Severe language effect in university rankings: particularly Germany and France are wronged in citation-based rankings

We applied a set of standard bibliometric indicators to monitor the scientific state-of-arte of 500 universities worldwide and constructed a ranking on the basis of these indicators (Leiden Ranking 2010). We find a dramatic and hitherto largely underestimated language effect in the bibliometric, citation-based measurements of research performance when comparing the ranking based on all Web of Science (WoS) covered publications and on only English WoS covered publications, particularly for Germany and France.     

Bibliometric analysis of biotechnology

Although Derwent Biotechnology Abstractshas been used in a variety of bibliometric studies, it has never undergone a systematic examination of its reliability and validity. The objective of this paper is to assess its quality for bibliometric studies attempting to analyse the evolution of biotechnology research, to map leading organizations, and to study the interaction between science and technology. The first part reviews the tools used in bibliometric studies of biotechnology and describes the Derwent Biotechnology Abstracts database. The second part is a case study of plant genetic research, with special emphasis on Canada.     

Facebook in educational research: a bibliometric analysis

Facebook has become the object of research in different areas. The present study presents a bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature related to the use of this social network in educational research. To this end, bibliometric techniques were applied in the analysis of scientific articles indexed at the Web of Science Core Collection, from Thomson Reuters, and linked to the research areas of Education/Educational Research. This resulted in the identification of, among others, developments in scientific production, the most important journals that publish papers on the topic, the main authors and the main articles published in the area. The results indicate the growth of scientific production in the area from 2008 onwards, pointing to Computers and Education as the most relevant journal by number of publications (22) and impact factor and indicate that authors from the United States, Australia, Taiwan, United Kingdom and South Africa stand out in the construction of knowledge on educational research applying Facebook. Moreover, the ego-network of the Educational Research area shows that this area coexists with other areas of knowledge in the use of social networking, such as Computer Science, Linguistics and Health Sciences, indicating an interdisciplinary and transversal nature in different areas of research.     

Evaluating research: from informed peer review to bibliometrics

National research assessment exercises are becoming regular events in ever more countries. The present work contrasts the peer-review and bibliometrics approaches in the conduct of these exercises. The comparison is conducted in terms of the essential parameters of any measurement system: accuracy, robustness, validity, functionality, time and costs. Empirical evidence shows that for the natural and formal sciences, the bibliometric methodology is by far preferable to peer-review. Setting up national databases of publications by individual authors, derived from Web of Science or Scopus databases, would allow much better, cheaper and more frequent national research assessments.     

Systematic analysis of coverage and usage of conference proceedings in web of science

The role of conference proceedings for scientific communication varies among the different research fields. It is thus difficult to determine how to use them in bibliometric studies that cover all or at least a variety of the research fields without favouring or penalizing observation subjects that are specialized in fields that rely heavily on conference proceedings. Also, the coverage of conference proceedings in bibliometric databases is often unclear. Not only have there been reports of misclassification but also of insufficient coverage. In this study, the Web of Science is used to give an overview of coverage of conference proceedings as well as advantages and pitfalls of their usage in bibliometric analyses. In particular, the focus lies on different citation behaviour of and for conference proceedings and the implications for bibliometric indicators. This is complemented by an investigation of the development of coverage and publication behaviour in conference proceedings which is compared to those of journal publications. Finally, the importance but also drawbacks and opportunities of acknowledging conference proceedings publications for bibliometric studies are summarized.     

Visibility of collaboration on the Web

The emerging influence of new information and communication technologies (ICT) on collaboration in science and technology has to be considered. In particular, the question of the extent to which collaboration in science and in technology is visible on the Web needs examining. Thus the purpose of this study is to examine whether broadly similar results would occur if solely Web data was used rather than all available bibliometric co-authorship data. For this purpose a new approach of Web visibility indicators of collaboration is examined. The ensemble of COLLNET members is used to compare co-authorship patterns in traditional bibliometric databases and the network visible on the Web. One of the general empirical results is a high percentage (78%) of all bibliographic multi- authored publications become visible through search of engines in the Web. One of the special studies has shown Web visibility of collaboration is dependent on the type of bibliographic multi-authored papers. The social network analysis (SNA) is applied to comparisons between bibliographic and Web collaboration networks. Structure formation processes in bibliographic and Web networks are studied. The research question posed is to which extent collaboration structures visible in the Web change their shape in the same way as bibliographic collaboration networks over time. A number of special types of changes in bibliographic and Web structures are explained. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An overview of selective laser sintering and melting research using bibliometric indicators

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of published research in selective laser sintering/melting (SLS/M), by using bibliometric indicators. Bibliometrics is the quantitative statistical analysis of written publications, such as articles or books. It is useful for displaying and classifying information according to selected variables, such as authors, journals, citations, countries, and institutions. This type of review provides a clear picture of research in a targeted area, such as the most cited research, author with most publications, journal with most published papers, and universities and countries producing the largest amount of research in the target area. The Web of Science database was used to collect data on the topic of interest. The results reveal that the Rapid Prototyping journal is the most productive journal in this field, where the Huazhong University Science Technology is the most effective institution. Also China is the most productive country, whereas USA is the most influential country.     

