Personal Research Database

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 89.pdf

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to depict the knowledge array of standards. This is done by identifying and analyzing external effects, specifically spillover effects. The database used is Perinorm. We use a cluster analysis in order to create groups of technology fields for German standards according to the fields of the International Classification of Standards. Methodologically, the distances between these objects or clusters are defined by the chosen distance measure, which in turn is determined by the sum of their cross references. The applied joining clustering method uses these distances between the objects and allows the data to be mapped within a two dimensional space. The results of this mapping show the existence of structures within the standards data fitting to the well-known structure of patent spillovers.

Keywords: Analysis, Innovations, Statistical Analysis

? Lariviere, V., Zuccala, A. and Archambault, E. (2008), The declining scientific impact of theses: Implications for electronic thesis and dissertation repositories and graduate studies. Scientometrics, 74 (1), 109-121.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 109.pdf

Abstract: Although the writing of a thesis is a very important step for scientists undertaking a career in research, little information exists on the impact of theses as a source of scientific information. Knowing the impact of theses is relevant not only for students undertaking graduate studies, but also for the building of repositories of electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) and the substantial investment this involves. This paper shows that the impact of theses as information sources has been generally declining over the last century, apart from during the period of the ‘golden years’ of research, 1945 to 1975. There is no evidence of ETDs having a positive impact, on the contrary, since their introduction the impact of theses has actually declined more rapidly. This raises questions about the justification for ETDs and the appropriateness of writing monograph style theses as opposed to publication of a series of peer-reviewed papers as the requirement for fulfilment of graduate studies.

Keywords: Citations, Collections, Doctoral Dissertation, Library, Peer-Reviewed, PhD, Publication, Research, Sciences, Scientific Information, Students, Trends

? Larsen, K. (2008), Knowledge network hubs and measures of research impact, science structure, and publication output in nanostructured solar cell research. Scientometrics, 74 (1), 123-142.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 123.pdf

Abstract: This study on co-authorship networks in the area of nanostructured solar cells aims to contribute to a further understanding of the use of research evaluation measures of science output, impact and structure in an emerging research field. The study incorporates quantitative bibliometric methods of analysis and social network analysis in combination with a qualitative case study research approach. Conclusions drawn from the results emphasise, firstly, the importance of distinguishing between early and later phases of the evolution of a novel research field, and secondly, the application of a systemic view on learning processes and knowledge diffusion in a science-based technology field.

Keywords: Analysis, Bibliometric, Bibliometric Methods, Citations, Co-Authorship, Co-Authorship Networks, Coauthorship, Diffusion, Dynamics, Evaluation, Field, Interdisciplinarity, Nanoscience, Nanotechnology, Network, Network Analysis, Patterns, Publication, Research, Research Collaboration, Research Evaluation, Science, Scientific Literature, Social Network Analysis, Technology

? Lo, S.C. (2008), Patent coupling analysis of primary organizations in genetic engineering research. Scientometrics, 74 (1), 143-151.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 143.pdf

Abstract: The aim of this study is to reveal the possible linkage among the 40 primary organizations in Genetic Engineering Research by taking the Patent Coupling approach. The primary organizations were defined by the productivity and identified by the patent count and Bradford Law. The author analyzed the cited patents of the patents granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 1991 to 2002 to the 40 primary organizations (assignees) in Genetics Engineering Research to establish the correlation. 780 coupling pairs formed by the 40 primary organizations and Coupling Index and Coupling Strength were calculated for each pair and primary organization. Correlation Analysis and Multiple-Dimension Scaling were applied further based on Coupling Index. Technological clusters were found in the results of the analyses.

Keywords: Analysis, Basic Research Literature, Biotechnology, Indicators, Patents, Primary, Research, Science

? Moed, H.F. (2008), UK research assessment exercises: Informed judgments on research quality or quantity? Scientometrics, 74 (1), 153-161.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 153.pdf

Abstract: A longitudinal analysis of UK science covering almost 20 years revealed in the years prior to a Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 1992, 1996 and 2001) three distinct bibliometric patterns, that can be interpreted in terms of scientists’ responses to the principal evaluation criteria applied in a RAE. When in the RAE 1992 total publications counts were requested, UK scientists substantially increased their article production. When a shift in evaluation criteria in the RAE 1996 was announced from ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’, UK authors gradually increased their number of papers in journals with a relatively high citation impact. And during 1997-2000, institutions raised their number of active research staff by stimulating their staff members to collaborate more intensively, or at least to co-author more intensively, although their joint paper productivity did not. This finding suggests that, along the way towards the RAE 2001, evaluated units in a sense shifted back from ‘quality’ to ‘quantity’. The analysis also observed a slight upward trend in overall UK citation impact, corroborating conclusions from an earlier study. The implications of the findings for the use of citation analysis in the RAE are briefly discussed.

