Publication activity, citation impact and bi-directional links between publications and patents in biotechnology

The study focuses on publication activity, citation impact and citation links between publications and patents in biotechnology. The European Union (EU), US, Japan and China are the most important global players. However, the landscape is changing since the EU and the US are losing ground because of challenges from a group of emerging economies. National profiles differ between the two groups of main players and upcoming countries; the focus on red biotechnology in the US and Europe is contrasted by propensity for white and green technology in Asia. Furthermore, the subject profile of biotechnology papers citing patents and cited by patents as well as the relationship between patent citations and citation impact in scientific literature is explored. Papers that cite patents tend to reflect propensity towards white biotechnology while patent-cited publications have a higher relative share in red biotechnology. No significant difference concerning the citation impact of publications ??citing patents?? and ??not citing patents?? can be found. This is contrasted by the observation that patent-cited papers perform distinctly better in terms of standard bibliometric indicators than comparable publications that are not linked to technology in this direction.     

Measuring impact by a full option method and the notion of bibliometric spectra

A full option method for determining impact takes into account citations to all cited publications, instead of limiting the analysis to ISI-publications only, as usually done in the standard method. The method was tested for the 258 early Ghent professors, teaching in 6 different faculties. The impact of monographs is, in general, much larger than the impact of articles (whether of ISI-type or not). This result remains valid for all six faculties separately. Limiting the bibliometric visibility to ISI-publications reduces the number of citations to only 16%. Bibliometric spectra are presented, in which citations, cited publications and their impact are shown in function of the year of publication. The number of cited publications is always important to expose the influence of activity (production) upon bibliometric scores. For the faculty of Arts, the citations to early professors are compared with those obtained for the presentday generation: the bibliometric spectrum for the former group is rather discontinuous (showing a large erosion in the number of citations by year), whereas that of the latter is continuous. The Ghent citation data are also compared with those given internationally in the same period.     

Bibliometric analysis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related research in the beginning stage

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has become the major of health issues since its outbreak early 2003. No analyses by bibliometric technique that have examined this topic exist in the literature. The objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of all SARS-related publications in Science Citation Index (SCI) in the early stage. A systematic search was performed using the SCI for publications since SARS outbreak early 2003. Selected documents included 'severe acute respiratory syndrome' or 'SARS' as a part of its title, abstract, or keyword from the beginning stage of SARS outbreak, March till July 8, 2003. Analysis parameters included authorship, patterns of international collaboration, journals, language, document type, research institutional address, times cited, and reprint address. Citation analysis was mainly based on impact factor as defined by Journal Citation Reports(JCR) issued in 2002 and on the actual citation impact (ACI), which has been used to assess the impact relative to the whole field and has been defined as the ratio between individual citation per publication value and the total citation per publication value. Thirty-two percent of total share was published as news features, 25% as editorial materials, 22% as articles, 13% as letters, and the remaining being biographic items, corrections, meeting abstracts, and reprints. The US dominated the production by 30% of the total share followed closely by Hong Kong with 24%. Sixty-three percent of publication was published by the mainstream countries. The SARS publication pattern in the past few months suggests immediate citation, low collaboration rate, and English and mainstream country domination in production. We observed no associations of research indexes with the number of cases. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Citation regression analysis of computer science publications in different ranking categories and subfields

A number of bibliometric studies point out that the role of conference publications in computer science differs from that in other traditional fields. Thus, it is interesting to identify the relative status of journal and conference publications in different subfields of computer science based on the citation rates categorised by the China Computer Federation (CCF) classifications and venue types. In this research, we construct a dataset containing over 100,000 papers recommended by the CCF catalogue and their citation information. We also investigate some other factors that often influence a paper’s citation rate. An experimental study shows that the relative status of journals and conferences varies greatly in different subfields of computer science, and the impact of different publication levels varies according to the citation rate. We also verify that the classification of a publication, number of authors, maximum h-index of all authors of a paper, and average number of papers published by a publication have different effects on the citation rate, although the citation rate may have a different degree of correlation with these factors.     

A study on the citation situation within the citing paper: citation distribution of references according to mention frequency

Citation impact indicators play a significant role in evaluating the scientific research activity. Most of citation impact indicators are based on the citation count that the publication is cited as a reference in the other publications, but the difference between each citation situation was not considered. Normally, the number of citations that a publication is cited in the other publications may represent the formal quality of the publication. Similarly, the number of times that a publication is really mentioned within the citing publication, it may also represent the formal quality of the citation. We have examined about how many times each reference was really mentioned within the citing publications and studied about the citation situation within the citing publications. We verified that the citation distribution of references according to the mention frequency follows the Generalized Pareto distribution. The results showed that about 20% of total references were mentioned three and more times, and the number of citation mentions for the about 50% of total references were from about 20% of the total references in the citing publications.     