The need for standards in bibliometric research and technology

The need for standardisation in bibliometric research and technology is discussed in the context of failing communication within the scientific community, the unsatisfactory impact of bibliometric research outside the community and the observed incompatibility of bibliometric indicators produced by different institutes. The development of bibliometric standards is necessary to improve the reliability of bibliometric results, to guarantee the validity of bibliometric methods and to make bibliometric data compatible. Both conceptual and technical questions are raised. Consequences of lacking standards are illustrated by typical examples. Finally, particular topics of standardisation are proposed based on experiences made at ISSRU.     

Reflection of co-authorship networks in the Web: Web hyperlinks versus Web visibility rates

About ten years ago a new research field called “webometrics” emerged. Similarities between methods used in webometrics and scientometrics or informetrics are evident from the literature. Are there also similarities between scientometric and Web indicators of collaboration for possible use in technology policy making? Usually, the bibliometric method used to study collaboration is the investigation of co-authorships.In this paper, Web hyperlinks and Web visibility indicators are examined to establish their usefulness as indicators of collaboration and to explore whether similarities exist between Web-based structures and bibliographic structures.Three empirical studies of collaboration between institutions and individual scientists show that hyperlink structures at the Web don’t reflect collaboration structures collected by bibliographic data. However Web visibility indicators of collaboration are different from hyperlinks and can be successfully used as Web indicators of collaboration.     

How to identify research groups using publication analysis: an example in the field of nanotechnology

Summary We present a new bibliometric approach to identify research groups in a particular research field. With a combination of bibliometric mapping techniques and network analysis we identify and classify clusters of authors to represent research groups. In this paper we illustrate the application and potential of this approach and present two types of outcomes: actual research groups and potential research groups. The former enables us to define research groups beyond the organizational structure. The latter may be used to identify potential partners for collaboration. Our approach is a starting point to deal with the complex issue of research groups in a changing structure of scientific research.     

Examining the relationship of co-authorship network centrality and gender on academic research performance: the case of chemistry researchers in Pakistan

This research examines the association of co-authorship network centrality (degree, closeness and betweeness) and the academic research performance of chemistry researchers in Pakistan. Higher centrality in the co-authorship network is hypothesized to be positively related to performance, in terms of academic publication, with gender having a positive moderating effect for female researchers. Using social network analysis, this study examines the bibliometric data (2002–2009) from ISI Web of Science for the co-authorship network of 2,027 Pakistani authors publishing in the field of Chemistry. A non-temporal analysis using node-level regression reports positive impact of degree and closeness and negative impact of betweeness centrality on research performance. Temporal analysis using node-level regression (time 1: 2002–2005; time 2: 2006–2009) confirms the direction of causality and demonstrates the positive association of degree and closeness centrality on research performance. Findings indicate a moderating role of gender on the relationship of both degree and closeness centrality with research performance for Pakistani female authors.     

Disruption risks in supply chain management: a literature review based on bibliometric analysis

Disruption risks in supply chain management have a great negative influence on the performance of supply chain members. Therefore, the field of supply chain disruption (SCD) has received increasing attention on mitigating the risks and improving the supply chain performance. This paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric overview and visualisation of the field of SCD based on 1,310 publications derived from the core collection of the Web of Science. The influential authors, organisations, and SCD keywords are discussed in detail based on some visualisation tools. Then, the leading publications and main clusters of SCD are identified to find out the key research topics based on citation analysis and reference co-citation analysis. The paper will be a helpful resource for researchers and practitioners who are interested in the field of SCD to capture the current research hotspots and potential research directions.     

A three-dimensional bibliometric evaluation of research in polymer solar cells

The science of polymer solar cells and the technology based on it is now pursued as a very exciting and promising area of research at leading universities, national laboratories, and companies throughout the world. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive and in-depth bibliometric analysis of this area that breaks down scholarly performance into three components—quantity, quality and consistency. The citation data is retrieved from the Web of Science. We identify the most productive organisations, countries, authors and also the most influential journals in which this newly emerging area is published using these criteria.     

Mapping scientific institutions

We have developed a set of routines that allows to draw easily different maps of the research carried out in a scientific institution. Our toolkit uses OpenSource elements to analyze bibliometric data gathered from the Web Of Science. We take the example of our institution, ENS de Lyon, to show how different maps, using co-occurrence (of authors, keywords, institutions…) and bibliographic coupling can be built. These maps may become a valuable tool for discussing institutions’ policies, as they offer different views on the institution at a global scale.     