Keywords: Analysis, Assessment, Bibliometric, Citation, Citation Analysis, Evaluation, Impact, Journals, Publications, Quality, Research, Research Assessment, Research Quality, Science

? Nederhof, A.J. (2008), Policy impact of bibliometric rankings of research performance of departments and individuals in economics. Scientometrics, 74 (1), 163-174.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 163.pdf

Abstract: This paper examines policy-relevant effects of a yearly public ranking of individual researchers and their institutes in economics by means of their publication output in international top journals. In 1980, a grassroots ranking (‘Top 40’) of researchers in the Netherlands by means of their publications in international top journals started a competition among economists. The objective was to improve economics research in the Netherlands to an internationally competitive level. The ranking lists did stimulate output in prestigious international journals. Netherlands universities tended to perform well compared to universities elsewhere in the EU concerning volume of output in ISI source journals, but their citation impact was average. Limitations of ranking studies and of bibliometric monitoring in the field of economics are discussed.

Keywords: Growth, Growth Rate, h Index, h-Index, Hirsch, Impact, Institutions, Journals, Methodology, Papers, Population, Rank, Ranking, Scientific Institutions, Scientific Production, Size, Universities, Visibility, Work

? Sandström, U. and Hällsten, M. (2008), Persistent nepotism in peer-review. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 175-189.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 175.pdf

Abstract: In a replication of the high-profile contribution by Wenneras and Wold on grant peer-review, we investigate new applications processed by the medical research council in Sweden. Introducing a normalisation method for ranking applications that takes into account the differences between committees, we also use a normalisation of bibliometric measures by field. Finally, we perform a regression analysis with interaction effects. Our results indicate that female principal investigators (PIs) receive a bonus of 10% on scores, in relation to their male colleagues. However, male and female PIs having a reviewer affiliation collect an even higher bonus, approximately 15%. Nepotism seems to be a persistent problem in the Swedish grant peer review system.

Keywords: Affiliation, Analysis, Bibliometric, Gender-Differences, Interaction, Medical, Peer Review, Peer-Review, Ranking, Research, Science, Scientific Productivity, Sex-Differences

? Shelton, R.D. (2008), Relations between national research investment and publication output: Application to an American Paradox. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 191-205.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 191.pdf

Abstract: The term ‘European Paradox’ describes the perceived failure of the EU to capture full benefits of its leadership of science as measured by publications and some other indicators. This paper investigates what might be called the ‘American Paradox,’ the decline in scientific publication share of the U.S. despite world-leading investments in research and development (R&D) - particularly as that decline has accelerated in recent years. A multiple linear regression analysis was made of which inputs to the scientific enterprise are most strongly correlated with the number of scientific papers produced. Research investment was found to be much more significant than labor input, government investment in R&D was much more significant than that by industry, and government non-defense investment was somewhat more significant than its defense investment. Since the EU actually leads the U.S. in this key component, this could account for gradual loss of U.S. paper share and EU assumption of leadership of scientific publication in the mid-1990s. More recently the loss of U.S. share has accelerated, and three approaches analyzed this phenomenon: (1) A companion paper shows that the SCI database has not significantly changed to be less favorable to the U.S., thus the decline is real and is not an artifact of the measurement methods. (2) Budgets of individual U.S. research agencies were correlated with overall paper production and with papers in their disciplines. Funding for the U.S. government civilian, non-healthcare sector was flat in the last ten years, resulting in declining share of papers. Funding for its healthcare sector sharply increased, but there were few additional U.S. healthcare papers. While this inefficiency contributes to loss of U.S. share, it is merely a specific example of the general syndrome that increased American investments have not produced increased publication output. (3) In fact the decline in publication share appears to be due to rapidly increasing R&D investments by China, Taiwan, S. Korea, and Singapore. A model shows that in recent years it is a country’s share of world investment that is most predictive of its publication share. While the U.S. has increased its huge R&D investment, its investment share still declined because of even more rapidly increasing investments by these Asian countries. This has likely led to their sharply increased share of scientific publication, which must result in declines of shars of others - the U.S. and more recently, the EU.

Keywords: Analysis, China, Development, EU, Indicators, Leadership, Measurement, Publication, Publications, Research, Research and Development, SCI, Science

? Small, H., Kushmerick, A. and Benson, D. (2008), Scientists’ perceptions of the social and political implications of their research. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 207-221.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 207.pdf

Abstract: We explore an empirical approach to studying the social and political implications of science by gathering scientists’ perceptions of the social impacts of their research. It was found that 78 percent of surveyed scientists from a variety of fields responding to a survey indicated that the research performed in connection with a recent highly cited paper had such implications. Health related implications were the most common, but other types of implications encountered were technological spin-offs, public understanding, economic and policy benefits. Surprisingly many scientists considered the advancement of science itself to be a social implication of their research. The relations of these implications to the field and topics of research are examined, and a mapping of implications gives an overview of the major dimensions of the social impacts of science.

