Key factors and considerations in the assessment of international collaboration: a case study for Austria and six countries

This bibliometric study on the collaboration of Austria and six target countries (Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Denmark, Switzerland and Israel) reveals the importance of differentiation between the bilateral and multilateral contingents in the assessment of international scientific collaboration. For this purpose a “degree of bilaterality” (DB) and a “citation degree of bilaterality” (CDB) are introduced. In our findings the DB and the CDB have values lower than 1/3 and 1/5, respectively. Therefore, the total collaboration is mostly shaped in its volume and impact by the multilateral contingent. Regarding the impact estimation of the collaboration publication output, a multi-faceted approach was used. It is recommended to separately analyze the following three aspects: the un-cited range, the average range and the excellence range. Considering different country specific parameters the total number of publications and citations were resized for each type of collaboration and the results discussed. Only a very weak correlation between ‘times cited’ and the number of affiliations or authors was observed at publication level. Neither the number of authors or affiliations determines impact increase. Rather internationalisation and cooperation seem to be the crucial factors.     

Exploring the bibliometric and semantic nature of negative results

Negative results are not popular to disseminate. However, their publication would help to save resources and foster scientific communication. This study analysed the bibliometric and semantic nature of negative results publications. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine (JNRBM) was used as a role model. Its complete articles from 2002–2009 were extracted from SCOPUS and supplemented by related records. Complementary negative results records were retrieved from Web of Science in “Biochemistry” and “Telecommunications”. Applied bibliometrics comprised of co-author and co-affiliation analysis and a citation impact profile. Bibliometrics showed that authorship is widely spread. A specific community for the publication of negative results in devoted literature is non-existent. Neither co-author nor co-affiliation analysis indicated strong interconnectivities. JNRBM articles are cited by a broad spectrum of journals rather than by specific titles. Devoted negative results journals like JNRBM have a rather low impact measured by the number of received citations. On the other hand, only one-third of the publications remain uncited, corroborating their importance for the scientific community. The semantic analysis relies on negative expressions manually identified in JNRBM article titles and abstracts and extracted to syntactic patterns. By using a Natural Language Processing tool these patterns are then employed to detect their occurrences in the multidisciplinary bibliographical database PASCAL. The translation of manually identified negation patterns to syntactic patterns and their application to multidisciplinary bibliographic databases (PASCAL, Web of Science) proved to be a successful method to retrieve even hidden negative results. There is proof that negative results are not only restricted to the biomedical domain. Interestingly a high percentage of the so far identified negative results papers were funded and therefore needed to be published. Thus policies that explicitly encourage or even mandate the publication of negative results could probably bring about a shift in the current scientific communication behaviour.     

The influence of European Framework Programmes on scientific collaboration in nanotechnology

This study deals primarily with the effect of certain European Framework Programmes on EU-27 member states’ publication output in nanotechnology, with a focus on their scientific collaboration over the last ten years. The study was conducted at three levels (category, journal and publication). The aim was to verify whether the newly launched category is sufficiently complete, as well as to identify the most prominent journals and compare the EU-27 member states’ output to world production. Snapshots of European networking are also provided for three key dates (2001, 2006 and 2011) to ascertain the positions of emerging and central countries and analyse their variations over time. The results confirm the speedy development in the field and the importance of the EU-27s world role. They corroborate the close correlation between funding and increased output and the intensification of collaboration among member states. Finally, the information contained in the “Funding Agency” field in the Web of Science database was also compiled, with a view to substantiating the validity of the estimated impact of EU-funding programmes on member states’ scientific output.     

Comparison of downloads,citations and readership data for two information systems journals

In our article we compare downloads from ScienceDirect, citations from Scopus and readership data from the social reference management system Mendeley for articles from two information systems journals (“Journal of Strategic Information Systems” and “Information and Management”) published between 2002 and 2011. Our study shows a medium to high correlation between downloads and citations (Spearman r = 0.77/0.76) and between downloads and readership data (Spearman r = 0.73/0.66). The correlation between readership data and citations, however, was only medium-sized (Spearman r = 0.51/0.59). These results suggest that there is at least “some” difference between the two usage measures and the citation impact of the analysed information systems articles. As expected, downloads and citations have different obsolescence characteristics. While the highest number of downloads are usually made in the publication year and immediately afterwards, it takes several years until the citation maximum is reached. Furthermore, there was a re-increase in the downloads in later years which might be an indication that citations also have an effect on downloads to some degree.     

On the impact of Gold Open Access journals

Gold Open Access (=Open Access publishing) is for many the preferred route to achieve unrestricted and immediate access to research output. However, true Gold Open Access journals are still outnumbered by traditional journals. Moreover availability of Gold OA journals differs from discipline to discipline and often leaves scientists concerned about the impact of these existent titles. This study identified the current set of Gold Open Access journals featuring a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) by means of Ulrichsweb, Directory of Open Access Journals and Journal Citation Reports (JCR). The results were analyzed regarding disciplines, countries, quartiles of the JIF distribution in JCR and publishers. Furthermore the temporal impact evolution was studied for a Top 50 titles list (according to JIF) by means of Journal Impact Factor, SJR and SNIP in the time interval 2000–2010. The identified top Gold Open Access journals proved to be well-established and their impact is generally increasing for all the analyzed indicators. The majority of JCR-indexed OA journals can be assigned to Life Sciences and Medicine. The success-rate for JCR inclusion differs from country to country and is often inversely proportional to the number of national OA journal titles. Compiling a list of JCR-indexed OA journals is a cumbersome task that can only be achieved with non-Thomson Reuters data sources. A corresponding automated feature to produce current lists “on the fly” would be desirable in JCR in order to conveniently track the impact evolution of Gold OA journals.     

Research strengths identified by esteem and bibliometric indicators: a case study at the University of Vienna

Scientometrics - The identification of one’s own research strengths is of crucial importance for research administration at universities. In this case study, two different approaches were...