Indian periodicals in the science citation index

The coverage of Indian S&T periodicals inSCI has been studied covering the period 1975–88. The study shows that coverage is rather poor due to a variety of reasons. Many of the Indian periodicals do not fulfil the criteria for getting covered inSCI. About 500 periodicals have been identified which are covered by at least one major indexing or abstracting service of the world. Total number of such periodicals is likely to be over 600. Slight improvement in the standard of these periodicals is likely to make many of them worthy of coverage bySCI.     

Clustering the science citation index using co-citations. II. Mapping science

Previous attempts to map science using the co-citation clustering methodology are reviewed, and their shortcomings analyzed. Two enhancements of the methodology presented in Part I of the paper-fractional citation counting and variable level clustering—are briefly described and a third enhancement, the iterative clustering of clusters, is introduced. When combined, these three techniques improve our ability to generate comprehensive and representative mappings of science across the multidisciplinaryScience Citation Index (SCI) data base. Results of a four step analysis of the 1979SCI are presented, and the resulting map at the fourth iteration is described in detail. The map shows a tightly integrated network of approximate disciplinary regions, unique in that for the first time links between mathematics and biomedical science have brought about a closure of the previously linear arrangement of disciplines. Disciplinary balance between biomedical and physical science has improved, and the appearance of less cited subject areas, such as mathematics and applied science, makes this map the most comprehensive one yet produced by the co-citation methodology. Remaining problems and goals for future work are discussed.     

The science citation index and the measurement of national performance in terms of numbers of scientific publications

A debate has occurred recently over the issue whether it is possible to account for differences in results when using various versions of theScience Citation Index for the measurement of national performance in terms of numbers of scientific publications. This article provides an overview of the various arguments which have been made, and reports that recent reorganization in the on-line installations (SciSearch) should make it possible to circumvene one of the major sources of error.     

Scientific innovation in bibliographical databases: A comparative study of the science citation index and the pascal database

This study compares information obtained from the INIST/CNRS bibliographical database PASCAL with that found in theAtlas of Science published by ISI. The goal of the comparison was to contribute, to a better understanding of how databases can be used to carry out fine-grained studies of social and cognitive factors which affect the definition of a scientific research program. The program studied concern the development of research on brushborder cell membranes.     

Do types of collaboration change citation? A scientometric analysis of social science publications in South Africa

Scientometrics - Scientometric studies have, by and large, focused on the features of the hard sciences rather than the soft sciences. Prior research has been highly centered around natural science...     

Science citation index and chemistry

Citation data have been collected for a large number of chemists at American universities. The principal objectives are to examine the use of citations as a tool in the study of sociology of chemical research and to determine the feasibility and accurancy of using automatically generated data. Past results in each of these areas, as well as a projection of future uses of citation data, are presented. First, a pilot study is described and some tentative conclusions discussed. The method used minimizes some of the most commonly-expressed criticism of citation data, such as multiple author, self-citations, etc. An effort has been made to establish the accuracy of automatically generated citation data. This project uses as a base for comparison the complete bibliographies of several thousand chemists. Several different citation indices are compared with other indicators commonly employed in discussions of the characteristics of the field of chemistry. The results generally support the idea that citations are meaningful. However, they also reveal some problems which require that great care be exercised in the use of citation data. The use of citation data to observe a chemistry subfield over time also is illustrated.     

A citation index for principal investigators

Scientometrics - A new citation index $$h_{\mathrm{PI}}$$ for principal investigators (PIs) is defined in analogy to Hirsch’s index h, but based on renormalized citations of a PI’s...     

Openness index and affinity index: Two new citation indicators

This article discusses some design issues in the self-citing rate and the self-cited rate proposed by the Social Sciences Citation Index for journals. Improvements on the above measures lead to two new citation indicators—the Openness Index and the Affinity Index. These new indices could be expressed in terms of several components (self, own-field, other-field, overall). Each of these components indicates more specific citation situations of a journal. The application of these new citation indicators is illustrated in the measurement of some journal's characteristics in the field of communication.     

A new index for the citation curve of researchers

Internet has made it possible to move towards researcher and article impact instead of solely focusing on journal impact. To support citation measurement, several indexes have been proposed, including the h-index. The h-index provides a point estimate. To address this, a new index is proposed that takes the citation curve of a researcher into account. This article introduces the index, illustrates its use and compares it to rankings based on the h-index as well as rankings based on publications. It is concluded that the new index provides an added value, since it balances citations and publications through the citation curve.     

