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Characteristics of high research performance authors in the field of library and information science and those of their articles
Abstract
This study investigated the characteristics of articles by high research performance authors in the field of library and information science (LIS) by comparing the articles by two control groups of highly cited authors and prolific authors. The comparison was conducted on the basis of the articles indexed by Web of Science between 2009 and 2013 and their citation counts as of August 2019. Research results suggested that both high research performance authors and highly cited authors produced a significantly higher percentage of coauthored articles than prolific authors did. Moreover, they published a higher percentage of international collaborative articles in Q1 journals. Most high research performance researchers conducted scientometric research, whereas most highly cited researchers worked in the domain of management and computer science expertise and published their research results in journals relevant to their field. Additionally, prolific researchers mostly preferred to publish articles in LIS journals, whereas highly cited researchers tended to publish more articles in non-LIS journals. Prolific authors did not adopt coauthorship to improve productivity but targeted non-Q1 journals with higher rates of acceptance. Academic age was not a determining factor for distinguishing research performance among all three groups of researchers. Each group of researchers comprised both junior and senior researchers.
In this study, we explored whether prolific arts and humanities authors prefer collaborating with other researchers, publishing in low-tier journals, or being less likely to serve as first authors to enhance their research productivity. According to articles published between 2001 and 2020 in journals in the fields of music, performing arts, literature, and philosophy, contributed by 100 prolific authors in each field, prolific authors in performing arts, literature, and philosophy, but not in music, prefer single authorship. In most of their collaborative articles, prolific authors in each field do not serve as first authors. More than half of the articles produced by prolific authors in music and philosophy are published in top-tier journals, with prolific authors in performing arts and literature publishing fewer than 20% of their articles in top-tier journals. Overall, the presence of prolific authors from fields outside the corresponding disciplines, particularly those oriented toward natural sciences, underscores distinct publishing preferences that may differ from those of other prolific authors. Additionally, the existence of journals covering multiple topics has led to the inclusion of interdisciplinary authors among the prolific authors in each field.
This survey study explored various determinants used to predict early-career researchers’ future performance. 50 studies and their relevant references were examined from two main perspectives: (1) what relevant studies expected as outcomes of successful early-career researchers, and (2) which determinants could significantly shape future outcomes. Regarding the first, various performance measures identified as dependent variables in the relevant literature were introduced, as were ways to determine researchers’ success or failure once their performance was measured. Moreover, the criteria used to circumscribe the early career stage were explained. As for the second perspective, the determinants of early-career researchers’ future performance considered in the relevant studies were classified into six categories: research performance; education, supervision, and postdoctoral training; research topics; co-authorship; personal properties; and others. As a result, several studies substantiated that early-career productivity was one salient component of future success, whereas the effect of research impact accrued during the early-career years on future success was less apparent. Read here: https://rdcu.be/drolC
The article analyses foreign experience in evaluating the performance of scientific and pedagogic research and highlights the following main relevant areas: definition of criteria for research, use of scientometric databases in the process of research evaluation for qualified analysis of the source base,
measurement of formal scientometric indicators, use of altmetric approaches and use of digital library systems. However, most of the reviewed criteria for evaluating the performance of scientific and pedagogic research have shortcomings due to their formal nature and possible manipulation. One effective factor should therefore be considered peer review and peer review, as is now
the case in most highly ranked publications.
Research is a key element of any profession and an analysis of published research enables professional communities to understand the dynamics of growth in a profession and its literature. Bibliometrics is used to carry out the analysis of Library and Information Science (LIS) research articles published by Pakistani authors because it is an important method for measuring impact of published research. We used relatedness measures to estimate the correlation among research growth, authorship patterns and publishing outlets. The sample consists of the research articles published during 2001–2016 by Pakistani authors who mostly remained associated with Pakistani institutions during this period. Chi-square and Binary Logistic Regression was used to find the relationship among different research indicators. Overall annual growth rate of the research articles remained between 8 and 9% from 2004 to 2016. During 2001 and 2016, 166 Pakistani authors contributed 600 articles with an average of 3.61 articles per author. Growth of articles published in foreign journals remained higher as compared to local journals. Out of 600 articles, 31% were contributed by 48 female and 71% articles were published by 118 male authors. Females were slightly more productive with an average of 3.85 than males with an average of 3.51. Collaboration among authors was seven times higher during 2009–16. Collaboration was higher among practitioners and for impact factor publishing. Females contributed more research during 2009–16 as compared to 2001–08. During the 2009–16, foreign articles were contributed with higher percentage by females and faculty. The current study depicts a comprehensive picture of LIS research publishing by Pakistani authors while exploring relationships among different bibliometric indicators.
The interdisciplinary nature of library and information science (LIS) research has been highlighted for some time now. The term “interdisciplinary” is used primarily in the LIS literature as a general concept with different meanings that refer either to the coexistence of researchers from different scientific fields or to cross-disciplinary collaboration expressed in the form of coauthorship. This study analyses the disciplinary profile of LIS researchers with a view to ascertaining the actual level of cross-disciplinary collaboration and identifying all fields involved. Because of the complexity of identifying accurate affiliations at knowledge area level, the study was limited to authors from France, Germany, Spain and the UK. This analysis of authorship affiliation was performed based on research published in LIS serial titles indexed in Scopus during the 2010–2017 period. A rigorous and laborious process of identifying author affiliations was carried out. This involved checking the authorship of each paper and complementing this with information from websites, scientific social networks and other research endeavours whenever ambiguous situations arose. We observed that LIS departments produce barely a third of the research published in serial titles in the LIS subject category. Cross-disciplinary collaboration among all of the scientific fields involved is low, and even lower in LIS than in other fields. The low level of cross-disciplinary collaboration in LIS contradicts the interdisciplinary nature of LIS highlighted in the literature.