Early recognition of high quality researchers of the German psychiatry by worldwide accessible bibliometric indicators

Background

Publication and citation rates mark the research activity and research quality of scientists.

Question

Are bibliometric indicators valid instruments for early recognition of high quality researchers?

Subjects and methods

The number of publications and citations of 26 assistant, associate and full professors of German psychiatry born after 1947 was analysed in their 30^th and 31^st year of age and between 1996 and 2000.

Results

58% of the selected 30 or 31 year old scientists had at least one publication in a journal with an impact factor, 93% of these as first or single author. 42% in this age group were at least cited once. Publication and citation rates in the early stage of a career provide hints on the later bibliometric data and the academic degree of scientists.

Conclusion

High quality researchers can be recognised early in their careers by means of worldwide accessible bibliometric indicators.

     

How does scientific success relate to individual and organizational characteristics? A scientometric study of psychology researchers in the German-speaking countries

Purpose: To provide up-to-date bibliometric reference data describing the output and success of psychology researchers in the German-speaking countries, including lifetime publication and citation numbers, and to investigate associations of bibliometric measures with academic status and gender as well as the department characteristics of size and quota of senior researchers. Method Queried literature databases using an extensive online register of academic psychologists in the German-speaking countries, obtaining valid data for 85 % (N = 1742) of the population of interest. Findings Skewed distributions for publications and citations; maximum number of German-language (=native) publications much higher than maximum number of English-language publications; relatively large part of population publishing almost exclusively in German; publication count predictable by academic status, gender, department size, and quota of senior researchers; citation count predictable by publication count, status, department size, and quota of senior researchers; department characteristics interact with individual characteristics to produce specific conditions under which publication count and citation count are higher or lower than expected: combination of female gender, small department size and large quota of senior researchers is associated with particularly increased publication count; female gender and large department size are associated with decreased publication count; high publication count, large department size and low quota of senior researchers are associated with increased citation count; low publication count and large quota of senior researchers are associated with decreased citation count. Conclusions Reference values for scientific output provided in this study provide an anchor for monitoring and international comparison; despite considerable noise in data, we show that interactions of individual and organizational characteristics are relevant for scientific success and should be investigated further, e.g. by adopting various measures of organizational diversity and tracing a population longitudinally.     

Renewable energy research 1995–2009: a case study of wind power research in EU, Spain, Germany and Denmark

The paper reports the developments and citation patterns over three time periods of research on Renewable Energy generation and Wind Power 1995–2011 in EU, Spain, Germany and Denmark. Analyses are based on Web of Science and incorporate journal articles as well as conference proceeding papers. Scientometric indicators include publication collaboration ratios, top-player distribution as well as citedness and correspondence analyses of citing publications, relative citation impact, distributions of top-cited as well as top-citing institutions and publication sources and cluster analysis of citing title terms to map knowledge export areas. Findings show an increase in citation impact for Renewable Energy and Wind Power research albeit hampered by scarcely cited conference papers. Although EU maintains its global top position in producing Renewable Energy and Wind Power research the developments of EU and German world shares as well as citation impact are negative during the most recent 7 year period. During the same time the citation impact of Spain and Denmark increase and place both nations among the top-ranking countries in Wind Power research. Spain is the only EU country that increases its world production share from 2000. China is currently ranked three after EU and USA in research output, however with a very low citation impact. Spain, Denmark and Germany each demonstrates distinct collaboration patterns and publication source and citation distribution profiles. More than half the citations to EU Wind Power research are EU-self citations. An expected intensified EU collaboration in the Wind Energy field does not come about. The most productive research institutions in Denmark and Spain are also the most cited ones.     

Distance and velocity measures: using citations to determine breadth and speed of research impact

Research that integrates the social and natural sciences is vital to address many societal challenges, yet is difficult to arrange, conduct, and disseminate. This paper compares diffusion of the research supported by a unique U.S. National Science Foundation program on Human and Social Dynamics (“HSD”) with a matched group of heavily cited papers. We offer a measure of the distance of cites between the Web of Science Category (“WoSC”) in which a publication appears and the WoSC of the journal citing it, and find that HSD publications are cited more distantly than are comparison publications. We provide another measure—citation velocity—finding that HSD publications are cited with similar lag times as are the comparison papers. These basic citation distance and velocity measures enrich analyses of research knowledge diffusion patterns.     

