Interactions between disciplines and countries in methodical preferences for empirical research

Scientific results of empirical research depend on the methods used. The selection of empirical methods by scientists is not solely determined by the subject of research or by theory. Social and historical (in our investigation national) conditions also affect the application of methods. This hypothesis has been corroborated with the help of journals in psychology, psychiatry, and sociology from different countries. The national impact on method preference varies among these disciplines. Conclusions are drawn concerning the generalizability of empirical results beyond disciplines and beyond countries.     

Positive results receive more citations, but only in some disciplines

Negative results are commonly assumed to attract fewer readers and citations, which would explain why journals in most disciplines tend to publish too many positive and statistically significant findings. This study verified this assumption by counting the citation frequencies of papers that, having declared to “test” a hypothesis, reported a “positive” (full or partial) or a “negative” (null or negative) support. Controlling for various confounders, positive results were cited on average 32 % more often. The citation advantage, however, was unequally distributed across disciplines (classified as in the Essential Science Indicators database). Using Space Science as the reference category, the citation differential was positive and formally statistically significant only in Neuroscience & Behaviour, Molecular Biology & Genetics, Clinical Medicine, and Plant and Animal Science. Overall, the effect was significantly higher amongst applied disciplines, and in the biological compared to the physical and the social sciences. The citation differential was not a significant predictor of the actual frequency of positive results amongst the 20 broad disciplines considered. Although future studies should attempt more fine-grained assessments, these results suggest that publication bias may have different causes and require different solutions depending on the field considered.     

Impact of country self-citations on bibliometric indicators and ranking of most productive countries

Scientometrics - The aim of the present work is to determine the share of country self-citations and to analyze its impact on total citations, average citation per paper, % cited publications and...     

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.     

Neo-colonial science by the most industrialised upon the least developed countries in peer-reviewed publishing

We are currently experiencing an era that is facing increasing global environmental and societal problems (e.g., climate change, habitat destruction and economic recession). Scientific research projects are often required to emphasize and counter the effects of inequity and globalisation, and prioritise cooperation supported by cooperative research. This paper investigates whether publication of research that is carried out in least developed countries is done in cooperation with research institutes from these countries. The study uses the Current Contents database of peer-reviewed publications from more than 7,000 journals in all sciences (Biology and environmental sciences; Physical, chemical and earth sciences; Engineering, computing and technology; Life sciences; Clinical medicine; Arts and humanities; Social and behavioral sciences) published between 1 January 1999 and 3 November 2000. From a total of 1,601,196 papers published, 2,798 articles of research activities carried out in the 48 least developed countries were selected using title information as an indicator. Collaborative relationships between research institutions involved was then analysed within and between countries and sciences. Our results show that publications of research, carried out in the least developed countries, do not have co-authorship of local research institutes in 70% of the cases, and that a majority of the papers is published by research institutes from the most industrialised countries in the world. We employed the use of questionnaires sent to authors from papers in the above-mentioned database to detect possible causes of this high percentage of lack of authorship in the essential academic currency that 'publications' are. 'Neo-colonial science' is identified as one of them. In addition, there exists a large discrepancy between what the surveyed scientists say they find important in international collaboration and joint publishing, and the way they act to it. However, the interpretation given to the fact that institutional co-authorship is underrepresented for local research institutions in the least developed countries is less important than the fact itself, and future research should concentrate on a scientific way to equilibrate this adverse trend. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Dentistry scientometric analysis: a comparative study between Brazil and other most productive countries in the area

This research aims at performing a comparative study between the Brazilian scientific production in Dentistry, from 2000 to 2009 and countries that contribute with at least 2 % of the world’s scientific production indexed in the Scopus database. More specifically, we intend to assess the annual Brazilian scientific production by comparing it to the other countries’, analyze the Brazilian and other countries’ publications in journals with higher impact factors, as well as to highlight the scientific production from these countries and its international visibility, measured by its total and by its average of citations and normalized citation index per year, by comparing the countries, and to compare the index h of such countries. As work procedure, the SCImago Journal and Country Rank was used as source, identifying the group of producing countries in the Dentistry area from 1996 to 2009. From a total of 136 countries, 13 were highlighted as the most productive, each one of them accounting for at least 2 % the worldwide scientific production in the area. The following indicators were raised for each country: number of produced documents, total of citations, self-citations, average of citations per document and index h. We verified that Brazil is the only country in Latin America that is pictured among the most productive ones in the Dentistry area. We observed that Brazil presents a growing visibility and impact in the international scenery, what suggests that its production is constantly consolidating, with Brazilian scientific recognition in the main vehicles of dissemination in the area.     

Studying leadership and subdisciplinary structure of scientific disciplines

A new method for the analysis of leadership and subdisciplinary structure of a scientific discipline is discussed. The database consists of lists of participants in international scientific meetings. Disciplinary leaders are identified by means of their frequency of participation. The subdisciplinary structure is mapped by means of cluster analysis of meetings with respect to degree of similarily. The method possesses strengths not shared by citation analysis: in addition to scientists frequently cited in the literature for their contribution to cognitive research programs, it also identifies administrative discipline builders. The method may also represent better the cognitive interests of scientists.Paper presented at the Fourth International Conference on Bibliometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics in Berlin (Germany), September 11–15, 1993.     

