A bibliometric study of taxonomic botany

AIMS — The aims were: to investigate the citation-patterns of monograph books in taxonomic botany (looking mainly at publications and publishers, and the age of current literature); to provide information for collections management and reference services in libraries that hold botany materials. METHOD — 454 citations were collected from 47 botanical monographs; Impact Factors of journals based on these citations were calculated and compared with conventional Impact Factors from ISI Web of Science; age-distributions of citations were drawn up; other analyses were also carried out. RESULTS — A small Bradfordian core of highly-cited journals was established; monograph Impact Factors were not useable; the important publishers of monograph books were identified; monographs were more often cited than journal articles; older materials were more important than in other sciences; monographs were used by botanists for current awareness purposes; coverage of botanical journals by citation indexes was inadequate. CONCLUSIONS — Librarians should: note the core botanical journals identified here; note the importance of British journals to British botanists; continue to acquire botanical monographs and to retain older materials; display new botanical monographs prominently and include them in current awareness services. PROBLEMS — The small size of the sample means that results were merely indicative. Further studies should: take larger samples; look at citations in journal articles, theses, conference proceedings, etc.; look at citations made over several years. ORIGINALITY — The bibliometrics of taxonomic botany have previously been little studied; likewise citations from monographs. Some of the bibliometric methods of J. M. Cullars were applied to botanical literature

A bibliometric study of taxonomic botany

PURPOSE – The aims of this paper are to: investigate the citation-patterns of monograph books in taxonomic botany (looking mainly at publications and publishers, and the age of current literature); and make recommendations for collections management and reference services in libraries that hold botany materials. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – In total, 454 citations were collected at random from 47 botanical monographs published in 2009; a Bradford distribution of cited journals was produced; age-distributions of citations were devised; and other bibliographical characteristics were tabulated. FINDINGS – A small Bradfordian core of highly-cited journals and important publishers of monograph books were identified; monographs are cited more often than journal articles; older materials are more important than in other sciences; monographs are used by botanists for current awareness purposes; coverage of botanical journals by citation indexes is poor. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS – The small size of the sample means that results were indicative. Further studies could: take larger samples; look at citations in journal articles, theses, conference proceeding; look at citations made over several years. PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS – Librarians should: note the core botanical journals identified here; continue to acquire botanical monographs and to retain older materials; display new botanical monographs prominently and include them in current awareness services. ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The bibliometrics of taxonomic botany have previously been little studied; likewise citations from monographs. This paper fills some of the gaps. Some of the bibliometric methods of J. M. Cullars were applied to botanical literature

A bibliometric study of taxonomic botany

This article has been published in the Journal of Documentation [© Emerald] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JD-09-2012-0121PURPOSE – The aims of this paper are to: investigate the citation-patterns of monograph books in taxonomic botany (looking mainly at publications and publishers, and the age of current literature); and make recommendations for collections management and reference services in libraries that hold botany materials. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – In total, 454 citations were collected at random from 47 botanical monographs published in 2009; a Bradford distribution of cited journals was produced; age-distributions of citations were devised; and other bibliographical characteristics were tabulated. FINDINGS – A small Bradfordian core of highly-cited journals and important publishers of monograph books were identified; monographs are cited more often than journal articles; older materials are more important than in other sciences; monographs are used by botanists for current awareness purposes; coverage of botanical journals by citation indexes is poor. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS – The small size of the sample means that results were indicative. Further studies could: take larger samples; look at citations in journal articles, theses, conference proceeding; look at citations made over several years. PRACTICAL LIMITATIONS – Librarians should: note the core botanical journals identified here; continue to acquire botanical monographs and to retain older materials; display new botanical monographs prominently and include them in current awareness services. ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The bibliometrics of taxonomic botany have previously been little studied; likewise citations from monographs. This paper fills some of the gaps. Some of the bibliometric methods of J. M. Cullars were applied to botanical literature

Revisiting De Solla Price: growth dynamics studies of various subjects over last one hundred years

The stalwart historian of science, Derek J. De Solla Price delivered a series of lectures at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1962, which was dedicated to discussing science and its interaction with society. The collection of these lectures was published in 1963 as a book entitled Little Science, Big Science. Here, Price empirically established that the initial exponential growth pattern of literature reaches a ceiling after a certain time span, which results a logistic growth pattern. This paper analyses Price's empirical theory on the basis of 198 articles that presented growth of literature of variant subjects published since 1913 to 2018. In all, 214 growth models were reported by the 198 articles that analysed growth of literature of more than 50 subjects. It is found that growth patterns reported by nearly 50% articles followed Price's empirical theory, i.e., exponential and logistic growth pattern while remaining 50% articles followed other growth patterns, viz., power model, linear model, etc. All growth models reported by the 198 articles were broadly categorised into five groups on the basis of statistical characteristics, viz., (exponential + logistic), growing without definite pattern (GWDP), linear, non-linear and decaying models. The null hypothesis formulated states that 214 growth models observed by different subjects described in 198 articles will follow either of the five patterns that will be guided by Bradford's Law of Bibliographic Scattering. The null hypothesis is accepted by Chi-square test. It is inferred that the distribution of different models of growth of literature is guided by Bradford's Law where the core or nucleus zone is occupied by the logistic and exponential model, i.e. Price's empirical model prevails in Bradford's nuclear (core) zone

The Uses of Herbaria in Botanical Research: A Review Based on Evidence From Argentina