This study investigated if collaboration type, publication place, funding and author’s role affect citations received by publications from Africa. Library and Information Science (LIS) publication record of the 54 African countries was collected from the Web of Science. Five types of collaborations were analyzed; no, institutional, national, African and international collaborations. The result shows that only 4.43% of the research by LIS authors from Africa were funded while only 8.16% were published in Africa. The study further shows that the visibility of the articles was low as they attracted 0.67 citation per year. Single author papers declined by the year, while collaboration increased. Institutional collaboration was the most popular while intra-Africa collaboration was the least popular. Furthermore, articles that were funded, published outside Africa, and from intra-African and international collaborations were more cited. International collaborations where LIS authors from Africa were lead authors attracted less citations. The observable differences in citations received by different funding status, collaboration types, publication place and authors’ role were statistically significant. Though higher visibility and funding through international collaboration as revealed in this study is a positive incentive for authors from Africa to participate in international collaboration, it is important to also improve intra-African collaboration. Through strong intra-African collaboration networks, innovative research could be driven to solve some of the problems facing Africa. It was also recommended that structures that will promote intra-African and international collaboration should be provided with funding opportunities.
This manuscript documents the research productivity over a 10-year period (2007–2016) of marketing faculty at 30 leading marketing departments. We find that median productivity in the top four marketing journals was 0.40 publications per year. We find no meaningful difference in productivity between “quant” and “behavioral” faculty. Furthermore, we find a slow decrease in productivity as faculty’s “academic age” increases, but we also find that the most productive members of our community are among the colleagues who received their PhDs 20 to 30 years ago and that academic age is not a good predictor when recent productivity is taken into account. In addition, we find that the departments differ strongly in terms of the concentration of publications among faculty, as measured by the Gini coefficient. Finally, and to our surprise, we find that the number of publications in top journals by the faculty at these 30 schools dropped quite precipitously from the 2007–2011 to the 2012–2016 period.
Authors are at the heart of academic publishing, but their voices are underrepresented in discussions about improving the academic publishing system. To understand the viewpoints of authors on various aspects of academic publishing and the challenges they face, we developed a large-scale survey entitled “Author perspectives on the academic publishing process” and made it available in December 2016. The survey has received 8,795 responses; this paper is based on the interim results drawn from 5,293 survey responses, and presents some interesting and thought-provoking trends that were observed in the authors’ responses, such as their interpretation of plagiarism and decisive factors in journal selection, as well as their thoughts on what needs to change in the publishing system for it to be more author-friendly. Some of the most important findings of the survey were: (1) the majority of the authors found manuscript preparation to be the most challenging task in the publication process, (2) the impact factor of a journal was reported to be the most important consideration for journal selection, (3) most authors found journal guidelines to be incomplete, (4) major gaps existed in author-journal communication, and (5) although awareness of ethics was high, awareness of good publication practice standards was low. Moreover, more than half of the participants indicated that among areas for improvement in the publishing system, they would like to see changes in the time it takes to publish a paper, the peer review process, and the fairness and objectivity of the publication process. These findings indicate the necessity of making the journal publication process more author-centered and smoothing the way for authors to get published.
Do highly productive researchers have significantly higher probability to produce top cited papers? Or do high productive researchers mainly produce a sea of irrelevant papers—in other words do we find a diminishing marginal result from productivity? The answer on these questions is important, as it may help to answer the question of whether the increased competition and increased use of indicators for research evaluation and accountability focus has perverse effects or not. We use a Swedish author disambiguated dataset consisting of 48.000 researchers and their WoS-publications during the period of 2008–2011 with citations until 2014 to investigate the relation between productivity and production of highly cited papers. As the analysis shows, quantity does make a difference.
The unbalanced international scientific collaboration as cause of misleading information on the country’s contribution to the scientific world output was analyzed. ESI Data Base (Thomson Reuters’ InCites), covering the scientific production of 217 active countries in the period 2010–2014 was used. International collaboration implicates in a high percentage (33.1 %) of double-counted world articles, thus impacting qualitative data as citations, impact and impact relative to word. The countries were divided into three groups, according to their individual contribution to the world publications: Group I (24 countries, at least 1 %) representing 83.9 % of the total double-counted world articles. Group II (40 countries, 0.1–0.99 % each). Group III, 153 countries (70.5 %) with <0.1 % and altogether 1.9 % of the world. Qualitative characteristics of each group were also analyzed: percentage of the country’s GNP applied in R&D, proportion of Scientists and Engineers per million inhabitants and Human Development Index. Average international collaboration were: Group I, 43.0 %; Group II, 55.8 % and Group III, 85.2 %. We concluded that very high and unbalanced international collaboration, as presented by many countries, misrepresent the importance of their scientific production, technological and social outputs. Furthermore, it jeopardizes qualitative outputs of the countries themselves, artificially increasing their scientific impact, affecting all fields and therefore, the whole world. The data confirm that when dealing with the qualitative contribution of countries, it is necessary to take in consideration the level of international cooperation because, as seen here, it can and in fact it does create false impression of the real contribution of countries.
Background:
In China, the field of orthopedics has experienced significant growth over the past 12 years. However, the recent status of research on orthopedics among individuals in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan is unknown. In this study, we investigated characteristics and trends of orthopedics publications from these three regions.
Methods:
Between 2003 and 2014, all articles published in 63 orthopedics journals originating from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were identified via Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database. A survey was conducted to systematically analyze the published orthopedics articles from the three regions according to the numbers of articles, study design, impact factors (IFs), citations, most prolific authors, and institutions. Additionally, we evaluated global trends in orthopedics publications, and ranked top 10 countries in terms of the total number of published articles over 12 years and the number of published articles per year.
Results:
A total number of 123,317 articles were published in the 63 orthopedics journals between 2003 and 2014. The worldwide number of annually published orthopedics articles tended to increase during the study period. The total number of orthopedics publications from the three regions, especially in mainland China, increased markedly from 2003 to 2014. The annual number of orthopedics articles from mainland China increased from 6 in 2003 to 813 in 2014, Hong Kong increased from 32 in 2003 to 71 in 2014, and Taiwan increased from 68 in 2003 to 168 in 2014. For accumulated IFs and total citations of articles, mainland China ranked the first place, followed by Taiwan and Hong Kong. However, publications from Taiwan had the highest average citations per article, and publications from Hong Kong had the highest average IFs. Among the top 10 most prolific authors and institutions, 4 authors and 4 institutions were from Taiwan, 3 authors and 4 institutions were from mainland China, and 3 authors and 2 institutions were from Hong Kong.
