Which are the best performing regions in information science in terms of highly cited papers? Some improvements of our previous mapping approaches

Bornmann and Leydesdorff (2011) proposed methods based on Web of Science data to identify field-specific excellence in cities where highly cited papers were published more frequently than can be expected. Top performers in output are cities in which authors are located who publish a number of highly cited papers that is statistically significantly higher than can be expected for these cities. Using papers published between 1989 and 2009 in information science improvements to the methods of Bornmann and Leydesdorff (2011) are presented and an alternative mapping approach based on the Integrated Impact Indicator (I3) is introduced here. The I3 indicator was developed by Leydesdorff and Bornmann (2011b).     

Including cited non-source items in a large-scale map of science: What difference does it make?

Cited non-source documents such as articles from regional journals, conference papers, books and book chapters, working papers and reports have begun to attract more attention in the literature. Most of this attention has been directed at understanding the effects of including non-source items in research evaluation. In contrast, little work has been done to examine the effects of including non-source items on science maps and on the structure of science as reflected by those maps. In this study we compare two direct citation maps of a 16-year set of Scopus documents – one that includes only source documents, and one that includes non-source documents along with the source documents. In addition to more than doubling the contents of the map, from 19 M to 43 M documents, the inclusion of non-source items strongly augments the social sciences relative to the natural sciences and medicine and makes their position in the map more central. Books are also found to play a significant role in the map, and are much more highly cited on average than articles.     

How to detect the sleeping beauty papers and princes in technology considering indirect citations?

In science-technology research, papers and patents are used to represent science and technology, respectively. Detecting sleeping beauty papers and their princes in technology (patent field) could uncover dynamic knowledge contributions from science (paper field) to technology (patent field). However, previous studies have mainly focused on sleeping beauty in science. Some studies have examined SB patents in technology, but SB papers in patents are rarely studied and need to be further discussed. In addition, knowledge could flow along citations. Thus, if one paper is cited by one patent's reference (indirect citation), it also contributes to the patent, even though the patent does not directly cite it. At the same time, indirect citations are rarely discussed in sleeping beauty studies. This could lead to a loss of significant information. Therefore, to reveal the dynamic knowledge contribution from science to technology considering indirect citations, this study proposed a new method of mining sleeping beauty papers in technology and their princes. The lithium-ion battery domain is selected as a case study. The findings are as follows: (1) Most papers do not contribute knowledge to technology continuously, even when considering indirect citations, and the time-varying knowledge contribution strength changes significantly overtime. (2) The knowledge contribution strength with a time delay of more than 11 years occupies 80% of the total knowledge contribution strength. It is suggested that the window period of paper publication evaluation be extended. (3) 22 sleeping beauty papers in technology are detected. Nine papers are among the top 10 regarding the total knowledge contribution strength. (4) The princes of 9 typical sleeping beauty papers in technology are all papers. This implies that the awakening of these papers in technology was all provoked by scientific development.     

A ‘powerful,creative history’: the reticence of women architects to donate their professional records to archival repositories

The article reports the findings from research investigating the impact of international standards for records management. This is a significant issue for the recordkeeping community given the significant resourcing devoted to the development of international standards. Previous attempts to measure impact have met with little success, so this research approached the problem area from a new angle, namely the indirect influence of standards on practice via their use in education and training. Data was collected from a global survey of educators and trainers. Findings demonstrate that the standards are being used extensively at undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as in vocational training. However, a number of barriers to use are identified. The research provides a strong foundation for further investigation of impact and use of the international standards.     

Four pitfalls in normalizing citation indicators: An investigation of ESI’s selection of highly cited papers

InCites Essential Science Indicators is becoming increasingly used to identify top-performing research and evaluate the impact of institutes. Unfortunately, our study shows that ESI indicators, as well as other normalized citation indicators, have the following flaws. First, the publication month and the online-to-print delay affect a paper’s probability of becoming a Highly Cited Paper (HCP). Papers published in the earlier months of the year are more likely to accumulate enough citation counts to rank at the top 1% compared with those published in later months of the year. Papers with longer online-to-print delays have an apparent advantage for being selected as HCPs. Research field normalizations lead to the third pitfall. Different research fields have different citation thresholds for HCPs, making research field classification important for a journal. In addition, the uniform thresholds for both articles and reviews in ESI affect the reliability of HCP selection because, on average, reviews tend to have higher citation rates than articles. ESI’s selection of HCPs provides an intuitive feel for the problems of normalized citation impact indicators, such as those provided in InCites and SciVal.     

Improve medical editors＇ professional qualifies in order to promote the publication of the medical papers

根据中华医学会杂志社多年来的实践与经验,从学科专业知识、科研设计、编辑加工、学习和使用英语能力等方面探讨如何提高医学编辑的专业素质,以促进学术论文的发育和成熟。     

Dimensions: A competitor to Scopus and the Web of Science?

Dimensions is a partly free scholarly database launched by Digital Science in January 2018. Dimensions includes journal articles and citation counts, making it a potential new source of impact data. This article explores the value of Dimensions from an impact assessment perspective with an examination of Food Science research 2008–2018 and a random sample of 10,000 Scopus articles from 2012. The results include high correlations between citation counts from Scopus and Dimensions (0.96 by narrow field in 2012) as well as similar average counts. Almost all Scopus articles with DOIs were found in Dimensions (97% in 2012). Thus, the scholarly database component of Dimensions seems to be a plausible alternative to Scopus and the Web of Science for general citation analyses and for citation data in support of some types of research evaluations.     

