Revealing the scientific comparative advantage of nations: Common and distinctive features

The paper compares the scientific profiles of 199 countries relative to 254 subject categories, based on the impact of knowledge produced in each category, measured by the bibliometric indicator known as Total Fractional Impact (TFI). TFI is calculated on the basis of publications indexed in Web of Science (here over years 2010-2019). The approach taken overcomes some criticalities occurring with indicators previously proposed for the same purpose. With this approach, it is possible to: i) produce, for any country, a scientific specialization profile in correspondence with each subject category; ii) identify distinctive or common characteristics of individual countries or clusters of countries. The approach provides a new tool which may reveal useful for formulation of research policies.     

Do discounted journal access programs help researchers in sub‐Saharan Africa? A bibliometric analysis

Prior research has suggested that providing free and discounted access to the scientific literature to researchers in low‐income countries increases article production and citation. Using traditional bibliometric indicators for institutions in sub‐Saharan Africa, we analyze whether institutional access to TEEAL (a digital collection of journal articles in agriculture and allied subjects) increases: (i) article production; (ii) reference length; and (iii) number of citations to journals included in the TEEAL collection. Our analysis is based on nearly 20,000 articles – containing half a million references – published between 1988 and 2009 at 70 institutions in 11 African countries. We report that access to TEEAL does not appear to result in higher article production, although it does lead to longer reference lists (an additional 2.6 references per paper) and a greater frequency of citations to TEEAL journals (an additional 0.4 references per paper), compared to non‐subscribing institutions. We discuss how traditional bibliometric indicators may not provide a full picture of the effectiveness of free and discounted literature programs.     

科学传播十载,研究成果几何:文献计量学视角的动态解析

科学传播是共享科学技术研究和开发的相关信息的人类传播活动,可促进科学共同体与公众的沟通,参与并提高公民科学素质的研究和实践领域。在新冠疫情的背景下,其重要性和研究价值愈发凸显。为了梳理近十年来国内外科学传播发展的状况,跟踪该领域前沿研究进展,对比国内外研究之差异和差距,本文借助文献计量学方法、共词网络分析和知识图谱等手段,对科学传播领域的研究论文发表情况进行总结,并从研究机构、学术期刊、作者、国家和地区等不同维度对科学传播的学科建制发展进行深入剖析。最后,通过共词网络分析,本文对此领域的研究内容和主要议题进行分析和可视化呈现,以期为科学传播领域的研究者、实践者乃至参与其中的公众提供参考和启发。     

Universality of scholarly impact metrics

Given the growing use of impact metrics in the evaluation of scholars, journals, academic institutions, and even countries, there is a critical need for means to compare scientific impact across disciplinary boundaries. Unfortunately, citation-based metrics are strongly biased by diverse field sizes and publication and citation practices. As a result, we have witnessed an explosion in the number of newly proposed metrics that claim to be “universal.” However, there is currently no way to objectively assess whether a normalized metric can actually compensate for disciplinary bias. We introduce a new method to assess the universality of any scholarly impact metric, and apply it to evaluate a number of established metrics. We also define a very simple new metric h_s, which proves to be universal, thus allowing to compare the impact of scholars across scientific disciplines. These results move us closer to a formal methodology in the measure of scholarly impact.     

An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices

This paper analyzes several well-known bibliometric indices using an axiomatic approach. We concentrate on indices aiming at capturing the global impact of a scientific output and do not investigate indices aiming at capturing an average impact. Hence, the indices that we study are designed to evaluate authors or groups of authors but not journals. The bibliometric indices that are studied include classic ones such as the number of highly cited papers as well as more recent ones such as the h-index and the g-index. We give conditions that characterize these indices, up to the multiplication by a positive constant. We also study the bibliometric rankings that are induced by these indices. Hence, we provide a general framework for the comparison of bibliometric rankings and indices.     

Researchers’ Mobility,Productivity and Impact: Case of Top Producing Authors in Seven Disciplines

The purpose of this study was to examine whether scientific mobility, either between countries or between affiliations has an effect on researchers’ productivity and impact. In order to investigate this issue, we examined the relationships between the number of institutional affiliations and countries of the top 100 authors in seven disciplines. The selected authors’ profiles contained the number of affiliations and countries each author is assigned. We studied the number of affiliations and countries and compared them to three bibliometric indicators: the number of publications in international, peer-reviewed journals, h-index and Field Weighted Citations Impact. Our findings show that although there are differences in the relationship between mobility, productivity and impact between disciplines, mobility between at least two affiliations has an overall positive effect on both output and impact while mobility between countries does not. Therefore, in most disciplines positive impact and productivity effects are tracked in affiliation mobility within a single country.     