Conclusions:
The quantity of articles published in international orthopedics journals from mainland China presented a remarkable upward trend during the past 12 years. Given the relative size of the populations, it should be emphasized that mainland China still has a long way to go to achieve the academic performance of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
This article examines the rise in co-authorship in the Social Sciences over a 34-year period. It investigates the development in co-authorship in different research fields and discusses how the methodological differences in these research fields together with changes in academia affect the tendency to co-author articles. The study is based on bibliographic data about 4.5 million peer review articles published in the period 1980–2013 and indexed in the 56 subject categories of the Web of Science’s Social Science Citation Index. The results show a rise in the average number of authors, share of co-authored and international co-authored articles in the majority of the subject categories. However, the results also show that there are great disciplinary differences to the extent of the rises in co-authorship. The subject categories with a great share of international co-authored articles have generally experienced an increase in co-authorship, but increasing international collaboration is not the only factor influencing the rise in co-authorship. Hence, the most substantial rises have occurred in subject categories, where the research often is based on the use of experiments, large data set, statistical methods and/or team-production models.
Introduction. Researchers’ productivity is usually measured in terms of their publication output. A minimum number of publications is required for some medical qualifications and professional appointments. However, authoring an unfeasibly large number of publications might indicate disregard of authorship criteria or even fraud. We therefore examined publication patterns of highly prolific authors in 4 medical specialties.
Methods. We analysed Medline publications from 2008–12 using bespoke software to disambiguate individual authors focusing on 4 discrete topics (to further reduce the risk of combining publications from authors with the same name and affiliation). This enabled us to assess the number and type of publications per author per year.
Results. While 99% of authors were listed on fewer than 20 publications in the 5-year period, 24 authors in the chosen areas were listed on at least 25 publications in a single year (i.e., >1 publication per 10 working days). Types of publication by the prolific authors varied but included substantial numbers of original research papers (not simply editorials or letters).
Conclusions. Institutions and funders should be alert to unfeasibly prolific authors when measuring and creating incentives for researcher productivity.
This study identifies the top individual contributors to 31 LIS journals from 2007 to 2012, both worldwide (all disciplines) and among four groups: LIS faculty in the US and Canada, LIS faculty in the UK, LIS faculty in other countries, and librarians worldwide. The distribution of authorship is highly skewed. Although more than 9,800 authors (86.4 %) each contributed no more than a single article over the six-year period, the top 50 authors (0.4 %) each contributed eight or more articles, with an average of 13.0. Together, the top 50 authors account for nearly 8 % of the LIS literature. Moreover, the most productive LIS faculty are concentrated in relatively few universities. Faculty in the natural sciences and LIS are more likely to be found among the top 50 authors than their overall contributions would suggest, while librarians, computer scientists and non-academic authors are underrepresented. Top authors are especially likely to publish in the Journal of Informetrics and Scientometrics. Among American LIS faculty, the list of the most prolific authors has changed substantially over time. Only three of the top 21 authors of the 1999-2004 period can be found on the current top-20 list.
As a follow-up to the highly-cited authors list published by Thomson Reuters
in June 2014, we analyze the top-1% most frequently cited papers published
between 2002 and 2012 included in the Web of Science (WoS) subject category
"Information Science & Library Science." 798 authors contributed to 305 top-1%
publications; these authors were employed at 275 institutions. The authors at
Harvard University contributed the largest number of papers, when the addresses
are whole-number counted. However, Leiden University leads the ranking, if
fractional counting is used.
Twenty-three of the 798 authors were also listed as most highly-cited authors
by Thomson Reuters in June 2014 (http://highlycited.com/). Twelve of these 23
authors were involved in publishing four or more of the 305 papers under study.
Analysis of co-authorship relations among the 798 highly-cited scientists shows
that co-authorships are based on common interests in a specific topic. Three
topics were important between 2002 and 2012: (1) collection and exploitation of
information in clinical practices, (2) the use of internet in public
communication and commerce, and (3) scientometrics.
Researchers typically pay greater attention to scientific papers published within the last 2 years, and especially papers that may have great citation impact in the future. However, the accuracy of current citation impact prediction methods is still not satisfactory. This paper argues that objective features of scientific papers can make citation impact prediction relatively accurate. The external features of a paper, features of authors, features of the journal of publication, and features of citations are all considered in constructing a paper’s feature space. The stepwise multiple regression analysis is used to select appropriate features from the space and to build a regression model for explaining the relationship between citation impact and the chosen features. The validity of this model is also experimentally verified in the subject area of Information Science & Library Science. The results show that the regression model is effective within this subject.
Ever more frequently, governments have decided to implement policy measures intended to foster and reward excellence in scientific research. This is in fact the intended purpose of national research assessment exercises. These are typically based on the analysis of the quality of the best research products; however, a different approach to analysis and intervention is based on the measure of productivity of the individual scientists, meaning the overall impact of their entire scientific production over the period under observation. This work analyzes the convergence of the two approaches, asking if and to what measure the most productive scientists achieve highly cited articles; or vice versa, what share of highly cited articles is achieved by scientists that are “non-top” for productivity. To do this we use bibliometric indicators, applied to the 2004–2008 publications authored by academics of Italian universities and indexed in the Web of Science.
Systematic reviews are important for informing clinical practice and health policy. The aim of this study was to examine the bibliometrics of systematic reviews and to determine the amount of variance in citations predicted by the journal impact factor (JIF) alone and combined with several other characteristics.
We conducted a bibliometric analysis of 1,261 systematic reviews published in 2008 and the citations to them in the Scopus database from 2008 to June 2012. Potential predictors of the citation impact of the reviews were examined using descriptive, univariate and multiple regression analysis.
