in the field of solar power, the present paper investigates the stage of evolution at which the scattering of articles over journals is similar to Bradford's curve, i.e. the stage at which Bradford's law is valid. Traces the related changes that take place in the size and elements of the core during the evolution and growth of literature. The study reveals that a curve similar to Bradford's curve is obtained when the field matures. The finding has been supported with the help of a simple mathematical model.     

Measuring economic journals�� citation efficiency: a data envelopment analysis approach

This paper by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and statistical inference evaluates the citation performance of 229 economic journals. The paper categorizes the journals into four main categories (A?CD) based on their efficiency levels. The results are then compared to the 27 ??core economic journals?? as introduced by Diamond (Curr Contents 21(1):4?C11, 1989). The results reveal that after more than 20 years Diamonds?? list of ??core economic journals?? is still valid. Finally, for the first time the paper uses data from four well-known databases (SSCI, Scopus, RePEc, Econlit) and two quality ranking reports (Kiel Institute internals ranking and ABS quality ranking report) in a DEA setting and in order to derive the ranking of 229 economic journals. The ten economic journals with the highest citation performance are Journal of Political Economy, Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Finance, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.     

An item-by-item subject classification of papers published in journals covered by the SSCI database using reference analysis

A serious shortcoming of bibliometric studies based on theSocial Sciences Citation Index is the lack of a universally applicable subject classification scheme as individual papers are concerned. Moreover, the selective coverage of more than thousand scientific journals per annum proved to be an insuperable obstacle in the delimitation of social science subject areas. Subject classification of papers on the basis of assigning journals to subject categories (like those found in the various supplements of ISI databases) works well in case of fully covered and highly specialised journals in the social sciences, too, but fails for multidisciplinary and selectively covered journals. This study presents the results of an item-by-item subject classification approach, where assignment is based on the analysis of the subject categories of reference literature. This analysis extends the results of an earlier study by the authors on the possibility of delimiting subfields in the hard and life sciences based on reference analysis. The assignment proved also reliable for a considerable share of literature in the social sciences. Due to the peculiarities of the database this share is lower in the SSCI than that in the SCI. Although an iterated application of the procedure is expected to increase the number of classifiable publications, it is suggested that in the sociated sciences the method should be used in combination with other means of subject assignment.     

Journal evaluation by environmental and resource economists: A survey

Using an online survey, we have asked the researchers in the field of environmental and resource economics how they themselves would rank a representative list of journals in their field. The results of this ranking are then compared to the ordering based on the journals’ impact factors as published by Thomson Scientific. The two sets of rankings seem to be positively correlated, but statistically the null hypothesis that the two rankings are uncorrelated cannot be rejected. This observation suggests that researchers interpret the current quality of journals based on other factors in addition to the impact factors.     

A diachronic comparative study of research article titles in linguistics and literature journals

By investigating a total number of 1364 article titles extracted from seven SSCI-indexed linguistics journals and seven A&HCI-indexed literature journals between 1980 and 2018, this study attempts to present the prominent form features and content attributes of the titles and their diachronic variations, as well as the similarities or differences between the two disciplines regarding title features. Results show that article titles in both subject domains demonstrate consistency in the long-range trend of title length and informativity, enjoying a steady and linear growth in length and an increase with fluctuations in informativity. Nominal and compound structures are both frequently adopted in linguistics and literature journals, but the proportion of compound constructions has always been higher than that of nominal ones in literature journals over the past 39 years. Titles containing topical information enjoy the highest percentage from the 1980s to the 2010s in both linguistics and literature journals. However, in the recent decade, content information provided by linguistic article titles tends to be more diversified, presenting not only research topics, but also results, dataset and methods of the study. No significant variations between the two disciplines have been found in lexical diversity, both of which experienced an overall downward trend.

     

Mapping of nanoscience and nanotechnology research in India: a scientometric analysis, 1990–2009

This paper analyses the growth pattern of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology literature in India during 1990–2009 (20 years). The Scopus international multidisciplinary bibliographical database has been used to identify the Indian contributions on the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The study measures the performance based on several parameters, country annual growth rate, authorship pattern, collaborative index, collaborative coefficient, modified collaborative coefficient, subject profile, etc. Further the study examines national publication output and impact in terms of average citations per paper, international collaboration output and share, contribution and impact of Indian Institutions and impact of Indian journals.     

The Literature of Bibliometrics,Scientometrics, and Informetrics

Since Vassily V. Nalimov coined the term ‘scientometrics’ in the 1960s, this term has grown in popularity and is used to describe the study of science: growth, structure, interrelationships and productivity. Scientometrics is related to and has overlapping interests with bibliometrics and informetrics. The terms bibliometrics, scientometrics, and informetrics refer to component fields related to the study of the dynamics of disciplines as reflected in the production of their literature. Areas of study range from charting changes in the output of a scholarly field through time and across countries, to the library collection problem of maintaining control of the output, and to the low publication productivity of most researchers. These terms are used to describe similar and overlapping methodologies. The origins and historical survey of the development of each of these terms are presented. Profiles of the usage of each of these terms over time are presented, using an appropriate subject category of databases on the DIALOG information service. Various definitions of each of the terms are provided from an examination of the literature. The size of the overall literature of these fields is determined and the growth and stabilisation of both the dissertation and non-dissertation literature are shown. A listing of the top journals in the three fields are given, as well as a list of the major reviews and bibliographies that have been published over the years. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

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 bibliometric analysis and comparison on three information science journals: JASIST,IPM, JOD, 1998–2008

Employing a citation analysis, this study explored and compared the bibliometric characteristics and the subject relationship with other disciplines of and among the three leading information science journals, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), Information Processing and Management and Journal of Documentation. The citation data were drawn from references of each article of the three journals during 1998 and 2008. The Ulrich’s Periodical Directory, Library of Congress Subject Heading, retrieved from the WorldCat, and LISA database were used to identify the main class, subclass and subject of cited journals and books. Quantitative results on the number of JASIST, IPM and JOD literature references, average number of references cited per paper, document type of cited literature and the journal self-citation rate are reported. Moreover, the highly cited journals and books, the main classes and subclasses of cited journals and books in papers of the three journals, the highly cited subjects in journals and books of library and information science were identified and analyzed. Comparison on the characteristics of cited journals and books confirmed that all the three journals under study are information science oriented, except JOD which is library science orientation. JASIST and IPM are very much in common and diffuse to other disciplines more deeply than JOD.     

Citation ranking versus expert judgment in evaluating communication scholars: Effects of research specialty size and individual prominence

Numerous attempts have been made to validate the use of citation as an evaluation method by comparing it with peer review. Unlike past studies using journals, research articles or universities as the subject matter, the present study extends the comparison to the ranking of individual scholars. Results show that citation ranking and expert judgment of communication scholars are highly correlated. The citation method and the expert judgment method are found to work better in smaller research areas and yield more valid evaluation results for more prominent scholars.