Botanists, a section of the broad universe of researchers in Biology, are intensive users of herbaria. Presumably, all botanists use herbaria, with greater or lesser frequency and intensity, in the development of their research. In this article, we will try to prove this statement. For this purpose, an institutional history of Botany and herbaria in Argentina is presented. This study will also show that there are other fields of knowledge in which the herbarium has a role as an input, or data source, for research (e.g. agronomy, ethnobotany, medicine). On the other hand, it will be demonstrated that, in addition to the uses of the herbarium in basic science, this institution has a crucial role in the knowledge and preservation of biodiversity, and in the improvement of species for commercial use.Fil: Lopez, Alicia. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata; ArgentinaFil: Sassone, Agostina Belén. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion. Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Instituto de Botánica Darwinion; Argentin

Publication Productivity Pattern of Malaysian Researchers in Scopus from 1995 to 2015

Aim: This study is to understand and analyze the publication productivity as one of the important scientometric indicators of HEI's performance in Malaysia for duration time of 20 years. Method: This study conducted the scientometric analysis of the research productivity performance of Malaysia's researchers from June 1995 to June 2015 using Scopus database. All type' field in the search box where chosen and the chosen keyword is `Malaysia'. All related papers are extracted, retrieved and compiled into the personal database in Microsoft Excel. Pre-processing task such as data cleaning were done and with total of 290 093 publications records was identified. These publications records included all type of documents such as articles, conference, review paper, book chapter and books. Result: The remarkably numbers of publication growth from 1995 to 2015. There are huge development of research happens in these 20 years in Malaysia with only 1,610 publication in 1995 increased to 180,797 publication in 2015. Subject area of pure science dominated the percentage of publication such as engineering with 15% from total and the small percentage with total of 5% comes from pure science as well which are physic and astronomy. Conclusion: The increase in publication productivity is a sign of good R&D that is actively happened in this country. This has a positive impact towards Malaysia as well as the related institutions in order to introduce and stamp their name to the world. Therefore, the numbers of collaboration with others countries especially with European countries and America is worth to emphasize. Nonetheless, we understand that there are numbers of factors that associated in producing the publication that can be barriers to the authors such as personal factors, environment factors and behavioral factors

Revisiting De Solla Price: growth dynamics studies of various subjects over last one hundred years

17-35The stalwart historian of science, Derek J. De Solla Price delivered a series of lectures at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1962, which was dedicated to discussing science and its interaction with society. The collection of these lectures was published in 1963 as a book entitled Little Science, Big Science. Here, Price empirically established that the initial exponential growth pattern of literature reaches a ceiling after a certain time span, which results a logistic growth pattern. This paper analyses Price's empirical theory on the basis of 198 articles that presented growth of literature of variant subjects published since 1913 to 2018. In all, 214 growth models were reported by the 198 articles that analysed growth of literature of more than 50 subjects. It is found that growth patterns reported by nearly 50% articles followed Price's empirical theory, i.e., exponential and logistic growth pattern while remaining 50% articles followed other growth patterns, viz., power model, linear model, etc. All growth models reported by the 198 articles were broadly categorised into five groups on the basis of statistical characteristics, viz., (exponential + logistic), growing without definite pattern (GWDP), linear, non-linear and decaying models. The null hypothesis formulated states that 214 growth models observed by different subjects described in 198 articles will follow either of the five patterns that will be guided by Bradford's Law of Bibliographic Scattering. The null hypothesis is accepted by Chi-square test. It is inferred that the distribution of different models of growth of literature is guided by Bradford's Law where the core or nucleus zone is occupied by the logistic and exponential model, i.e. Price's empirical model prevails in Bradford's nuclear (core) zone

Development of research trends evolution model for computer science for Malaysian publication

Nowadays, there seem to be research trends done on studies that manipulate publications that utilise the text mining approach. However, most of these studies only investigated the gaps faced by existing research trends models, and the execution of text mining of bibliometric elements and the timeline windows representing the "trends" was not clarified. Thus, this study aimed to develop the conceptual model for research trends in Malaysian publications, specifically, to incorporate the text element of bibliometrics and the execution of timeline windows to identify research trends. In the context of research trends, the evolution or growth of some research area from one period to another is important. This included what has happened, what is currently happening, and predicting potential research trends that will happen in the near future for others to continue the research development. The element in the newly developed model was extracted from the literature review and adapted from one of the selected models. The new model consisted of three stages which is the first stage consisted of three elements - selecting document collection; the second stage was the selection of the bibliometric element; and the third stage was the execution of text mining, co-word analysis from the selected textual bibliometric element, the implementation of two timeline windows (fixed time and sliding time windows-timeline). Also, the execution of the third stage required aid from tools - CiteSpace. The newly developed model was tested, and data were downloaded from two databases, Scopus (10,052 publications) and Web of Science (WoS) (22,088 publications), for a duration between 1995 and 2019. This study identified that the research trend pattern became more active from 2002 onwards. Besides that, the research topic became fresher and more unconventional throughout the timelines. Research topics on artificial intelligence, network communication, and wireless sensor networks are the hottest topics and timeless. Besides that, knowledge management, internet banking, online shopping, and eCommerce were the alternative options for computer science researchers. Each timeline's evolution and blooming shows that researchers are investigating each topic thoroughly. In addition, some small topics do not appear in fixed timeline windows but instead emerge from sliding timeline windows, such as system development, shared banking service, virtual team collaboration, and internet policy. This study also captured the highlighted keywords that could give hints or appear as an initial idea for the next research journey. Experts' evaluation and validation were executed as the interpretation of experimental results require experts' expertise, experience, and views. A semi-structured interview was done with thirteen experts who have remarkable expertise in research and development. From the discussion, most experts agreed that the model could help others identify the research trends and potential new research topics emerging for future research journeys. The newly developed model could be beneficial to those who need hints for their next exploration and help those keen to understand how to execute the text mining within the bibliometric elements