The mean number of citations per review over four years was 26.5 (SD +/-29.9) or 6.6 citations per review per year. The mean JIF of the journals in which the reviews were published was 4.3 (SD +/-4.2). We found that 17% of the reviews accounted for 50% of the total citations and 1.6% of the reviews were not cited. The number of authors was correlated with the number of citations (r = 0.215, P < 0.001). Higher numbers of citations were associated with the following characteristics: first author from the United States (36.5 citations), an ICD-10 chapter heading of Neoplasms (31.8 citations), type of intervention classified as Investigation, Diagnostics or Screening (34.7 citations) and having an international collaboration (32.1 citations). The JIF alone explained more than half of the variation in citations (R2 = 0.59) in univariate analysis. Adjusting for both JIF and type of intervention increased the R2 value to 0.81. Fourteen percent of reviews published in the top quartile of JIFs (>=5.16) received citations in the bottom quartile (eight or fewer), whereas 9% of reviews published in the lowest JIF quartile (<=2.06) received citations in the top quartile (34 or more). Six percent of reviews in journals with no JIF were also in the first quartile of citations.
The JIF predicted over half of the variation in citations to the systematic reviews. However, the distribution of citations was markedly skewed. Some reviews in journals with low JIFs were well-cited and others in higher JIF journals received relatively few citations; hence the JIF did not accurately represent the number of citations to individual systematic reviews.
This study is the third in a series that examines some measures of productivity applied to faculty in Library and Information Science (LIS) programs in the United States accredited by the American Library Association. The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is used to generate publication and citation data. The time period covered is 1993-98. The data are analyzed according to both individual productivity and program productivity. Tables are presented to list the individuals ranked by the measures. Additional tables present ranked lists of programs according to total and per capita publications and total and per capita citations. Programs are then ranked by the criteria just mentioned along with the perceptions of programs as reported in the most recent U.S. News and World Report survey.
Geography, economic, socio-political and language are considered to be factors that effect the level of research collaboration. However, to-date no technique has been developed to isolate the effect of geographical proximity from the other factors. This paper presents a methodology for specifically examining geographical effects on intra-national scientific collaboration. An investigation of intra-national university-university collaboration in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom using this technique demonstrates that research cooperation decreases exponentially with the distance separating the collaborative partners.
The objective of the study was to perform a scientometric analysis of all Tsunami related publications as per the Scopus TM database during 1997-2008. A total of 4338 publications and 21107 citations to these papers were received. The parameters studied include growth of publication, country-wise distribution of publications, activity index of countries, most-frequently cited publications, authorship pattern, co-authorship index, and distribution of keywords. United States of America, Japan, United Kingdom, India and Australia produced 54.20% of the total output. A spurt in number of publications was observed after the Indonesia's tsunami occurred on 26 December 2004.
The Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) has been playing a vital role in the dissemination of scholarly articles in library and information science since 1950. This paper presents the results of a bibliometric study of articles published in the JASIST from 2000 to 2007. It examines the distribution of papers under various headings, including authorship pattern and nature of collaboration, geographic distribution of articles, nature of cited and citing references, prolific authors and highly cited authors. Data were collected using the Web of Science and analyzed using Microsoft Excel. Results indicate that during the sample period the rate of publication was uneven and the most prominent form of publication was articles. The trend of authorship pattern of articles is towards collaboration and authors from 47 countries contributed articles. The country-wise distribution reveals that the highest number of contributions was made by US authors followed by the UK. The number of references cited per article increased from 2000—2007 whereas articles received citations in decreasing numbers during the same period. The results suggest that articles need to have been published for more than 2 years before they receive adequate numbers of citations.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify factors influencing extremely high or low research productivity for business faculty members.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data originating from a random sample of 236 faculty members across a wide range of accredited business schools and a web‐based survey, main effects are hypothesized and explored. The authors examine only extreme data points of high (and low) research productivity to focus on high‐performing research “stars.”
Findings
It is found that research “stars” hold higher academic rank, possess greater time management skills, individually place a high value on research, report higher time available to conduct research, enjoy higher institutional support in the form of graduate assistants and summer research support, have fewer course preparations, and work for departments with a similar priority placed on research.
Research limitations/implications
The authors found that certain person‐ and situation‐level factors differentiate high and low performing faculty members’ research output.
Practical implications
The paper has implications for university administrators regarding recruiting, selecting, and managing faculty members’ research performance.
Originality/value
Research productivity and intellectual contributions continue to dominate much of higher education as a primary measure of faculty members’ success. One area that remains under‐explored in the business literature is what “makes a research star” and, to the contrary, what factors predict extremely low faculty research productivity? Shedding light on this research question provides practical benefits for universities by enabling administrators to better recruit, select, motivate, and develop productive faculty members.
This study compared the longitudinal research performance of 50 biological scientists who received the National Medal of Science (NMS) between 1995 and 2014 and who shared the honor of receiving a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fifty NMS scientists were categorized based on their annual number of publications (research productivity) and their annual average number of citations received per publication (research influence). These categories covered all their articles, conference papers, and review articles before 2018 indexed by databases of Web of Science, divided into three periods. Results demonstrated that the primary type of research productivity was the same as that of research influence, indicating an upward trend in the first period but a decreasing trend in the second and third periods. Few scientists had their influential scientific contributions being practically applied and presented in the format of a book. Research performance among 50 NMS scientists varied at the individual level. However, no aggregate and statistically significant differences were identified between groups of 50 NMS winners with respect to characteristics related to research performance. Although no clear relationship was identified between research performance and scientific contribution, research productivity had a weaker association with scientific contribution than did research influence.
This paper examines how early career-related factors can predict the future research performance of computer and information scientists. Although a few bibliometric studies have previously investigated multiple factors relating to early career scientists that significantly predict their future research performance, there have been limited studies on early career-related factors affecting scientists in the fields of information science and computer science. This study analyzes 4,102 scientists whose publishing careers started in the same year. The criteria used to quantify future research performance of the target scientists included the number of publications and citation counts of publications in a four-year citation window to indicate future research productivity and research impact, respectively. These criteria were regressed on 13 early career-related factors. The results showed that these factors accounted for about 27% and 23% of the future productivity of the target scientists in terms of journal articles and conference papers, respectively; these 13 factors were also responsible for 19% of the future impact of target scientists' journal articles and 19% of the future impact of their conference papers. The factor that most contributed to explaining the future research performance (i.e. publication numbers) and future research impact (i.e. citation counts of publications) was the number of publications (both journal articles and conference papers) produced by the target scientists in their early career years.
