F1000 recommendations as a new data source for research evaluation: A comparison with citations

F1000 is a post-publication peer review service for biological and medical research. F1000 aims to recommend important publications in the biomedical literature, and from this perspective F1000 could be an interesting tool for research evaluation. By linking the complete database of F1000 recommendations to the Web of Science bibliographic database, we are able to make a comprehensive comparison between F1000 recommendations and citations. We find that about 2% of the publications in the biomedical literature receive at least one F1000 recommendation. Recommended publications on average receive 1.30 recommendations, and over 90% of the recommendations are given within half a year after a publication has appeared. There turns out to be a clear correlation between F1000 recommendations and citations. However, the correlation is relatively weak, at least weaker than the correlation between journal impact and citations. More research is needed to identify the main reasons for differences between recommendations and citations in assessing the impact of publications

Eye drop Self-medication: Comparative Questionnaire-based study of two Latin American cities.

A broad spectrum of ocular symptoms are treated by self-medication with commercial eye-drops.  This behavior threatens individuals' visual health. In Latin America, evidence is poor. Objective:  To  detect,  characterize  and  compare  patterns  of  ophthalmic  self-medication  between  Córdoba (Argentina) and Barranquilla (Colombia).Design:  Analytic, cross-sectional and comparative population-based study. Setting: Two private tertiary care ophthalmology centers from Córdoba, Argentina, and Barranquilla, Colombia.Participants:  Patients 18 years of age or older who consulted for the first time in this two institutions duringAugust-November 2009, were included. A number of 570 patients were enrrolled.Methods:  Data collected through a semi-structured questionnaire. Main outcome measure: To determine thefrequency of self-medication with eyedrops on a specific population of two cities in Latin America.Results:  Comparable  rates  of  ocular  self-medication  were  found  (25.6%  and  25.7%  for  Cordoba  and Barranquilla, respectively). The percentage of men and women who self-medicated was not significantly different between both samples. The major source of eye drops recommendation in the Argentineans patients was the pharmacist (31%); while the social source was predominant in Colombian individuals (53%). In Cordoba, the most frequently used product was a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drop in combination with a vasoconstrictive agent (32%); while in Barranquilla, antibiotic eye drops were preferred (33%). Self-medication was higher between the ages of 31 and 50 years old in Argentinean citizens (28%) and between 18 to 31 years old in the Colombiancommunity (39%). This habit was found mostly in patients who completed university studies in Cordoba (33%); in Barranquilla, individuals with lower educational level practice more this behavior (36%).Conclusion:  In both populations, patients commonly treat ocular conditions by self-medicating. Currently, anincreasing number of eye drops are obtainable without prescription and a high percentage of self-medicated patients in both samples ignore the possible side effects of the used medication.Fil: Marquez, Gabriel. Fundación VER; ArgentinaFil: Hildegard Piñeros-Heilbron. Fundación Oftalmológica del Caribe; ColombiaFil: Sanchez, Victoria M.. Fundación VER; ArgentinaFil: Torres, Victor Eduardo Roque. Fundación VER; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios sobre Cultura y Sociedad; ArgentinaFil: Gramajo, Ana L.. Fundación VER; ArgentinaFil: Juarez, Claudio P.. Fundación VER; Argentina. Fundación Oftalmológica del Caribe; ColombiaFil: Peña, Fernando. Fundación Oftalmológica del Caribe; ColombiaFil: Luna, José D.. Fundación VER; Argentin

Citation sentence reuse behavior of scientists: A case study on massive bibliographic text dataset of computer science

Our current knowledge of scholarly plagiarism is largely based on the similarity between full text research articles. In this paper, we propose an innovative and novel conceptualization of scholarly plagiarism in the form of reuse of explicit citation sentences in scientific research articles. Note that while full-text plagiarism is an indicator of a gross-level behavior, copying of citation sentences is a more nuanced micro-scale phenomenon observed even for well-known researchers. The current work poses several interesting questions and attempts to answer them by empirically investigating a large bibliographic text dataset from computer science containing millions of lines of citation sentences. In particular, we report evidences of massive copying behavior. We also present several striking real examples throughout the paper to showcase widespread adoption of this undesirable practice. In contrast to the popular perception, we find that copying tendency increases as an author matures. The copying behavior is reported to exist in all fields of computer science; however, the theoretical fields indicate more copying than the applied fields

