The influence of journal publisher characteristics on open access policy trends

Examines SHERPA/RoMEO publisher open access (OA) policy information for 100 publishers over a 13 year period (2004–2016) to consider whether their size, type or country (UK or US) affected the development of their OA policy over time. A publisher’s RoMEO colour code, whether they offered a Gold OA option, and the mean number of restrictions as to when, how and where papers may be self-archived, were all mapped. Kruskal–Wallis tests were run to assess whether the differences between their 2004 and 2016 positions were statistically significant. Finds that the growth of Green and Gold OA policy approaches has not been evenly distributed amongst publishers with some significant differences amongst publishers of different size, types and country (UK and US). Large commercial publishers are more likely to be allocated a RoMEO colour code, but at the same time place a high volume of restrictions as to where and how authors might self-archive. Small publishers are less likely to have a RoMEO green colour code, but the volume of restrictions they place on self-archiving are minimal. University presses appear not to be engaging with either OA agenda to any considerable degree. UK and US publishers’ OA policies appear to be influenced by the national OA policy environment which, considering the global nature of the scholarly journals market, was more pronounced than might have been anticipated.     

Global competition and technological transition in electrical,electronic, information and communication engineering: quantitative analysis of periodicals and conference proceedings of the IEEE

This study analysed the technical and publication activities of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE), the most influential academic publisher in engineering. We first constructed an original comprehensive database of periodicals (journal and magazine) and conference proceedings published by the IEEE between 1980 and 2008, which comprised approximately 0.36 million periodical articles and 1.14 million conference articles. We analysed the transitions in technical innovations from two perspectives: trends within (1) individual countries and (2) specialized fields represented in IEEE societies. The number of published periodical articles increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008, while that of published conference articles increased nearly 20-fold in the same period. In particular, the number of conference articles published by China increased dramatically from 2002, exceeding even the number published by the US in 2008. The IEEE has increasingly shifted away from its US-centred origins to literally becoming the ‘electrical and electronics association of the world’. The proportion of articles published by authors in North America, Europe and East Asia has increasingly balanced, thus leading to the formation of a tri-polar structure of IEEE technological activities. This comprehensive analysis of IEEE publications over a period of almost 30 years revealed that with the emergence of more active international competition, ‘glocalisation’ is occurring among publications and research activities of the IEEE. Consequently, quantitative analysis revealed structural changes in global competition and technological transition characterized by five phases.     

Evaluation of accounting journals by coverage of accounting topics in 2018–2019

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the coverage of accounting topics in 2018 and 2019 by the high-ranked and cited journals of popular international publishers. To achieve this, the study provides (1) research on the proportion of accounting journals in the international publishers; (2) identification of the largest publishers by the number of accounting journals; (3) a check of the high-ranked and cited accounting journals according to the journals’ websites, the SCImago database, and Web of Science database; (4) investigation of the trend in the number of accounting publications in 2018–2019 compared with 2016–2017 by SSRN, IDEAS/RePEc, and DOAJ; (5) a detailed overview of 1749 accounting publications for 2018 and 2019 using the reference databases of such international publishers as Blackwell, Elsevier, American Accounting Association, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Springer; (6) a self-developed classification of the accounting topics into 14 main directions; and (7) an assessment of the extent of coverage of accounting topics by each journal. The research methods are based on a cross-sectional survey between the website of each publisher and the SCImago database, and on a bibliometric analysis of the metrics and citation impact, the number and proportion of articles in the “major” journals in accounting, and the major bibliometrics databases. SCImago, as the main bibliometrics database, was used for the first time to identify the top-ranked and cited journals. This study highlights the importance of accounting in international publications in the high-ranked and cited journals, emphasizing the actual publications obtained in 2018–2019. The results indicate that a high quartile or high international citation level does not determine the full coverage of accounting topics in a journal. It was found that assets, control, management accounting, and financial reporting were the most frequently published topics in 2018 and 2019. The blockchain technology and IFRS research in accounting were published within 2018–2019 in only 125 articles (7.14%) by 26 accounting journals among the high-ranked and cited journals with an obtained high coverage of accounting topics. This study may help scientists to select a journal for publishing or researching an appropriate accounting topic. Moreover, to increase the coverage extent of accounting topics, the analysis and classification of publication topics conducted in this work are also recommended to editorial boards of accounting journals as information regarding the least disclosed accounting topics over the last 2 years.

