Creativity in science and the link to cited references: Is the creative potential of papers reflected in their cited references?

Several authors have proposed that a large number of unusual combinations of cited references in a paper point to its high creative potential (or novelty). However, it is still not clear whether the number of unusual combinations can really measure the creative potential of papers. The current study addresses this question on the basis of several case studies from the field of scientometrics. We identified some landmark papers in this field. Study subjects were the corresponding authors of these papers. We asked them where the ideas for the papers came from and which role the cited publications played. The results revealed that the creative ideas might not necessarily have been inspired by past publications. The literature seems to be important for the contextualization of the idea in the field of scientometrics. Instead, we found that creative ideas are the result of finding solutions to practical problems, result from discussions with colleagues, and profit from interdisciplinary exchange. The roots of the studied landmark papers are discussed in detail.     

Do Article Influence scores overestimate the citation impact of social science journals in subfields that are related to higher-impact natural science disciplines?

Unlike Impact Factors (IF), Article Influence (AI) scores assign greater weight to citations that appear in highly cited journals. The natural sciences tend to have higher citation rates than the social sciences. We might therefore expect that relative to IF, AI overestimates the citation impact of social science journals in subfields that are related to (and presumably cited in) higher-impact natural science disciplines. This study evaluates that assertion through a set of simple and multiple regressions covering seven social science disciplines: anthropology, communication, economics, education, library and information science, psychology, and sociology. Contrary to expectations, AI underestimates 5IF (five-year Impact Factor) for journals in science-related subfields such as scientific communication, science education, scientometrics, biopsychology, and medical sociology. Journals in these subfields have low AI scores relative to their 5IF values. Moreover, the effect of science-related status is considerable—typically 0.60 5IF units or 0.50 SD. This effect is independent of the more general finding that AI scores underestimate 5IF for higher-impact journals. It is also independent of the very modest curvilinearity in the relationship between AI and 5IF.     

In the right vein? How adequately are departments of information and library studies educating for health care information management and library services in a changing health service?

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