Keywords: Research, Science

? Thijs, B. and Glänzel, W. (2008), A structural analysis of publication profiles for the classification of European research institutes. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 223-236.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 223.pdf

Abstract: In the present study we propose a solution for a common problem in benchmarking tasks at institutional level. The usage of bibliometric indicators, even after standardisation, cannot disguise that comparing institutes remains often like comparing apples with pears. We developed a model to assign institutes to one of 8 different groups based on their research profile. Each group has a different focus: 1. Biology, 2. Agricultural Sciences, 3. Multidisciplinary, 4. Geo & Space Sciences, 5. Technical and natural Sciences, 6. Chemistry, 7. General and Research Medicine, 8. Specialised Medicine. Two applications of this methodology are described. In the first application we compare the composition of clusters at national level with the national research profiles. This gives a deeper insight in the national research landscape. In a second application we look at the dynamics of institutes by comparing their subject clustering at two different points in time.

Keywords: Analysis, Bibliometric, Bibliometric Indicators, Indicators, Publication, Research, Science, Solution

? Vinkler, P. (2008), Correlation between the structure of scientific research, scientometric indicators and GDP in EU and non-EU countries. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 237-254.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 237.pdf

Abstract: Significant discrepancies were found in the ratio and relative impact of the journal papers of several scientific fields of some Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries compared to the European Community member states, the US and Japan (EUJ countries). A new indicator, characterizing the Mean Structural Difference of scientific fields between countries has been introduced and calculated for CEE countries. For EUJ countries correlation between the GDP and number of publications of a given year proved to be non-significant. Longitudinal studies showed, however, significant correlations between the yearly values of GDP and number of papers published. Studying data referring to consecutive time periods revealed that there is no direct relationship between the GDP and information production of countries. It may be assumed that grants for R&D do not actually depend on real needs, but the fact is that rich countries can afford to spend more whilst poor countries only less money on scientific research.

Keywords: EU, Impact, Indicators, Information, Journal, Nations, Publications, Research, Science, Scientific Research, Scientometric, US

? Bar-Ilan, J. (2008), Which h-index? - A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 257-271.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 257.pdf

Abstract: This paper compares the h-indices of a list of highly-cited Israeli researchers based on citations counts retrieved from the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar respectively. In several case the results obtained through Google Scholar are considerably different from the results based on the Web of Science and Scopus. Data cleansing is discussed extensively.

Keywords: Citation Analysis, Citations, Comparison, h Index, h-Index, Journals, Numbers, Scientists, Scopus, Search, Web of Science

? Kousha, K. and Thelwall, M. (2008), Sources of Google Scholar citations outside the Science Citation Index: A comparison between four science disciplines. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 273-294.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 273.pdf

Abstract: For practical reasons, bibliographic databases can only contain a subset of the scientific literature. The ISI citation databases are designed to cover the highest impact scientific research journals as well as a few other sources chosen by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Google Scholar also contains citation information, but includes a less quality controlled collection of publications from different types of web documents. We define Google Scholar unique citations as those retrieved by Google Scholar which are not in the ISI database. We took a sample of 882 articles from 39 open access ISI-indexed journals in 2001 from biology, chemistry, physics and computing and classified the type, language, publication year and accessibility of the Google Scholar unique citing sources. The majority of Google Scholar unique citations (70%) were from full-text sources and there were large disciplinary differences between types of citing documents, suggesting that a wide range of non-ISI citing sources, especially from non-journal documents, are accessible by Google Scholar. This might be considered to be an advantage of Google Scholar, since it could be useful for citation tracking in a wider range of open access scholarly documents and to give a broader type of citation impact. An important corollary from our study is that Google Scholar’s wider coverage of Open Access (OA) web documents is likely to give a boost to the impact of OA research and the OA movement.

Keywords: Articles, Biology, Chemistry, Citation, Citations, Communication, Comparison, Impact Factors, Information, Institute for Scientific Information, ISI, Journal Web Sites, Journals, Library, Links, Literature, Motivations, Open Access, Publication, Publications, Quality, Research, Research Journals, Science, Science Citation Index, Scientific Research, Web

? Ortega, J.L., Aguillo, I., Cothey, V. and Scharnhorst, A. (2008), Maps of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area - an exploration of visual web indicators. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 295-308.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 295.pdf

Abstract: This paper shows maps of the web presence of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) on the level of universities using hyperlinks and analyses the topology of the European academic network. Its purpose is to combine methods from Social Network Analysis (SNA) and cybermetric techniques in order to ask for tendencies of integration of the European universities visible in their web presence and the role of different universities in the process of the emergence of an European Research Area. We find as a main result that the European network is set up by the aggregation of well-defined national networks, whereby the German and British networks are dominant. The national networks are connected to each other through outstanding national universities in each country.