     

Self-citation and citation of top journal publishers and their interpretation in the journal-discipline context

Scientometrics - The increasing influence of publishers on academic publishing has inevitably promoted studies of publisher citation and self-citation. However, in this type of citation analysis,...     

科技论文中英文摘要的重要性

在我国几千种科技期刊中,被SCI及EI作为期刊源收录的期刊只有100多家,其中高校学报20多家.这并不能反映我国科技期刊的整体水平.究其原因,它同出版者不够重视与国外检索机构的联系、出版不及时、一稿多投造成期刊内容雷同等有关;但作者对中英文摘要的重要性认识不够,摘要不能说明论文研究的主要问题,英文摘要不符合英文表达习惯,从而导致这些研究成果不能被转摘或收录,也是一个重要原因.     

Publication and citation patterns of Latin American &; Caribbean journals in the SCI and SSCI from 1995 to 2004

Impact factors, publication-citation patterns and growth dynamics were analyzed for the Latin America and the Caribbean journals covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index from 1995–2003. Two main journal groups were identified: those publishing mainly in English with substantial contributions from outside the region, and those publishing in local languages, principally by the local community and on subjects of local interest. We found little inter-citation among the local papers while the highest number of citations by extra-regional authors was to papers published in English. Quantitative indicators show that LA-C journals are better positioned in the mainstream literature than ever before.     

Change in the publishing regime in Latin America: from a local to universal journal,Archivos de investigación Médica/Archives of Medical Research (1970–2014)

This study addresses an early case of an association between a local journal and a commercial publisher in Latin America striving to improve quality. The two journals examined are Archivos de Investigación Médica (AIM), 1970–1991 and its continuation as Archives of Medical Research (AMR), 1992–2014. The aim is to characterize and compare the publishing policies and patterns of scientific communication and bibliometric indicators developed under the two different types of publication: AIM as a source of local dissemination and the commercially circulated AMR. Publishing policies, production, and citations were identified in accordance with coverage by the Web of Science and Scopus indexes. The papers and citations were grouped into three categories according to the author´s affiliation: local, regional, and external. This categorization resulted in different combinations of correlations between cited and citing papers, in addition to a distribution of collaborative production and citations by country organized by continent. The comparison of results reveals two successful publishing projects; however, editorial practices pose an irreconcilable situation between the AIM objectives as a regional journal and AMR objectives as a mainstream journal, according with dominant indicators of international competition. Some implications of this situation are discussed in the context of Latin American and Caribbean journals.     

Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

This study analyzed the use of acknowledgements in medical articles published in five countries (Venezuela, Spain, France, UK and USA) from 1950 to 2010. For each country, we selected 54 papers (18 research papers, 18 reviews and 18 case reports), evenly distributed over six decades, from two medical journals with the highest impact factors. Only papers written by native speakers in the national language were included. The evolution of the frequency and length of acknowledgments was analyzed. Of 270 articles studied, 127 (47%) had acknowledgments. The presence of acknowledgments was associated with country (p = 0.001), this section being more common and longer in US and UK journals. Acknowledgments were most common in research papers (70 vs. 40% in case reports and 31% in reviews, p < 0.001). Reviews without acknowledgments were significantly more common than those with (69 vs. 31%), but there was no trend in case reports. Altogether, articles with acknowledgments predominated only after 2000. Since the frequency of use of acknowledgments remained stable over time in US and UK journals but increased in non-Anglophone journals, the overall increase is attributed to the change in non-English publications. Authors acknowledged sub-authorship more in English language journals than in those published in the national language in France, Spain and Venezuela. However, the practice of acknowledging is increasing in non-Anglophone journals. We conclude that the concept of intellectual indebtedness does not only differ from one geographical context to another, but also over time and from one academic genre to another.     

Economists behaving badly: publications in predatory journals

The extent of publishing in predatory journals in economics is examined. A simple model of researcher behavior is presented to explore those factors motivating an academic to publish in predatory journals as defined by Beall (Criteria for determining predatory open access publishers, Unpublished document, 3rd edn, 2015. https://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/). Beall’s lists are used to identify predatory journals included in the Research Papers in Economics archives. The affiliations of authors publishing in these outlets indicate that the geographic dispersion of authorship is widespread. A very small subset of authors is registered on RePEc. A surprising number of authors who are in the RePEc top 5% also published in predatory journals in 2015.     