Variations of alcohol impairment in different types, causes and contexts of injuries: results of emergency room studies from 16 countries

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this paper is to document alcohol impairment (based on a blood alcohol content (BAC) of at least 80 mg%) for different types, causes and location contexts of injuries. DESIGN AND SETTING: Data from 45 studies with 11,536 injury patients were merged to determine variations in the percent of alcohol impairment among injury patients. In each study, emergency room (ER) injury patients were given a short interview on the circumstances of their injury and BAC was measured. RESULTS: Injury severity, measured by number of body regions injured was significantly associated with BACs over 80 mg%. The highest percentage of injury type to involve alcohol was head injury/concussion. In terms of causes of injuries, patients with alcohol impairment were significantly more likely to be involved in violence than any other cause (i.e., vehicle, falling, poisoning or burns). Finally, injuries occurring at a bar or restaurant were significantly more likely to involve alcohol impairment than any other setting. CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate considerable variation in the circumstances where alcohol is involved in injuries. These results may be useful for the development of prevention initiatives.     

Experiences from dependent failure analysis in nordic countries

This paper provides a review of recent experiences from dependent failure analysis in Nordic countries. A brief summary of the present status of the treatment of explicitly modelled dependencies is given. However, the main emphasis is on analysis of common cause failures (CCFs). In this context insights from the Nordic CCF Data Benchmark Exercise and from qualitative and quantitative retrospective studies are covered. Specific findings concern the impact of alternative methods, data and assumptions in modelling of common cause failures on the results of current PSAs, and use of systematic procedures for search and quantification of CCF contributions. Based on these experiences, priorities for future research have been set. Thus the ongoing activities concentrate on proper consideration of plant-specific defensive measures against CCFs, on generation of representative CCF data which take into account efficiency of such defences, and on quantification of CCF contributions in systems with an ultra high level of redundancy.     

Prescribed practices of authorship: review of codes of ethics from professional bodies and journal guidelines across disciplines

Guidelines on authorship requirements are common in biomedical journals but it is not known how authorship is defined by journals and scholarly professional organizations across research disciplines. Prevalence of authorship statements, their specificity and tone, and contributions required for authorship were assessed in 185 journals from Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), 260 journals from Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) and 651 codes of ethics from professional organizations from the online database of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Profession, USA. In SCI, 53?% of the top-ranked journals had an authorship statement, compared with 32?% in SSCI. In a random sample of A&HCI-indexed journals, only 6?% of the journals addressed authorship. Only 71 (11?%) codes of ethics carried a statement on authorship. Almost all journals had defined authorship criteria compared with 33?% of the ethics codes ( $ \chi_{1}^{2} $ ?=?75.975; P?<?0.001). The tone of the statements in the journals was aspirational, whereas ethics codes used a normative language for defining authorship ( $ \chi_{1}^{2} $ ?=?51.709, P?<?0.001). Journals mostly required both research and writing contributions for authorship, while two-thirds of the ethics codes defined only research as a mandatory contribution. In conclusion, the lack of and variety of authorship definitions in journals and professional organizations across scientific disciplines may be confusing for the researchers and lead to poor authorship practices. All stakeholders in research need to collaborate on building the environment where ethical behaviour in authorship is a norm.     

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.     

Collaboration and impact of research in different disciplines with international funding (from the EU and other foreign sources)

Scientometrics - The advancement of scientific research requires an adequate investment, which calls for promoting fair political decisions about the allocation of limited resources. In this...     

A stability study of ticlopidine products from 18 countries

The results of the stability study of ticlopidine formulations (250 mg and 100 mg) show that products available in many countries worldwide exhibit different stability characteristics. Stability testing under the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) accelerated test conditions (40°C/75% relative humidity [RH], 3 and 6 months) was performed on a total of 43 products obtained from 18 countries. The samples were visually examined for physical change and analyzed for their content of degradation products, remaining ticlopidine, and in vitro dissolution characteristics (in the case of tablets). Only 6 (16%) of all the samples submitted to this study had a good stability profile. Their appearance remained unchanged during the study; assay results were between 95% and 100%; their impurity content did not exceed 0.25%; and in the dissolution test, at least 75% of ticlopidine was dissolved after 30 min. Three samples had excellent dissolution properties and showed a very high purity level (viz. 21, 40, and 43) over the course of the study.     

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.     

彩卷颗粒度在扩印中的传递

根据系统间Wiener噪声功率谱的传递理论 ,给出了彩卷颗粒度到彩纸颗粒度的传递规律。在通常扩印条件下 ,彩纸的测定反差和彩卷与彩纸之间的配合参数是传递中的主要因素 ,并试验求取了三种彩卷和乐凯 4型彩纸的配合参数。