This study measured the proportion of articles by authors affiliated with library and information science (LIS)-related institutions and proportion of LIS authors in each journal using 3224 articles published in 75 journals in 2015 in the category of information science and library science as assigned by journal citation reports (JCR). Only 33.3% of journals published over half of their articles by LIS authors. Over half of authors affiliated with LIS institutions were identified in only 30.7% of journals. Library science-oriented journals had higher percentages of LIS authors and articles by LIS authors, followed by information science-oriented journals. Not all typical LIS journals were primarily contributed to by LIS authors. Additionally, 30 journals with a weak association to LIS research substantially explained the findings and tended to have higher impact factors. Lower ranks of typical LIS journals affect research rewards for LIS researchers when JCR impact factors are emphasized.
Academic journals play a significant role in the dissemination of new research insights and knowledge among scientists. The number of such journals has recently increased significantly. Scientists prefer to publish their scholarly work at reputed venues. Speed of publication is also an import factor considered by many while selecting a publication venue. To evaluate a journal’s quality, few of the key indicators include impact factor, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), and Hirsch index (h-index). Journals’ ranking is an indication of their impact and quality with respect to other venues in a specific discipline. Various measures can be utilized for ranking, like, field specific statistics, intra discipline ranking, or a combination of both. Earlier, the journals’ ranking was done through a manual process by providing an institutional list created by academic leaders. Factors like politicization, biases, and personal interests were the key issues with such categorization. Later, the process evolved to a database system based on impact factor, SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper), h-index, or any combination of these. All this demanded an external source of categorizing academic journals. This work presents a data science-based framework that evaluates journals based on their key bibliometric indicators and presents an automated approach to categorize them. For this, the current proposal is restricted to the journals published in the computer science domain. The journal’s features considered in the proposed framework include: publisher, impact factor, website, CiteScore, SJR (SCImago Journal & Country Rank), SNIP, h-index, country, age, cited half-life, immediacy factor/index, Eigenfactor score, article influence score, open access, percentile, citations, acceptance rate, peer review, and the number of articles published yearly. A dataset is collected for 660 journals consisting of these 19 features. The dataset is preprocessed to fill-in the missing values and perform scaling. Three feature selection techniques, namely, Mutual Information (MI), minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (mRMR), and Statistical Dependency (SD) are used to rank the aforementioned features. The dataset is then vertically divided into three sets, all features, top nine features, and bottom ten features. Later, two clustering techniques, namely, k-means and k-medoids are employed to find the optimum number of coherent groups in the dataset. Based on a rigorous evaluation, four groups of journals are identified. It is followed by training two classifiers, i.e., k-NN (Nearest Neighbor) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict the category of an unknown journal. Where, the ANN shows an average accuracy of 82.85%. A descriptive analysis of the clusters formed is also presented to gain insights about the four journal categories. The proposed framework provides an opportunity to independently categorize academic journals based on data science methods using multiple significant bibliometric indicators.
This study investigated the external contributors of library and information science (LIS) knowledge who were unaffiliated with LIS-related institutions but published their research results in LIS journals. Differences between the contributors to library science (LS) and contributors to information science (IS) were considered. Articles published in 39 strongly LIS-oriented journals indexed in the Web of Science database between 2005 and 2014 were analyzed. The results demonstrated that 46.5% of the LIS articles were written by at least one non-LIS author; authors’ backgrounds ranged across 29 disciplines. An increasing trend was observed in degrees of interdisciplinarity of LS and IS. An increase in proportion of articles by LIS and non-LIS authors was identified in LS and IS as well. Those with medical backgrounds were the primary non-LIS authors contributing to the LS field and collaborated the most frequently with LIS authors. Those with computer science backgrounds were the most prevalent non-LIS contributors to the IS field and preferred to publish individually. A critical difference was also identified in research topics between LS and IS. The foundations of LIS and scientometrics were the largest research topics in LS and IS, respectively.
This bibliometric analysis explores the interdisciplinary characteristics of library and information science (LIS) from the perspective of interdisciplinary LIS authors. Articles published in non-LIS journals by LIS authors between 2005 and 2014 and indexed by the Web of Science database formed the basis for analysis. The results showed that interdisciplinary LIS authors published articles in numerous disciplines; a largest number of articles were found in medical and music journals. Over half of the articles published by these authors were not LIS-related and were primarily singly-authored articles and articles coauthored by LIS and non-LIS authors. Most articles coauthored by only LIS authors involved LIS-related topics. Interdisciplinary LIS authors preferred to publish by themselves. The majority of interdisciplinary authors were academic librarians. Interdisciplinary LIS authors most frequently collaborated with other LIS authors, followed by authors from the field of medicine. Although interdisciplinary LIS authors are a minority, they are active in expanding the visibility of LIS.
We analyzed comparative trends in research performance of the Russian institutions based on the quantitative and qualitative data available in the international SciVal, Scopus, web of science and the national Russian databases from 2012 to December 2017. Russian Federation represented 2.0% of the world population and 2% of the researchers while accounting to 2.2% of the world publications (14th place in the world scholarly output) with overall field-weighted citation impact of 0.75. Scholarly output of the Russian authors increased by 79%, field-weighted citation impact by 12% and outputs in top citation percentiles by 21% but without a statistically significant positive association between higher investment in research and development and the increase the national GDP. Scholarly output for the Russian publications in mathematics, physics and astronomy are among 5 top countries. However, field-weighted mass media impact, the number of citations per publication, citations per author and per publication, metrics of international collaboration and the academic–corporation collaboration and economic impact of the Russian research remain low. Routine analysis of the research performance and economic impact of R&D expenditure should be reflected in transparent distribution of state research funding. Legal aspects of the international research must be developed to ensure a complete integration of the Russian science into international research activities.
