A multi-dimensional analysis of usage counts, Mendeley readership, and citations for journal and conference papers

This study analyzed 16,799 journal papers and 98,773 conference papers published by IEEE Xplore in 2016 to investigate the relationships among usage counts, Mendeley readership, and citations through descriptive, regression, and mediation analyses. Differences in the relationship among these metrics between journal and conference papers are also studied. Results showed that there is no significant difference between journal and conference papers in the distribution patterns and accumulation rates of the three metrics. However, the correlation coefficients of the interrelationships between the three metrics were lower in conference papers compared to journal papers. Secondly, funding, international collaboration, and open access are positively associated with all three metrics, except for the case of funding on the usage metrics of conference papers. Furthermore, early Mendeley readership is a better predictor of citations than early usage counts and performs better for journal papers. Finally, we reveal that early Mendeley readership partially mediates between early usage counts and citation counts in the journal and conference papers. The main difference is that conference papers rely more on the direct effect of early usage counts on citations. This study contributes to expanding the existing knowledge on the relationships among usage counts, Mendeley readership, and citations in journal and conference papers, providing new insights into the relationship between the three metrics through mediation analysis.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

Research co-authorship 1900-2020: Continuous, universal, and ongoing expansion

© [in press] The Authors. Published by MIT Press This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence.Research co-authorship is useful to combine different skillsets, especially for applied problems. Whilst it has increased over the last century, it is unclear whether this increase is universal across academic fields and which fields co-author the most and least. In response, this article assesses changes in the rate of journal article co-authorship 1900-2020 for all 27 Scopus broad fields and all 332 Scopus narrow fields. Whilst all broad fields have experienced reasonably continuous growth in co-authorship, in 2020 there were substantial disciplinary differences, from Arts and Humanities (1.3 authors) to Immunology and Microbiology (6 authors). All 332 Scopus narrow fields also experienced an increase in the average number of authors. Immunology and Classics are extreme Scopus narrow fields, as exemplified by 9.6 authors per Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer article, whilst 93% of Trends in Classics articles were solo in 2020. The reason for this large difference seems to be the need for multiple complementary methods in Immunology, making it fundamentally a team science. Finally, the reasonably steady and universal increases in academic co-authorship over 121 years show no sign of slowing, suggesting that ever expanding teams are a central part of current professional science

An empirical investigation of the associations among usage, scientific collaboration and citation impact

In this study usage counts and times cited from Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) were collected for articles published in 2013 with Belgian, Israeli and Iranian addresses. We investigated the relations among three indicators related to citation impact, usage counts and co-authorship, respectively. In addition, we applied the method of Characteristic Scores and Scales (CSS) to analyse the distributions of citations and usage counts to further test the relation between the usage and citation impact. The results show that citations and usage counts in WoS correlate significantly, especially in the social sciences. However, higher numbers of co-authors are not associated with higher usage counts or citations. Furthermore, the stability of CSS-class distributions substantiates the applicability of CSS in characterising both usage and citation distributions. Distinctly different patterns in citations and usage are observed, but the similarities within citations and usage in these fields are somewhat unexpected.status: publishe

Bibliometric approach to research in entrepreneurship

El emprendedor, genera un creciente interés que se sustenta en los valiosos beneficios económicos y sociales que produce, lo que ha supuesto casi sin excepción una de las principales motivaciones para su estudio. Las publicaciones sobre emprendimiento (entrepreneurship) han experimentado un crecimiento exponencial en los últimos años. El interés por el campo de investigación se encuentra en pleno auge. Progresivamente se ha generado un universo documental cada vez más inalcanzable tanto para investigadores como para responsables público-privados, incrementando la dificultad para interpretar, analizar y comprender aquellos hallazgos relevantes en contraposición de otros de naturaleza más prescindible. En esta tesitura surge la necesidad de plantear una investigación centrada en incluir el punto de vista bibliométrico para sentar las bases científicas de futuras investigaciones. La cuestión central que justifica la tesis es la necesidad de construir una referencia para impulsar el incremento y mejora de la calidad de los estudios bibliométricos sobre emprendimiento. Para ello, se realizan diferentes análisis: en primer lugar se caracteriza una muestra representativa de documentos altamente citados sobre emprendimiento; seguidamente se estudia el potencial que ofrecen métricas alternativas a las citas, vinculadas al consumo de información como posibles predictoras del impacto futuro de esos documentos; en tercer lugar se profundiza en la evolución temática que ha seguido la disciplina a través del análisis de su contenido; finalmente, se recopilan los principales estudios bibliométricos que han analizado la disciplina de manera global con especial atención a sus características técnicas, objetivos, limitaciones y conclusiones. La tesis presenta importantes implicaciones para el futuro, actúa como nexo de unión entre dos conocimientos habitualmente desconectados. Pretende ser una referencia significativa para académicos interesados en el estudio del emprendimiento mediante herramientas bibliométricas. Aporta como principal contribución la incorporación del enfoque bibliométrico a este tipo de investigación. Entre los principales hallazgos se presentan evidencias que indican que la imagen ofrecida hasta el momento no incorpora la naturaleza multidisciplinar del emprendimiento y podría estar distorsionada. A su vez, detecta una serie de problemas inherentes a su realización, así como la necesidad de incorporar los últimos avances en bibliometría y mejorar la colaboración entre expertos de ambos campos para intentar solventarlos y avanzar hacia futuros progresos

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