Clustering thescience citation index ® using co-citations

Earlier experiments in the use of co-citations to cluster theScience citation Indey (SCI) database are reviewed. Two proposed improvements in the methodology are introduced: fractional citation counting and variable level clustering with a maximum cluster size limit. Results of an experiment using the 1979SCI are described comparing the new methods with those previously employed. It is found that fractional citation counting helps reduce the bias toward high referencing fields such as biomedicine and biochemistry inherent in the use of an integer citation count threshold, and increases the range of subject matters covered by clusters. Variable level clustering, on the other hand, increases recall as measured by the percentage of highly cited items included in clusters. It is concluded that the two new methods used in combination will improve our ability to generate comprehensive maps of science as envisioned byDerek Price. This topic will be discussed in a forthcoming paper.     

Co-authorship and citation networks in Spanish history of science research

This paper studies cooperation patterns in Spain between science history researchers by analysing co-authorship in the scientific publications of the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and the Science Citation Index (SCI) databases.     

A comparison of citation classics in three fields of science

A sample of Citation Classics in three scientific fields was studied to uncover citing motivations. The classics were classified into basic research, methods and reviews. Number of citations received per classic, number of authors, and age of classic per category and scientific field were the parameters studied. Journals and countries accounting for the highest incidence of classics were examined. A striking parallelism was found in the parameters applied to the categories in the scientific fields studied. This parallelism suggests similar citing habits of scientists in the fields studied which should be reflected in the structures of science obtained through citation grounded bibliometric models.     

Analyzing the citation characteristics of books: edited books,book series and publisher types in the book citation index

This paper presents a first approach to analyzing the factors that determine the citation characteristics of books. For this we use the Thomson Reuters’ book citation index, a novel multidisciplinary database launched in 2011 which offers bibliometric data on books. We analyze three possible factors which are considered to affect the citation impact of books: the presence of editors, the inclusion in series and the type of publisher. Also, we focus on highly cited books to see if these factors may affect them as well. We considered as highly cited books, those in the top 5 % of those most highly cited in the database. We define these three aspects and present results for four major scientific areas in order to identify differences by area (science, engineering and technology, social sciences and arts and humanities). Finally, we report differences for edited books and publisher type, however books included in series showed higher impact in two areas.     

Chinese science citation database: Its construction and application

The important role of the Institute for Scientific Information'sScience Citation Index (SCI) as an international retrieval and evaluation tool is briefly discussed. The role ofChinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), the counterpart of SCI in China, in improving the application of citation retrieval method in China, is summarized. The construction process and status quo of CSCD are explained.     

Do types of collaboration change citation? Collaboration and citation patterns of South African science publications

Bibliographic records are extensively used in the study of citations. Based on ISI data, this paper examines citation patterns of the publications of South African scientists in recent years. In particular, the focus of this paper is on citations as to the collaborative dimensions of South African scientists in their publications. The study reveals that the number of citations received by a publication varies not only according to the collaboration but also to the types of collaboration of the authors who are involved in its production. Furthermore, it emerges that the impact of citations on publications differs from discipline to discipline, and affiliating sector to sector, regardless of collaboration.     

Specialties and disciplines in science and social science: An examination of their structure using citation indexes

The technique of co-citation cluster analysis is applied to a special three-year (1972–1974) file of theSocial Sciences Citation Index. An algorithm is devised for identifying clusters which belong to a discipline based on the percentage of source documents which appear in a disciplinary journal set. Clusters in three disciplines (economics, sociology and psychology) are identified using this algorthm. Clusters in a specialty of natural science (particle physics) obtained from the 1973Science Citation Index are compared and contrasted with the three groups of social sciences clusters. Certain common structural characteristics of the social science and natural science groups suggest that knowledge is developing in parts of the social science disciplines in a manner similar to the natural sciences.Prepared for presentation at the joint meeting of The Society for Social Studies of Science and the Research Committee on the Sociology of Science of the International Sociological Association, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, November 4–6, 1976.     

Document type assignment accuracy in the journal citation index data of Web of Science

Despite their important position in the research environment, there is a growing theoretical uncertainty concerning what research metrics indicate (e.g., quality, impact, attention). Here we utilize the same tools used to study latent traits like Intelligence and Personality to get a quantitative understanding of what over 20 common research metrics indicate about the papers they represent. The sample is all of the 32,962 papers PLoS published in 2014, with results suggesting that there are at least two important underlying factors, which could generally be described as Scientific Attention/Discussion (citations), General Attention/Discussion (views, tweets), and potentially Media Attention/Discussion (media mentions). The General Attention metric is correlated about .50 with both the Academic and Media factors, though the Academic and Media attention are only correlated with each other below .05. The overall best indicator of the dataset was the total lifetime views on the paper, which is also probably the easiest to game. The results indicate the need for funding bodies to decide what they value and how to measure it (e.g., types of attention, quality).