可视化工具在文献计量分析和科研绩效评价中的应用

随着我国的科技管理部门越来越多地采用文献计量学指标进行科研绩效的量化评价,如何利用文献计量的新指标和新工具更好地为科技管理服务便成为一个值得深入探讨的话题。文章从科研管理人员的视角出发,将文献计量和可视化技术结合在一起,介绍并探讨了一系列文献计量的新方法和新工具。为科研管理人员全面、深入地了解机构科研现状,对比与国际平均基准的差距,洞悉合作模式的发展趋势,以及深入剖析高被引论文的国际影响力和学科渗透影响力提供了全方位的信息和工具支撑。     

Ranking scientific articles based on bibliometric networks with a weighting scheme

As the volume of scientific articles has grown rapidly over the last decades, evaluating their impact becomes critical for tracing valuable and significant research output. Many studies have proposed various ranking methods to estimate the prestige of academic papers using bibliometric methods. However, the weight of the links in bibliometric networks has been rarely considered for article ranking in existing literature. Such incomplete investigation in bibliometric methods could lead to biased ranking results. Therefore, a novel scientific article ranking algorithm, W-Rank, is introduced in this study proposing a weighting scheme. The scheme assigns weight to the links of citation network and authorship network by measuring citation relevance and author contribution. Combining the weighted bibliometric networks and a propagation algorithm, W-Rank is able to obtain article ranking results that are more reasonable than existing PageRank-based methods. Experiments are conducted on both arXiv hep-th and Microsoft Academic Graph datasets to verify the W-Rank and compare it with three renowned article ranking algorithms. Experimental results prove that the proposed weighting scheme assists the W-Rank in obtaining ranking results of higher accuracy and, in certain perspectives, outperforming the other algorithms.     

Comparing journal and paper level classifications of science

The classification of science into disciplines is at the heart of bibliometric analyses. While most classifications systems are implemented at the journal level, their accuracy has been questioned, and paper-level classifications have been considered by many to be more precise. However, few studies investigated the difference between journal and the paper classification systems. This study addresses this gap by comparing the journal- and paper-level classifications for the same set of papers and journals. This isolates the effects of classification precision (i.e., journal- or paper-level) to reveal the extent of paper misclassification. Results show almost half of papers could be misclassified in journal classification systems. Given their importance in the construction and analysis of bibliometric indicators, more attention should be given to the robustness and accuracy of these disciplinary classifications schemes.     

Science indicators and science patterns in Europe

In this communication we perform an analysis of European science, investigating the way countries are joined in clusters according to their similarity. An extremely clear pattern arises, suggesting that geographical and cultural factors strongly influence the scientific fabric of these countries. Although it is seen that one of the major factors behind Science in Europe is, apparently, geographical proximity, bilateral cooperation between countries cannot fully account for the respective similarity. Long-term policies, planning and investment are also visible in the results.     

Ranking dynamics and volatility

Scientific journals are ordered by their impact factor while countries, institutions or researchers can be ranked by their scientific production, impact or by other simple or composite indicators as in the case of university rankings. In this paper, the theoretical framework proposed in Criado, R., Garcia, E., Pedroche, F. & Romance, M. (2013). A new method for comparing rankings through complex networks: Model and analysis of competitiveness of major European soccer leagues. Chaos, 23, 043114 for football competitions is used as a starting point to define a general index describing the dynamics or its opposite, stability, of rankings. Some characteristics to study rankings, ranking dynamics measures and axioms for such indices are presented. Furthermore, the notion of volatility of elements in rankings is introduced. Our study includes rankings with ties, entrants and leavers. Finally, some worked out examples are shown.     

What is in a name? Credit assignment practices in different disciplines

The paper reviews the literature on disciplinary credit assignment practices, and presents the results of a longitudinal study of credit assignment practices in the fields of economics, high energy physics, and information science. The practice of alphabetization of authorship is demonstrated to vary significantly between the fields. A slight increase is found to have taken place in economics during the last 30 years (1978–2007). A substantial decrease is found to have taken place in information science during the same period. High energy physics is found to be characterised by a high and stable share of alphabetized multi-authorships during the investigated period (1990–2007). It is important to be aware of such disciplinary differences when conducting bibliometric analyses.     

Editing organization profiles in SCOPUS and the RSCI: Facilities comparison

This article describes the experience in editing organization profiles in Scopus and in the Science Index for organizations system, which is an add-on to the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI). The basic functionalities of the two systems are analyzed and comparison of the Science Index for organizations with the possibilities of editing an organization profile in Scopus is carried out. An attempt is made to give an objective assessment of the current state of the two systems from the user’s point of view. The conclusion is made that despite the more extensive functionalities of the Science Index for organizations, the feedback system in Scopus is well thought out and provides better control of changes that are requested by organizations. In the system of editing the profile of an organization in the RSCI the functional tools are characterized by a low level of moderation, which has a formal character; therefore, it can be used not only to edit a profile, but to create unreasonable increases in the values of bibliometric indicators.     