This paper aims to understand the influence of institutional and organisational embeddedness on research productivity of Italian sociologists. We looked at all records published by Italian sociologists in Scopus from 1973 to 2016 and reconstructed their co-authorship patterns. We built an individual productivity index by considering the number and type of records, the impact factor of journals in which these records were published and each record’s citations. We found that sociologists who co-authored more frequently with international authors were more productive and that having a stable group of co-authors had a positive effect on the number of publications but not on citations. We found that organisational embeddedness has a positive effect on productivity at the group level (i.e., sociologists working in the same institute), less at the individual level. We did not found any effect of the scientific disciplinary sectors, which are extremely influential administratively and politically for promotion and career in Italy. With all caveats due to several limitations of our analysis, our findings suggest that internationalisation and certain context-specific organisational settings could promote scientist productivity .
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the top researchers in information behaviour (IB) based on ideational and social influence indicators.
Design/methodology/approach
The population included papers on IB indexed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2015. UCINET and Bibexcel were the tools used for measuring the ideational and social influence indicators. The correlations among the study variables were measured by applying SPSS and LISREL.
Findings
There was a significant relationship between IB researchers’ productivity and performance, and between ideational influence and social influence. The structural equation modelling showed that a researcher with top placement in his/her co-authorship network can gain higher ideational influence. In total, it seems that the single and traditional criteria are increasingly replacing new and integrative ones in measuring researchers’ scientific influence in fields including IB studies. Results have shown that based on total scores of the studied indicators, Spink, A., Nicholas, D., Ford, N., Huntington, P., Wilson, T.D., and Jamali, H.R. gained the high scores.
Originality/value
The current study used an integrative method based on influence indicators to identify the influential researchers in IB studies. None of the few studies done using bibliometric methods in the realm of IB has investigated the ideational and social influence indicators altogether.
Study design:
Bibliometric analysis.
Objective:
To apply the established technique of citation analysis to identify the 100 most influential articles in scoliosis surgery research published between 1900 and 2015.
Summary of background data:
Previous studies have applied the technique of citation analysis to other areas of study. This is the first article to apply this technique to the field of scoliosis surgery.
Methods:
A two-step search of the Thomson Reuters Web of Science was conducted to identify all articles relevant to the field of scoliosis surgery. The top 100 articles with the most citations were identified based on analysis of titles and abstracts. Further statistical analysis was conducted to determine whether measures of author reputation and overall publication influence affected the rate at which publications were recognized and incorporated by other researchers in the field.
Results:
Total citations for the final 100 publications included in the list ranged from 82 to 509. The period for publication ranged from 1954 to 2010. Most studies were published in the journal Spine (n = 63). The most frequently published topics of study were surgical techniques (n = 35) and outcomes (n = 35). Measures of author reputation (number of total studies in the top 100, number of first-author studies in the top 100) were found to have no effect on the rate at which studies were adopted by other researchers (number of years until first citation, and number of years until maximum citations). The number of citations/year a publication received was found to be negatively correlated with the rate at which it was adopted by other researchers, indicating that more influential manuscripts attained more rapid recognition by the scientific community at large.
Conclusion:
In assembling this publication, we have strived to identify and recognize the 100 most influential articles in scoliosis surgery research from 1900 to 2015.
Level of evidence:
N/A.
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 disciplines and not many studies have dealt with the social sciences. This applies to Africa as well. However, attempts to investigate the features and tendencies in the social sciences are gradually emerging. This is the first paper to explore the social sciences in South Africa, examining the interrelationships between the types of collaboration and the impact of research publications as measured in the count of citations. Extracting Web of Science data from its Social Science Citation Index (from 1956 to present) for sampled years between 1970 and 2015 (n = 4991), the analysis explains citations in terms of the type of collaboration, international partners and subject areas. The highlights of this analysis are that the social sciences in South Africa have certain distinguishing characteristics that determine the production and impact on knowledge.
We assemble a massive sample of 180,000 CVs of Brazilian academic researchers of all disciplines from the Lattes platform. From the CVs we gather information on key variables related to the researchers and their publications. We find males are more productive in terms of quantity of publications, but the effect of gender in terms of research impact is mixed for individual groups of subject areas. For all fields of science, holding a PhD from abroad increases the chance for a researcher to publish in journals of higher impact. We also find that the more years a researcher takes to finish his or her doctorate, the more likely he or she will publish less thereafter, although in outlets of higher impact. The data also support the existence of an inverted U-shaped function relating research age and productivity.
Scientific impact—that is the Q
Are there quantifiable patterns behind a successful scientific career? Sinatra et al. analyzed the publications of 2887 physicists, as well as data on scientists publishing in a variety of fields. When productivity (which is usually greatest early in the scientist's professional life) is accounted for, the paper with the greatest impact occurs randomly in a scientist's career. However, the process of generating a high-impact paper is not an entirely random one. The authors developed a quantitative model of impact, based on an element of randomness, productivity, and a factor Q that is particular to each scientist and remains constant during the scientist's career.
Science , this issue p. 596
The number of scientific publications by Iranian academics has grown considerably in the last decade. In the current study, scientometric methods were used to analyse the scientific publications-journal articles and conference papers-of Iranian researchers in the management-operations and economics-business fields, indexed in the Web of Science, from 1990 to 2010. The aim of the study was to measure institutional collaboration, the quality of journals, and the role of highly productive authors in highly cited articles in the aforementioned fields. Results showed that the intra-institutional rate of collaboration was greater than interinstitutional or international collaboration. Results also indicated that more than half of Iranian journal articles in the fields of interest were published in high-quality journals. Finally, a comparison of highly cited papers and highly productive authors revealed that highly productive authors did not make significant contributions to the top articles of the fields.