Geographical knowledge diffusion and spatial diversity citation rank

This paper proposes a citation rank based on spatial diversity (SDCR) in terms of cities and countries, focusing on the measurement of the “spatial” aspect in citation networks. Our main goal is to solve the citation bias caused by different geographical locations of citations. We empirically investigate spatial properties of citing distances, citation patterns and spatial diversity to understand geographical knowledge diffusion, based on the data from “Transportation Science and Technology” subject category in the Web of Science (1966–2009). We also compare the proposed ranking method with other bibliometric measures, and conduct a case study to figure out the recent ranks of the well-established authors in Transportation research. It is found that the SDCR of a focal author is highly correlated with the sum of spatial diversity weights (“strength”) of all his in-links, and it is better to set the damping factors smaller than 0.75 when ranking authors with various initial academic years by SDCR. The cases show that Hong Kong is becoming a cluster in Transportation research.     

基于Web of Science数据库的感性研究的文献计量分析

近年来,诞生于日本的感性（Kansei）研究越来越得到各国不同领域学者的关注。利用文献计量学的方法对Web of Science 数据库1998~2010年来收录的354篇相关文献进行了分析：通过对文献和作者的统计分析,探索了感性研究的发展现状;通过对文献作者提供的关键词的分析,构建了感性研究主题框架。结果表明：感性研究是一个具有较强发展潜力的新兴领域,日益呈现出跨行业、跨学科及多学科的研究特色。本研究成果对我国的感性研究具有一定的借鉴。     

Independent publications from Serbia in the Science Citation Index Expanded: a bibliometric analysis

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of articles from the Republic of Serbia in the period 2006–2012 that are indexed in the Thomson Reuters SCI-EXPANDED database. The Republic of Serbia is a small country in Europe with about seven million citizens that became an independent country in 2006. Since 2006, Serbian science has achieved some recognition. Analysis included 14,293 articles with authors all from Serbia. Distribution of published articles in the Web of Science categories, journals, scientific-research institutions and researchers were analysed. Most cited independent research articles from Serbia were also analysed. The Y-index indicator for rating the productivity of researchers and institutions was used. This indicator takes into account the contribution of the researcher to the published results. The results showed that the productivity of articles from Serbia is significant compared to neighbouring Serbian countries, taking into account the number of researchers in these countries, their GDPs and the percentages of GDPs spent on research.     

共现网络分析国内外医疗可视化设计研究的演化路径

目的 从文献计量学的角度来分析国内外医疗可视化设计领域里的研究进展、研究热点和发展趋势,并通过文献量化对比分析得出国内外发展的结论和建议,助于全面补充我国医疗可视化的研究领域。方法 从社会科学研究领域将研究主题“医疗可视化设计”等在国内知网CNKI数据库和国外Web of science数据库进行检索,利用文献分析的可视化工具Citespace和Vosviewer进行文献计量可视化分析和知识图谱分析。结果国内医疗可视化设计的研究正在朝着数据-产品-体系-空间全方位体现智慧医疗的应用发展。国际上该领域的发展体现出关怀–公众–数字–技术的循环发展模式,医疗可视化设计继续向着个性化、精准化、交互化的方向发展。结论 对比分析国内外医疗可视化设计研究的不同发展演化路径,从创新视角下归纳医疗可视化设计的循证可视化工具研究模型,并为未来医疗可视化设计发展方向提供思路。     

可持续设计研究趋势的可视化分析

目的 对可持续设计的研究现状进行可视化分析,从文献产出分布、研究热点等角度掌握研究进展,形成研究趋势结论。方法 主要采用文献计量学方法,从国内CNKI数据库和国外Web of Science 核心合集数据采集数据,通过有条件筛选得出有效结果,使用VOSviewer和Citespace可视化软件进行分析,分析内容是可持续设计相关的文献发文量、高被引文献、热点文献、     

The influence of author self-citations on bibliometric meso-indicators. The case of european universities

Summary In earlier studies by the authors, basic regularities of author self-citations have been analysed. These regularities are related to the ageing, to the relation between self-citations and foreign citations, to the interdependence of self-citations with other bibliometric indicators and to the influence of co-authorship on self-citation behaviour. Although both national and subject specific peculiarities influence the share of self-citations at the macro level, the authors came to the conclusion that - at this level of aggregation - there is practically no need for excluding self-citations. The aim of the present study is to answer the question in how far the influence of author self-citations on bibliometric meso-indicators deviates from that at the macro level, and to what extent national reference standards can be used in bibliometric meso analyses. In order to study the situation at the institutional level, a selection of twelve European universities representing different countries and different research profiles have been made. The results show a quite complex situation at the meso-level, therefore we suggest the usage of both indicators, including and excluding self-citations.