The development of a scientometric database for monitoring the publication activities of Russian scientists at the Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia

The existing approaches to the definition of the scientific contributions made by researchers are analyzed. A bibliometric database is developed on the basis of the quantitative analysis of publication activities monitored by the most representative global citation systems, such as the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters, USA), Scopus (Elsevier, the Netherlands), and the Russian Science Citation Index (Scientific Electronic Library, the Russian Federation). The system allows teachers and researchers to consult their scientific publications (contained in Scopus, the WoS, and the RSCI),check citation levels and the h-index, filter data by the date of publication, and access the profiles of other researchers.     

How good is a model based on bibliometric indicators in predicting the final decisions made by peers?

This paper shows how bibliometric models can be used to assist peers in selecting candidates for academic openings.Several studies have demonstrated that a relationship exists between results from peer-review evaluations and results obtained with certain bibliometric indicators. However, very little has been done to analyse the predictive power of models based on bibliometric indicators. Indicators with high predictive power will be seen as good instruments to support peer evaluations. The goal of this study is to assess the predictive power of a model based on bibliometric indicators for the results of academic openings at the level of Associado and Catedrático at Portuguese universities. Our results suggest that the model can predict the results of peer-review at this level with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This predictive power is better when only the scientific performance is assessed by peers.     

A machine learning approach for Arabic text classification using N-gram frequency statistics

In this paper a machine learning approach for classifying Arabic text documents is presented. To handle the high dimensionality of text documents, embeddings are used to map each document (instance) into R (the set of real numbers) representing the tri-gram frequency statistics profiles for a document. Classification is achieved by computing a dissimilarity measure, called the Manhattan distance, between the profile of the instance to be classified and the profiles of all the instances in the training set. The class (category) to which an instance (document) belongs is the one with the least computed Manhattan measure. The Dice similarity measure is used to compare the performance of method. Results show that tri-gram text classification using the Dice measure outperforms classification using the Manhattan measure.     

A systematic empirical comparison of different approaches for normalizing citation impact indicators

We address the question how citation-based bibliometric indicators can best be normalized to ensure fair comparisons between publications from different scientific fields and different years. In a systematic large-scale empirical analysis, we compare a traditional normalization approach based on a field classification system with three source normalization approaches. We pay special attention to the selection of the publications included in the analysis. Publications in national scientific journals, popular scientific magazines, and trade magazines are not included. Unlike earlier studies, we use algorithmically constructed classification systems to evaluate the different normalization approaches. Our analysis shows that a source normalization approach based on the recently introduced idea of fractional citation counting does not perform well. Two other source normalization approaches generally outperform the classification-system-based normalization approach that we study. Our analysis therefore offers considerable support for the use of source-normalized bibliometric indicators.     

Characteristics of the Literature Used by Arab Authors in Library and Information Science: a Bibliometric Study

This paper attempts to shed some light on the scientific communication behavior of Arab authors in library and information science by studying the characteristics of the literature used by these authors. A bibliometric study by way of citation analysis was conducted on the articles published from 1978 to 1988 in Maktabat Al-Idarah, an elite Arab scholarly journal in the field. It was concluded from this study that English literature is the main source of information for Arab authors in library and information science. They rely on English literature that is between 5 and 15 years of age more than on their own literature and use books more than any other form of publication. They cover almost all areas of the field with special emphasis on technical services as represented by cataloging, classification and aquisition, library administration and library education. Local materials published in their own country were also important.     

疑似王重民手札一封考证

王重民自1934年起赴欧美诸国访书多年,为海外汉学文献的研究作出了卓越贡献。文章针对学界认为是王重民在法国期间写给杨东讐的一封书信,使用文献分析法与考据法进行考证,从辨识信札客观文本出发,结合时代背景,参考文献史料,最后考辨出收信人是杨东蓴(莼),而不是杨东讐,信札真正的作者是北京大学历史系教授杨人楩。     

Social media-based sleeping beauties: Defining,identifying and features

The sleeping beauties in science signify a unique knowledge diffusion trajectory created by citation after the publication of scientific literature. However, in social media, scientific knowledge creates a new diffusion trajectory through social media metrics such as View, Save, Discussed, and Recommendations. This study aims to define social media–based sleeping beauties S-SB in science by using social media metrics which we termed as citation-based Sleeping Beauties in science, C-SB. We constructed a quantitative method to identify S-SB and conducted an empirical study of all types of 4019 articles published in PLOS Biology. Comparison of the S-SB and C-SB results revealed that from the perspective of social media metrics, C-SB has become the literature of S-total elements early gradual awakening type, S-total elements delay gradual awakening type, and S-early sudden awakening type. Moreover, the awakening time of C-SB literature under the action of social media metrics was found to be 4–5 years earlier than that under the action of citation-based indicators. Both C-SB and S-SB included significant “Editorial Material,” establishing that “Editorial Material” type literature is noteworthy while promoting the diffusion of scientific knowledge. Overall, this study extends the perspective of sleeping beauties in science.