Abstract
The majority of academic papers are scarcely cited while a few others are highly cited. A large number of studies indicate that there are many factors influencing the number of citations. An actual review is missing that provides a comprehensive review of the factors predicting the frequency of citations. In this review, we performed a search in WoS, Scopus, PubMed and Medline to retrieve relevant papers. In overall, 2087 papers were retrieved among which 198 relevant papers were included in the study. Three general categories with twenty eight factors were identified to be related to the number of citations: Category one: “paper related factors”: quality of paper; novelty and interest of subject; characteristics of fields and study topics; methodology; document type; study design; characteristics of results and discussion; use of figures and appendix in papers; characteristics of the titles and abstracts; characteristics of references; length of paper; age of paper; early citation and speed of citation; accessibility and visibility of papers. Category two: “journal related factors”: journal impact factor; language of journal; scope of journal; form of publication. Category three: “author(s) related factors”: number of authors; author’s reputation; author’s academic rank; self-citations; international and national collaboration of authors; authors’ country; gender, age and race of authors; author’s productivity; organizational features; and funding. Probably some factors such as the quality of the paper, journal impact factor, number of authors, visibility and international cooperation are stronger predictors for citations, than authors’ gender, age and race; characteristics of results and discussion and so on.
This study aims to identify and analyse the characteristics of highly cited articles published in the Information Science and Library Science category in the Social Science Citation Index. Articles that have been cited at least 100 times since publication up to the end of 2012 were analysed. We identified 501 highly cited articles published between 1956 and 2009 in 37 journals. MIS Quarterly published 26% of all analysed highly cited articles. The most productive researcher published 11 articles. Six bibliometric indicators were used to evaluate source institutions and countries. The 13 most productive institutions were all located in the USA and Canada. Harvard University in the USA was the most productive institution, ranked number one in the total number of highly cited articles, while the University of Maryland in the USA had the highest publication performance of first and corresponding author articles. Researchers from the USA contributed 67% of highly cited articles.
The study analyses the materials science publications in India for a period of ten years (1999-2008) based on the Scopus database. The objective of the study was to perform a scientometric analysis of all materials science research publications by Indian scientists. The parameters studied include growth of publications and citations, relative growth rate and doubling time, domain-wise distribution of publications and citations, activity index, Citation Index, national and international collaboration, highly productive institutions, highly productive authors, highly preferred journals and highly cited publications. A total of 14849 publications were published by the Indian scientists in materials science during 1999-2008 which received 94610 citations. The average number of publications per year was 1484.90. The average number of citations per publication was 6.37. The highest number of publications 1953 was published in 2007. The highest number of citations 12901 was received in 2003. There were 11961 (80.55%) national collaborative publications and 2190 (14.75%) international collaborative publications by the scientists from India with 59 countries. Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur topped the list with 1243 publications which received 7985 citations, followed by Indian Institute of Science-Bengaluru with 1052 publications and 8816 citations, and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre-Mumbai with 818 publications and 4252 citations.
Many studies have found that co-authored research is more highly cited than single author research. This finding is policy relevant as it indicates that encouraging co-authored research will tend to maximise citation impact. Nevertheless, whilst the citation impact of research increase as the number of authors increases in the sciences, the extent to which this occurs in the social sciences is unknown. In response, this study investigates the average citation level of articles with one to four authors published in 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007 in 19 social science disciplines. The results suggest that whilst having at least two authors gives a substantial citation impact advantage in all social science disciplines, additional authors are beneficial in some disciplines but not in others.
This paper discusses criteria for evaluation of faculty in general as they apply specifically to faculty of schools of library and information science. The criteria considered are those identified in The CALL, the procedures used in faculty personnel actions at University of California, Los Angeles. Among those criteria, that relating to "research and creative work" requires special attention. To provide a benchmark for evaluation, the paper analyzes citation statistics for a total of 411 tenured level faculty (i.e., professor and associate professor ranks) at 60 schools of library and information science with M.L.S. degree programs accredited by the American Library Association. It identifies 40 faculty (about 10%) with the highest frequency of citation. It provides analyses of the distributions by several subject specialties and for various time periods. It calculates several measures for the ranking of schools in terms of frequency of publication and citation of faculty. It analyzes the relations to Ph.D. degree programs. It compares the resulting rankings with the several subjective rankings of schools, based on surveys of individuals. In making the comparison, it was hypothesized that the "top ten" as identified by Blau and Margulies (1974) 1 would overlap other schools, but that there would be distinct subgroups that did not overlap (those in the group of the "Blau and Margulies" ten and those in the other schools that are significantly below the range of overlap). Such turned out to be the case. The faculty were those identified in the Journal ofEducation for Librarianship, Directory Issue, as appointed to their respective schools during academic year 1979-80. The data are derived from the citation indexes and source indexes as reported in Social Science Citation Index over the 15-year period 1965-80.
This stated preference study approached the issue on sub-categorization of the information science–library science (IS–LS) journals listed in the Journal Citation Report (JCR) 2011. To investigate this, 243 active authors/editors publishing in this field were requested to indicate their preferred category to 83 journal titles listed in JCR 2011 from four options: information science (IS), library science (LS), information systems (ISys) and do not know/undecided. Based on the popularity count, respondents assigned 39 titles to LS, 23 titles to IS and 21 titles to ISys. Twenty-five titles received high “do-not-know” counts—these are titles in non-English languages, information management and publishing sub-fields. Only one title in LS was grouped in the highest quartile by impact factor, compared to 8 titles in IS and 11 in ISys. This indicates that LS journals are hardly represented among the top 25 % of the impact factor distribution of JCR’s ranked IS–LS journals. Respondents show concern about the “fit” of information systems journals in the IS–LS category.
This study explores the factors influencing citations to Internet studies by assessing the relative explanatory power of three perspectives: normative theory, the social constructivist approach, and a natural growth mechanism. Using data on 7,700+ articles of Internet studies published in 100+ Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)-listed journals in 2000–2009, the study adopted a multilevel model to disentangle the impact between article- and journal-level factors on citations. This research strategy resulted in a number of both expected and surprising findings. The primary determinants for citations are found to be journal-level factors, accounting for 14% of the variances in citations of Internet studies. The impact of some, if not all, article-level factors on citations are moderated by journal-level factors. Internet studies, like studies in other areas (e.g., management, demography, and ecology), are cited more for rhetorical purposes, as suggested by the social constructivist approach, rather than as a form of reward, as argued by normative theory. The impact of time on citations varies across journals, which creates a growing “citation gap” for Internet studies published in journals with different characteristics.