Citation patterns in the Kuwaiti journal Medical Principles and Practice: The first 12 years, 1989-2000

This study investigates the citation patterns in the journal, Medical Principles and Practice from its inception in 1989 through 2000 (volumes 1-9). The data set includes 4740 references appended to the 221 original research articles. All of the citations were entered into a ProCite database for analysis. Specifically, this study addresses: (1) bibliometric patterns of cited works in terms of publication format, subject scatter, authorship characteristics, age of citations, geographic distribution, and language distribution; (2) productivity of journal titles; (3) the role of self-citation; and (4) how selected bibliometric indicators apply. Some of the findings include: journal articles are most frequently cited; English language publications dominate the literature; there is a trend of multiple authorship; and the pattern of aging is below the norm for medical literature. The results of the study can provide a benchmark to measure the user behavior of a particular group of researchers as well as for the provision of collection development and management decisions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Early citation counts correlate with accumulated impact

Summary The present paper addresses the objective of developing forward indicators of research performance using bibliometric information on the UK science base. Most research indicators rely primarily on historical time series relating to inputs to, activity within and outputs from the research system. Policy makers wish to be able to monitor changing research profiles in a more timely fashion, the better to determine where new investment is having the greatest effect. Initial (e.g. 12 months from publication) citation counts might be useful as a forward indicator of the long-term (e.g. 10 years from publication) quality of research publications, but - although there is literature on citation-time functions - no study to evaluate this specifically has been carried out by Thomson ISI or any other analysts. Here, I describe the outcomes of a preliminary study to explore these citation relationships, drawing on the UK National Citation Report held by Evidence Ltd under licence from Thomson ISI for OST policy use. Annual citation counts typically peak at around the third year after publication. I show that there is a statistically highly significant correlation between initial (years 1-2) and later (years 3-10) citations in six research categories across the life and physical sciences. The relationship holds over a wide range of initial citation counts. Papers that attract more than a definable but field dependent threshold of citations in the initial period after publication are usually among the top 1% (the most highly cited papers) for their field and year. Some papers may take off slowly but can later join the high impact group. It is important to recognise that the statistical relationship is applicable to groups of publications. The citation profiles of individual articles may be quite different. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to conclude that leading indicators of research excellence could be developed. This initial study should now be extended across a wider range fields to test the initial outcomes: earlier papers suggest the model holds in economics. Additional statistical tests should be applied to explore and model the relationship between initial, later and total citation counts and thus to create a general tool for policy application.     

How well developed are altmetrics? A cross-disciplinary analysis of the presence of ‘alternative metrics’ in scientific publications

In this paper an analysis of the presence and possibilities of altmetrics for bibliometric and performance analysis is carried out. Using the web based tool Impact Story, we collected metrics for 20,000 random publications from the Web of Science. We studied both the presence and distribution of altmetrics in the set of publications, across fields, document types and over publication years, as well as the extent to which altmetrics correlate with citation indicators. The main result of the study is that the altmetrics source that provides the most metrics is Mendeley, with metrics on readerships for 62.6 % of all the publications studied, other sources only provide marginal information. In terms of relation with citations, a moderate spearman correlation (r = 0.49) has been found between Mendeley readership counts and citation indicators. Other possibilities and limitations of these indicators are discussed and future research lines are outlined.     

Citation frequency: A biased measure of research impact significantly influenced by the geographical origin of research articles

Context. The use of citation frequency and impact factor as measures of research quality and journal prestige is being criticized. Citation frequency is augmented by self-citation and for most journals the majority of citations originate from a minority of papers. We hypothesized that citation frequency is also associated with the geographical origin of the research publication. Objective. We determined whether citations originate more frequently from institutes that are located in the same country as the authors of the cited publication than would be expected by chance. Design. We screened citations referring to 1200 cardiovascular publications in the 7 years following their publication. For the 1200 citation recipient publications we documented the country where the research originated (9 countries/regions) and the total number of received citations. For a selection of 8864 citation donor papers we registered the country/region where the citing paper originated. Results. Self-citation was common in cardiovascular journals (n = 1534, 17.8%). After exclusion of self-citation, however, the number of citations that originated from the same country as the author of the citation recipient was found to be on average 31.6% higher than would be expected by chance (p<0.01 for all countries/regions). In absolute numbers, nation oriented citation bias was most pronounced in the USA, the country with the largest research output (p<0.001). Conclusion. Citation frequency was significantly augmented by nation oriented citation bias. This nation oriented citation behaviour seems to mainly influence the cumulative citation number for papers originating from the countries with a larger research output.     