Keywords: Collaboration, Graph Structure, Indicators, Network, Network Structure, Science, Space, Universities, Web, World-Wide-Web

? Smith, A.G. (2008), Benchmarking Google Scholar with the New Zealand PBRF research assessment exercise. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 309-316.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 309.pdf

Abstract: Google Scholar was used to generate citation counts to the web-based research output of New Zealand Universities. Total citations and hits from Google Scholar correlated with the research output as measured by the official New Zealand Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) exercise. The article discusses the use of Google Scholar as a cybermetric tool and methodology issues in obtaining citation counts for institutions. Google Scholar is compared with other tools that provide web citation data: Web of Science, SCOPUS, and the Wolverhampton Cybermetric Crawler.

Keywords: Assessment, Citation, Citation Counts, Citations, Research, Research Assessment, Web, Web of Science

? Vaughan, L. and Shaw, D. (2008), A new look at evidence of scholarly citation in citation indexes and from web sources. Scientometrics, 74 (2), 317-330.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 317.pdf

Abstract: A sample of 1,483 publications, representative of the scholarly production of LIS faculty, was searched in Web of Science (WoS), Google, and Google Scholar. The median number of citations found through WoS was zero for all types of publications except book chapters, the median for Google Scholar ranged from 1 for print, subscription journal articles to 3 for books and book chapters. For Google the median number of citations ranged from 9 for conference papers to 41 for books. A sample of the web citations was examined and classified as representing intellectual or non-intellectual impact. Almost 92% of the citations identified through Google Scholar represented intellectual impact - primarily citations from journal articles. Bibliographic services (non-intellectual impact) were the largest single contributor of citations identified through Google. Open access journal articles attracted more web citations but the citations to print, subscription journal articles more often represented intellectual impact. In spite of problems with Google Scholar, it has the potential to provide useful data for research evaluation, especially in a field where rapid and fine-grained analysis is desirable.

Keywords: Analysis, Citation, Citation Indexes, Citations, Evaluation, Faculty, Google-Scholar, Greater Research Impact, Journal, Journal Articles, Library, LIS, of-Science, Open-Access Articles, Publications, Research, Research Evaluation, Scopus, Web, Web of Science

? Miguel, S., Moya-Anegón, F. and Herrero-Solana, V. (2008), New approach to institutional domain analysis: Multilevel research fronts structure. Scientometrics, 74 (3), 331-344.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 331.pdf

Abstract: The intellectual structure and main research fronts of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum of the National University of La Plata, Argentina is studied, based on the cocitation analysis of subject categories, journals and authors of their scientific publications collected in the Science Citation index, CD-ROM version, for the period 1991-2000. The objective of this study is to test the utility of those techniques to explore and to visualize the intellectual structure and research fronts of multidisciplinary institutional domains. Special emphasis is laid on the identification of multilevel structures, by means of arrangements of subject categories cocitation analysis and journal cocitation analysis.

Keywords: Analysis, Argentina, Author Cocitation Analysis, Cocitation, Decision-Support Systems, Domain Analysis, Identification, Intellectual Structure, Journal, Journals, Multidisciplinary, Publications, Research, Research Fronts, Science, Scientific Publications, Semiconductor Literature, Structure, Techniques, Utility

? Yoon, Y.H. and Young, K.S. (2008), Correlation analysis between university research competitiveness and library’s scholarly information in OECD nations and Korea. Scientometrics, 74 (3), 345-360.

Full Text: 2008\Scientometrics74, 345.pdf

Abstract: Beginning from the premise that research competitiveness at the university level is the starting point for national competitiveness as a whole, this paper analyzes the correlation between university research-related performance and the scholarly or academic resources available through a country’s library system. An analysis of this correlation from two different angles - a macroscopic approach considering universities in OECD nations and a microscopic approach focusing only upon universities in Korea - found that there is indeed a significant correlation between university research performance and the scholarly information available at libraries. A regression analysis of the two approaches also found that the more journal titles subscribed to by university libraries and the higher their budget for materials, the greater the contribution university libraries make to university research competitiveness in Korea as well as other OECD countries. In this light, in order for Korea to reach a level of research competitiveness comparable to other OECD members, policies need to be created that will effectively increase the number of journals subscribed to by university libraries.

Keywords: Analysis, Budget, Higher-Education, Information, Journal, Journals, Korea, Nations, Productivity, Regression Analysis, Research, Research Performance, Universities, University

? Schmoch, U. and Schubert, T. (2008), Are international co-publications an indicator for quality of scientific research? Scientometrics,