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the international collaboration of global library and information science (LIS), the present paper investigated the trends, networks as well as core groups of the international collaboration in LIS at the country and institution levels by combining bibliometric analysis and social network analysis. In this study, a total of 8,570 papers from 15 core journals during the period of 2000–2011 were collected. The results indicate that 66 % of papers are joint publications in global LIS. Two-country papers and two-institution papers are the two primary collaboration patterns in the international collaboration at the country and institution levels respectively. Through social network analysis, it is observed that the country collaboration network has reached a certain degree of maturity over the past 12 years in global LIS, while the international institution collaboration network has not yet matured and is made up of dozens of components. In the country collaboration network, the position of USA and UK are remarkable. Although the USA is positioned at the center of the network, institutions located in the USA are more inclined to have collaboration within domestic, suggesting institutions in the USA have a low tendency towards international collaboration. In the institution collaboration network, it is found that two groups located in the USA and Europe respectively. The results of the institution collaboration network also reveal that Katholieke Univ Leuven has not only the largest collaboration breadth, but also strong capabilities to control communication within the international institution collaboration network.
An analysis of 766 publications by prolific authors in scientific journals indicate that prolific authors produce about 25% of the total scientific output in periodical literature in laser science and technology. The average productivity per author is about 2. Prolific authors from most of the countries belonged either to academic or research institutions except in USA and Japan. Prolific authors on average made more impact than non-prolific authors. However the situation varied from country to country.
This study employs the method of direct citation to analyze and compare the interdisciplinary characteristics of the two disciplines of library science and information science during the period of 1978–2007. Based on the research generated by five library science journals and five information science journals, library science researchers tend to cite publications from library and information science (LIS), education, business/management, sociology, and psychology, while researchers of information science tend to cite more publications from LIS, general science, computer science, technology, and medicine. This means that the disciplines with larger contributions to library science are almost entirely different from those contributing to information science. In addition, researchers of library science frequently cite publications from LIS; the rate is as high as 65.61%, which is much higher than the rate for information science, 49.50%. However, a decreasing trend in the percentage of LIS in library science indicates that library science researchers tend to cite more publications from non-LIS disciplines. A rising trend in the proportion of references to education sources is reported for library science articles, while a rising trend in the proportion of references to computer science sources has been found for information science articles. In addition, this study applies an interdisciplinary indicator, Brillouin’s Index, to measurement of the degree of interdisciplinarity. The results confirm that the trend toward interdisciplinarity in both information science and library science has risen over the years, although the degree of interdisciplinarity in information science is higher than that in library science.
The present study is a replication of the paper written by Robert Hayes in 1983. Both studies employ the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) to obtain indications of library and information science publishing and citation activity. The present study extends the examination of publishing and citation for the period 1981-92, although it includes some differences from Hayes's study. For instance, while Hayes examined only associate and full professors, all ranks are included here. This project examines, as did the Hayes paper, both individual productivity (as defined by numbers of papers published and indexed in SSCI and numbers of citations received) and productivity by school. The rankings are presented and per capita publications and citations are calculated. Comparison within the twelve-year period and with the Hayes paper are offered in the text wherever possible.
This study examines possible influences on the level of collaboration in published research by the most productive authors of accounting literature. Understanding the collaboration tendencies of these authors should benefit early-career-stage accounting faculty. Seven factors are examined for the publications of 93 of the most productive accounting authors. These productive authors are found to include fewer coauthors on their publications early in their careers. The number of coauthors increases through their first 16 to 17 years and then decreases through the remainder of their careers. The results also indicate that productive accounting researchers include a greater number of coauthors on more recently published articles and on longer articles. Fewer coauthors are included when a productive author is affiliated with a “top-10” university or on articles published in highly ranked accounting journals. Lastly, the results show that prolific authors seek out coauthorship throughout their careers and usually include one or more coauthors on their publications. Implications from these results and specific suggestions for accounting faculty are discussed.
This study investigates a range of metrics available when a nanoscience and nanotechnology article is published to see which metrics correlate more with the number of citations to the article. It also introduces the degree of internationality of journals and references as new metrics for this purpose. The journal impact factor; the impact of references; the internationality of authors, journals, and references; and the number of authors, institutions, and references were all calculated for papers published in nanoscience and nanotechnology journals in the Web of Science from 2007 to 2009. Using a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model on the data set, the impact factor of the publishing journal and the citation impact of the cited references were found to be the most effective determinants of citation counts in all four time periods. In the entire 2007 to 2009 period, apart from journal internationality and author numbers and internationality, all other predictor variables had significant effects on citation counts.
Purpose - This paper offers a practical insight into the application of Lotka's law of author productivity to the question of how likely it is that an author will return to a particular publisher (rather than make another contribution to a subject literature, which is its usual application). The question of author loyalty, especially repeat visits, is one which is of great interest to publishers. Design/methodology/approach - This paper shows, possibly for the first time, that the author productivity distribution predicted by Lotka's law for subject literatures also holds for publisher aggregates, in this case, all Emerald authors. Findings - The ideas presented here are speculative and programmatic: they raise questions and provide a robust intellectual framework for further research into the determinants of author loyalty, as seen from the publisher side. Practical implications - The implications for commissioning editors and marketing departments in journal publishing houses are that repeat visiting authors are indeed scarce commodities, not necessarily because of barriers put in their way by publishers, but because research production is very asymmetrically skewed in favour of a small productive elite. Originality/value - By analysing survey data it should be possible, within very broad parameters, to identify clusters of say high, medium and low research activity authors. This would provide insight into potential "hot spots" of future publishing intent and, in the case of dense and overworked research