On the validity of citation counting in science evaluation: Content analyses of references and citations in psychological publications

In reference to the increasing significance of citation counting in evaluations of scientists and science institutes as well as in science historiography, it is analyzed empirically what is cited in which frequency and what types of citations in scientific texts are used. Content analyses refer to numbers of references, self-references, publication language of references cited, publication types of references cited, and type of citation within the texts. Validity of citation counting is empirically analyzed with reference to random samples of English and German journal articles as well as German textbooks, encyclopedias, and test-manuals from psychology. Results show that 25% of all citations are perfunctory, more than 50% of references are journal articles and up to 40% are books and book-chapters, 10% are self-references. Differences between publications from various psychological sub-disciplines, publication languages, and types of publication are weak. Thus, validity of evaluative citation counting is limited because at least one quarter refers to perfunctory citations exhibiting a very low information utility level and by the fact that existing citation-databases refer to journal articles only.     

Analysis of publication patterns in Korean library and information science research

This study assessed research patterns and trends of library and information science (LIS) in Korea by applying bibliometric analysis to 159 Korean LIS professors?? 2,401 peer-reviewed publications published between 2001 and 2010. Bibliometric analysis of publication data found an increasing trend for collaboration, robust publication patterns, increasing number of international publications, and internationalization of LIS in Korea. The maturation and internalization of LIS research was evidenced in increased number of publications in high impact journals (e.g., SSI, SSCI), growing participation in leading international conferences (e.g., ASIST, TREC), increasing proportion of Korean LIS faculty with international degrees, and high publication rates by professors with international degrees. Though limited in its evaluative power without citation data, publication data can be a rich source for bibliometric analysis as this study has shown. The analysis of publication patterns conducted by the study, which is a first step in our aim to establish a multi-faceted approach for assessing the impact of scholarly work, will be followed up in a future study, where the question of quantity versus quality will be examined by comparing publication counts with citation counts.     

Use of citation per publication as an indicator to evaluate pentachlorophenol research

The objective of the study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of all pentachlorophenolrelated publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI). Analyzed parameters included document type, language of publication, page count, publication output, authorship, keywords plus, publication pattern, citation and country of publication. The US produced 29% of the total single country publications where the seven major industrial countries accounted for the majority of the total production (66%). An indicator citation per publication was successfully applied in this study to evaluate the impact of number of authors, countries, and journals. The mean value of citation per publication of collaborative papers was higher than that of single country publications. In addition analysis of keywords plus in different period was applied to indicate a research trend.     

Better late than never? On the chance to become highly cited only beyond the standard bibliometric time horizon

According to Garfield (1980),most scientists can name an example of an important discovery that had little initial impact on contemporary research. And he uses Mendel's work a classical example. Delayed recognition is sometimes used by scientists as an argument against citation-based indicators based on citation windows defined for a short- or medium-term initial period beginning with the paper's publication year. This study is focussed on a large-scale analysis of the citation history of all papers indexed in the 1980 annual volume of the Science Citation Index. The objective is two-fold, particularly, to analyse whether the share of delayed recognition papers is significant and whether such papers are typical of the work of their authors at that time. In a first step, the background of advanced bibliometric models by Glänzel, Egghe, Rousseau and Burrell of stochastic citation processes and first-citation distributions is described briefly. The second part is devoted to the bibliometric analysis of first-citation statistics and of the phenomenon of citation delay. In a third step, finally, delayed reception publications have been studied individually. Their topics and the citation patterns of other papers by the same authors have been studied to uncover principles of regularity or exceptionality of delayed reception publications.     

The evaluation of university departments and their scientists: Some general considerations with reference to exemplary bibliometric publication and citation analyses for a Department of psychology

In reference to an exemplary bibliometric publication and citation analysis for a University Department of Psychology, some general conceptual and methodological considerations on the evaluation of university departments and their scientists are presented. Data refer to publication and citation-by-others analyses (PsycINFO, PSYNDEX, SSCI, and SCI) for 36 professorial and non-professorial scientists from the tenure staff of the department under study, as well as confidential interviews on self-and colleagues-perceptions with seven of the sample under study. The results point at (1) skewed (Pareto-) distributions of all bibliometric variables demanding nonparametrical statistical analyses, (2) three personally identical outliers which must be excluded from some statistical analyses, (3) rather low rank-order correlations of publication and citation frequencies having approximately 15% common variance, (4) only weak interdependences of bibliometric variables with age, occupational experience, gender, academic status, and engagement in basic versus applied research, (5) the empirical appropriateness and utility of a normative typological model for the evaluation of scientists’ research productivity and impact, which is based on cross-classifications with reference to the number of publications and the frequency of citations by other authors, and (6) low interrater reliabilities and validity of ad hoc evaluations within the departments’ staff. Conclusions refer to the utility of bibliometric data for external peer reviewing and for feedback within scientific departments, in order to make colleague-perceptions more reliable and valid.