Automatic Metadata Generation using Associative Networks

In spite of its tremendous value, metadata is generally sparse and incomplete, thereby hampering the effectiveness of digital information services. Many of the existing mechanisms for the automated creation of metadata rely primarily on content analysis which can be costly and inefficient. The automatic metadata generation system proposed in this article leverages resource relationships generated from existing metadata as a medium for propagation from metadata-rich to metadata-poor resources. Because of its independence from content analysis, it can be applied to a wide variety of resource media types and is shown to be computationally inexpensive. The proposed method operates through two distinct phases. Occurrence and co-occurrence algorithms first generate an associative network of repository resources leveraging existing repository metadata. Second, using the associative network as a substrate, metadata associated with metadata-rich resources is propagated to metadata-poor resources by means of a discrete-form spreading activation algorithm. This article discusses the general framework for building associative networks, an algorithm for disseminating metadata through such networks, and the results of an experiment and validation of the proposed method using a standard bibliographic dataset

Will This Paper Increase Your h-index? Scientific Impact Prediction

Scientific impact plays a central role in the evaluation of the output of scholars, departments, and institutions. A widely used measure of scientific impact is citations, with a growing body of literature focused on predicting the number of citations obtained by any given publication. The effectiveness of such predictions, however, is fundamentally limited by the power-law distribution of citations, whereby publications with few citations are extremely common and publications with many citations are relatively rare. Given this limitation, in this work we instead address a related question asked by many academic researchers in the course of writing a paper, namely: "Will this paper increase my h-index?" Using a real academic dataset with over 1.7 million authors, 2 million papers, and 8 million citation relationships from the premier online academic service ArnetMiner, we formalize a novel scientific impact prediction problem to examine several factors that can drive a paper to increase the primary author's h-index. We find that the researcher's authority on the publication topic and the venue in which the paper is published are crucial factors to the increase of the primary author's h-index, while the topic popularity and the co-authors' h-indices are of surprisingly little relevance. By leveraging relevant factors, we find a greater than 87.5% potential predictability for whether a paper will contribute to an author's h-index within five years. As a further experiment, we generate a self-prediction for this paper, estimating that there is a 76% probability that it will contribute to the h-index of the co-author with the highest current h-index in five years. We conclude that our findings on the quantification of scientific impact can help researchers to expand their influence and more effectively leverage their position of "standing on the shoulders of giants."Comment: Proc. of the 8th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM'15

Beyond Service Attributes: Do Personal Values Matter?

Purpose – Service firms constantly look for ways to differentiate their offering. Recently, personal values have emerged as a way to understand how customers fulfill deeper needs when consuming a service. This paper aims to examine how personal values operate in the evaluation of higher education services. Like other services, marketing has become essential to higher education as universities compete aggressively for students and differentiate their service offerings. Although attribute-based measures such as SERVQUAL provide useful information to service providers, personal values may offer a deeper understanding of how customers judge the quality and desirability of an educational institution’s services. This study seeks to determine whether personal values in higher education affect perceptions of overall value, satisfaction, and behavioral outcomes including loyalty and intention to recommend.Design/methodology/approach – A survey measured student personal values, service quality, satisfaction, and behavioral outcomes in the USA – the largest exporter of higher educational service, and India – the largest net importer. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, and t-tests.Findings – The results describe the impact of personal values on satisfaction and behavioral outcomes, while showing differences between India and the USA.Research limitations/implications – The paper provides implications for applying the personal values concept to the marketing of a university. It also serves as a basis for future research on the impact of personal values in other service sectors.Originality/value – The study fills an important gap in the literature by showing that personal values are an important dimension in services. Service firms need to move beyond attributes and measure personal values, as these values do impact customer satisfaction and loyalty