A Review of Theory and Practice in Scientometrics

Scientometrics is the study of the quantitative aspects of the process of science as a communication system. It is centrally, but not only, concerned with the analysis of citations in the academic literature. In recent years it has come to play a major role in the measurement and evaluation of research performance. In this review we consider: the historical development of scientometrics, sources of citation data, citation metrics and the “laws" of scientometrics, normalisation, journal impact factors and other journal metrics, visualising and mapping science, evaluation and policy, and future developments

Which cities produce excellent papers worldwide more than can be expected? A new mapping approach--using Google Maps--based on statistical significance testing

The methods presented in this paper allow for a statistical analysis revealing centers of excellence around the world using programs that are freely available. Based on Web of Science data, field-specific excellence can be identified in cities where highly-cited papers were published significantly. Compared to the mapping approaches published hitherto, our approach is more analytically oriented by allowing the assessment of an observed number of excellent papers for a city (in the sample) against the expected number. Using this test, the approach cannot only identify the top performers in output but the "true jewels." These are cities locating authors who publish significantly more top cited papers than can be expected. As the examples in this paper show for physics, chemistry, and psychology, these cities do not necessarily have a high output of excellent papers

The Extraction of Community Structures from Publication Networks to Support Ethnographic Observations of Field Differences in Scientific Communication

The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping sub- communities within a research specialty and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we aim to increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set in order to adequately represent a research specialty, and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.Comment: Accepted for publication in JASIS

Understanding the relevance of national culture in international business research: a quantitative analysis

This review is a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the International Business literature whose focus is on national culture. The analysis relies on a broad range of bibliometric techniques as productivity rankings, citation analysis (individual and cumulative), study of collaborative research patterns, and analysis of the knowledge base. It provides insights on (I) faculty and institutional research productivity and performance; (II) articles, institutions, and scholars’ influence in the contents of the field and its research agenda; and (III) national and international collaborative research trends. The study also explores the body of literature that has exerted the greatest impact on the researched set of selected articles.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comparative performance of adult social care research, 1996-2011: a bibliometric assessment

Decision-makers in adult social care are increasingly interested in using evidence from research to support or shape their decisions. The scope and nature of the current landscape of adult social care research (ASCR) needs to be better understood. This paper provides a bibliometric assessment of ASCR outputs from 1996 to 2011. ASCR papers were retrieved using three strategies: from key journals; using keywords and noun phrases; and from additional papers preferentially citing or being cited by other ASCR papers. Overall 195,829 ASCR papers were identified in the bibliographic database Scopus, of which 16% involved at least one author from the UK. The UK output increased 2.45-fold between 1996 and 2011. Among selected countries, those with greater research intensity in ASCR generally had higher citation impact, such as the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands. The top-5 UK institutions in terms of volume of papers in the UK accounted for 26% of total output. We conclude by noting the limitations to bibliometric analysis of ASCR and examine how such analysis can support the strategic development of the field

The Structure and Dynamics of Co-Citation Clusters: A Multiple-Perspective Co-Citation Analysis

A multiple-perspective co-citation analysis method is introduced for characterizing and interpreting the structure and dynamics of co-citation clusters. The method facilitates analytic and sense making tasks by integrating network visualization, spectral clustering, automatic cluster labeling, and text summarization. Co-citation networks are decomposed into co-citation clusters. The interpretation of these clusters is augmented by automatic cluster labeling and summarization. The method focuses on the interrelations between a co-citation cluster's members and their citers. The generic method is applied to a three-part analysis of the field of Information Science as defined by 12 journals published between 1996 and 2008: 1) a comparative author co-citation analysis (ACA), 2) a progressive ACA of a time series of co-citation networks, and 3) a progressive document co-citation analysis (DCA). Results show that the multiple-perspective method increases the interpretability and accountability of both ACA and DCA networks.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, 10 tables. To appear in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technolog

Study on open science: The general state of the play in Open Science principles and practices at European life sciences institutes

Nowadays, open science is a hot topic on all levels and also is one of the priorities of the European Research Area. Components that are commonly associated with open science are open access, open data, open methodology, open source, open peer review, open science policies and citizen science. Open science may a great potential to connect and influence the practices of researchers, funding institutions and the public. In this paper, we evaluate the level of openness based on public surveys at four European life sciences institute