Quantitative study on Australian academic science

As at the end of 2009, 50 million scholarly papers were in existence, and changes in the global higher education sector are seeing this number grow rapidly. With the impact of university ranking schemes, dramatic changes have occurred in the academic publication system; both the number of publications, and the number of scholars, are increasing rapidly. In this research, we conduct a focused study on the quantitative relationships in Australian academic science. Sample data is selected from three institutions, representing three types of universities in Australia: a leading university, a middle-tier university, and a non-comprehensive university. For our analysis, bibliometric data for 32,056 scholars and 353,334 publications are downloaded. The results show that varying growth rates for scholars (5.6, 6.1, and 7.7%) and journal publications (6.7, 7.4, and 9.7%) for the leading university, the middle-tier university, and the non-comprehensive university respectively. We also evaluate how scholarly publications differ across these three Australian universities types from six aspects: average number of publications per scholar, percentage of first-authored publications, collaboration pattern, average SJR score of publishing journals, percentage of Quartile category of publishing journals, and average citation per publication. Lastly, we consider how the scholarship life-cycle varies in Australian universities in terms of publishing age, thus establishing the quantitative relationship between scholarship life-cycle and publishing performance in Australian universities.     

A framework for systematic analysis of open access journals and its application in software engineering and information systems

This article is a contribution towards an understanding of open access (OA) publishing. It proposes an analysis framework of 18 core attributes, divided into the areas of bibliographic information, activity metrics, economics, accessibility, and predatory issues. The framework has been employed in a systematic analysis of 30 OA journals in software engineering (SE) and information systems (IS), which were selected from among 386 OA journals in Computer Science from the Directory of OA Journals. An analysis was performed on the sample of the journals, to provide an overview of the current situation of OA journals in the fields of SE and IS. The journals were then compared between-group, according to the presence of article processing charges. A within-group analysis was performed on the journals requesting article processing charges from authors, in order to understand what is the value added according to different price ranges. This article offers several contributions. It presents an overview of OA definitions and models. It provides an analysis framework born from the observation of data and the existing literature. It raises the need to study OA in the fields of SE and IS while offering a first analysis. Finally, it provides recommendations to readers of OA journals. This paper highlights several concerns still threatening the adoption of OA publishing in the fields of SE and IS. Among them, it is shown that high article processing charges are not sufficiently justified by the publishers, which often lack transparency and may prevent authors from adopting OA.     

Assessing the quality of scholarly journals in Linguistics:An alternative to citation-based journal impact factors

Methods were developed to allow quality assessment of academic research in linguistics in allsub-disciplines. Data were obtained from samples of respondents from Flanders, the Netherlands,as well as a world-wide sample, evaluated journals, publishers, and scholars. Journals andpublishers were ranked by several methods. First, we weighted the number of times journals orpublishers were ranked as 'outstanding', 'good', or 'occasionally/not at all good'. To reduce theinfluence of unduly positive or negative biases of respondents, the most extreme ratings weretrimmed. A second weight reflects the (international) visibility of journals and publishers. Here,journals or publishers nominated by respondents from various countries or samples received agreater weight than journals or publishers nominated by respondents from one country or onesample only. Thirdly, a combined index reflects both quality and international visibility. Its use isillustrated on the output of scholars in linguistics. Limitations and potentials for application ofbibliometric methods in output assessments are discussed.     

Recent strategies for adding value to scientific journals in Latin America

A recent initiative in some Latin American countries, to define thebasic core of credited titles of domestic scientific journals in the different knowledge fields, is reviewed. The policy aim is to strengthen the best journals and to minimize the noise produced by the great number of journals that do a disservice to the authors who publish in them either because of their low quality or because even if they are reasonably good, have a very low impact. It is argued that if the exercise were carried out in a rigorous and systematic way in the countries of the region that publish scientific journals, one might eventually obtain a depurated list of Latin American periodical publications. Such list might be useful as a supplement to the catalogues of mainstream journals registered by ISI and other international databases, and could provide valid alternatives of publication of results for Latin American researchers and for authors of other regions active in subjects in which the countries of the region have significant scientific contributions. It might also help to provide a better indication of the total publishing activity of Latin American countries.     