Perceptions of the Future of Cataloging: Is the Sky Really Falling?

Cataloging procedures have evolved in many academic research libraries over the past 10 years. Some predicted trends—outsourcing, original cataloging by paraprofessionals, more digital material—have been borne out. Others, such as a decline in the amount of material to catalog or in the number of professional catalogers, have not. Changes have been mostly procedural and have not affected the catalog itself. Recently, however, the emergence of powerful Internet search engines has allowed researchers to bypass the catalog. This has led some to question the wisdom of continuing it and others to vigorously defend current practice. In 2005–2007 this debate became especially heated, but a consensus appears to be emerging that although the character of the professional cataloger's job will continue to evolve over the next 5 to 10 years there will not be a revolution. The cataloger's basic skills will still be needed and the fundamental nature of cataloging will remain much as we know it.     

An empirical investigation of the tribes and their territories: Are research specialisms rural and urban?

We propose an operationalization of the rural and urban analogy introduced in Becher and Trowler (2001). According to them, a specialism is rural if it is organized into many, smaller topics of research, with higher author mobility among them, lower rate of collaboration and productivity, lower competition for resources and citation recognitions compared to an urban specialism. It is assumed that most humanities specialisms are rural while science specialisms are in general urban: we set to test this hypothesis empirically. We first propose an operationalization of the theory in most of its quantifiable aspects. We then consider specialisms from history, literature, computer science, biology, astronomy. Our results show that specialisms in the humanities present a sensibly lower citation and textual connectivity, in agreement with their organization into more, smaller topics per specialism, as suggested by the analogy. We argue that the intellectual organization of rural specialisms might indeed be qualitative different from urban ones, discouraging the straightforward application of citation-based indicators commonly applied to urban specialisms without a dedicated re-design in acknowledgement of these differences.     

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.     

Propaganda and rush Limbaugh: Is the label the last word?

A content analysis measured the performance of much‐labeled talk show host Rush Limbaugh against traditional and modem standards of propaganda. A month of Limbaugh's syndicated radio program was recorded off air. The tapes were randomly sampled for topic segments defined as the units of analysis. Trained coders working in pairs rated each sampled segment on 40 questions, grouped to test seven hypotheses about Rush Limbaugh's performance, and t‐tests were used to test the variance of scores from the neutral median. Although Limbaugh was not found to use the majority of traditional and modem propaganda techniques or to conceal the source and purpose of the ideas he presented, he was found to have a political agenda, to espouse that agenda openly, and to employ a minority of propaganda techniques. The findings support the notion that analysis of the message source, individual techniques of presentation, and the totality of the message may be more important to effective understanding than the assigning of labels.     

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Relations between the UK and Europe in the library world

In this paper I will look at relations in the book world between the UK and the rest of Europe. I will consider the London International Book Fair in its European context and will go on to show some of the impact of the European Union on libraries, publishers and booksellers. I will look to see whether there is any light at the end of The Tunnel.     

The US and UNESCO: Is it time to rejoin?

After a brief analysis of the founding and history of UNESCO, “The US and UNESCO: Is It Time to Rejoin?” examines the political, administrative and budgetary reasons why the United States withdrew from UNESCO in 1984, the several reforms undertaken by Director General Mayor in the last 2 years and whether the changes to date warrant US re-entry.After considering the arguments of both proponents and opponents, the paper sets forth three major criteria for rejoining: (1) budgetary and financial reform of UNESCO; (2) thorough reform of the secretariat; and (3) major programmatic changes with the intention of “returning UNESCO to the original ideals of its Charter”.While giving high marks to the personal integrity and remarkable energy of Director General Mayor, the paper questions whether he can persuade the organization to accept the radical reform he is proposing, noting the negative and even hostile response of the Executive Board and the General Conference to his Mid-term Plan.The paper concludes that it is premature for the US to make any definitive decision at this time, but predicts that the US will rejoin if the organization returns to its roots and concentrates on “practical achieveable projects”, not the “pretentious unrealistic goals” that have too often attracted UNESCO members and management.     

The studio model: Should publishing follow Hollywood’s approach to the creative process?

Publishers have long outsourced many parts of their operations. Should they go the whole way and outsource the whole of the process, becoming more like a Hollywood studio: “a bank with a sales force?” A number of senior publishers surveyed responded to this proposition. Positive and negative aspects of outsourcing can be tested, suggesting considerable benefits possible from increased outsourcing of creative talent.     

Exploring the “awakening effect” in knowledge diffusion: a case study of publications in the library and information science domain

Inspired by “sleeping beauties in science”, we proposed that the awakening effect in knowledge diffusion is ubiquitous, whereas the “prince” paper has the strongest effect. To test this hypothesis, a three-layer super-network model depicting the knowledge diffusion trajectory is designed and the diffusion path of the awakening effect (defined on the basis of influential strength) is simulated. In detail, the model is built based on the citation network and collaboration network of 63785 publications in the library and information science domain. Through meta-paths in this super-network, the influential strength of a paper and the awakening effect from neighboring papers can be quantified into 36 numerical features. By testing the effectiveness of these features in citation counts prediction, we try to prove our hypothesis. Thus an effective predictor in machine learning is trained upon these features. Using this predictor, we showed that most neighboring papers in the super-network had effects on future citation counts. The effectiveness of these features is again demonstrated through experiments on papers with different publication years. We also did a case study on papers that were significantly affected by the awakening effect, and found that the model proposed in this paper can also be used to explain some common phenomena in knowledge diffusion. All results show that the awakening effect could be not only ubiquitous but also quantifiable.