Information management or knowledge management? An informetric view of the dynamics of Academia

This study analyzes the similarities and differences of performance of information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM) research publication indexed by the SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI and A&HCI databases since 1994 with informetric methods in order to explore a developing tendency in the near future. The bibliographic search supplied 1199 IM and 1063 KM records. A very few of IM and KM authors contributed two or more articles. Four countries dominated global IM and KM research productivity, while a few institutions played remarkable roles in scholarly activity. IM journals distributed widespread and 84 per cent just published one or two articles; KM publications were rather concentrated to core and borderline periodicals, fitting Bradford's law of scattering and. The result of Pearson's correlation coefficients analysis indicates that the higher the journal impact factor, the more times the published article is cited. The author concludes that KM has been leading IM in both publication productivity and academic population and the tendency is overwhelmingly growing. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An analysis of discontinued journals by Scopus

Researchers continually strive to communicate their findings to peers, hoping to receive recognition for their contribution in a not-so-distant future. The prevailing idea of “publish or perish” becomes imperative when researchers are applying for competitive grants or academic promotions. Choosing a suitable journal has become an important issue as thousands of journals are available. One of the aspects considered by researchers is the journal’s indexation status. Scopus continuously evaluates journals submitted by publishers for indexation, and later, to verify if quality is maintained. During this re-evaluation process, some publication concerns may be raised at journal or publisher level. Consequently, Scopus periodically issues a list of discontinued journals. However, not all journals update their websites in order to inform readers that they have been discontinued. This study shows that 56 journals that were discontinued in 2016 currently affirm on their websites that they are indexed by Scopus. In addition, another 20 journals discontinued in 2016, which do not specifically state that they are indexed by Scopus, include a widget from SCImago that may generate confusion about their current indexing situation. For some journals it seems that the emphasis is placed more on the publishing end of the business than the dissemination of research findings. This study shows that regular updates are among the responsibilities that editorial teams must maintain to ensure the quality and accuracy of the information posted on journal websites.     

Scientific collaboration of Cuban researchers working in Europe: understanding relations between origin and destination countries

The global network of scientific collaboration created by researchers opens new opportunities for developing countries to engage in the process of knowledge creation historically lead by institutions in the developed world. The results discussed here explore how Cubans working in European science and technology might contribute to extending the scientific collaboration of the country through their ties with Cuban institutions mainly in the academic sector. A bibliometric method was used to explore the pattern of collaboration of Cuban researchers in Europe using the institutional affiliation of authors and collaborators. The records of scientific publications of the defined sample were obtained from Scopus database for the period between 1995 and 2014. The network of collaboration was generated using the affiliations of Cuban authors in Europe and co-authors with worldwide affiliations shown in the records of publications of each Cuban researcher of the study. The analysis of aggregate values of the output of Cuban researchers in Europe (1995–2014) reveals that their collaboration with Cuba correlates moderately with their performance in Europe. However, when taking into account their time publishing in Europe, the collaboration with Cuba decreases the longer they remain away from home. The network of collaborating Cuban researchers in Europe comprises 991 different affiliations from 58 countries: 698 from Europe, 118 from North America, 96 from Latin America and 79 from the rest of the world. K-core analysis of centrality shows two Cuban universities sharing the central position with another 24 institutions worldwide of which 18 belong to higher education.     

The business of being an editor: Norman Lockyer,Macmillan and Company,and the editorship of Nature, 1869–1919

Broadly speaking, Victorian scientific periodicals fell into one of two categories: specialist periodicals aimed at publishing original research for an audience of scientific researchers, or popularizing periodicals meant to share news about science with a broader readership. When astronomer Norman Lockyer founded Nature in 1869, he envisioned his new weekly as a member of the latter group. That vision resulted partly from his own wish to raise science's profile in Great Britain and partly from the interests of his publisher Macmillan and Company, which bankrolled Nature with its eye on eventual profit. This paper shows that the pressure for Nature to be a financial success shaped Lockyer's approach to editing and thus shaped Nature's content, leading the magazine to occupy an unusual space in the landscape of Victorian science publishing and placing unique burdens on its editor. Nature quickly moved away from Lockyer's initial vision of a popularizing magazine and became known as a periodical by and for researchers. The magazine's popularity among scientific researchers set it apart from its closest inspiration, the commercial weekly Chemical News. But in contrast to contemporary editors at learned society journals, such as George Gabriel Stokes at the Philosophical Transactions, Lockyer did not linger over the scientific details of Nature's papers. Instead, articles for Nature were usually either accepted or rejected immediately, with little editorial involvement shaping their scientific content. The difference between editing Nature and editing other research periodicals is clearly visible in the selection of Richard Gregory as Lockyer's successor in 1919. Most research periodicals selected eminent men of science as their editors-in-chief. Gregory, a science writer and long-time subeditor at Nature, did not lend scientific prestige to the masthead, but was eminently qualified to maintain Nature's distinctive content and its profitability for Macmillan and Company.