Characterization, description, and considerations for the use of funding acknowledgement data in Web of Science

Funding acknowledgements found in scientific publications have been used to study the impact of funding on research since the 1970s. However, no broad scale indexation of that paratextual element was done until 2008, when Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science started to add funding acknowledgement information to its bibliographic records. As this new information provides a new dimension to bibliometric data that can be systematically exploited, it is important to understand the characteristics of these data and the underlying implications for their use. This paper analyses the presence and distribution of funding acknowledgement data covered in Web of Science. Our results show that prior to 2009 funding acknowledgements coverage is extremely low and therefore not reliable. Since 2008, funding information has been collected mainly for publications indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded; more recently (2015), inclusion of funding texts for publications indexed in the Social Science Citation Index has been implemented. Arts & Humanities Citation Index content is not indexed for funding acknowledgement data. Moreover, English-language publications are the most reliably covered. Finally, not all types of documents are equally covered for funding information indexation and only articles and reviews show consistent coverage. The characterization of the funding acknowledgement information collected by Thomson Reuters can therefore help understand the possibilities offered by the data but also their limitations

European non-communicable respiratory disease research, 2002-13: Bibliometric study of outputs and funding

©2016 Begum et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This study was conducted in order to map European research in chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs). It was intended to assist the European Commission and other research funders to identify gaps and overlaps in their portfolios, and to suggest ways in which they could improve the effectiveness of their support and increase the impact of the research on patient care and on the reduction of the incidence of the CRDs. Articles and reviews were identified in the Web of Science on research in six non-communicable respiratory diseases that were published in 2002-13 from 31 European countries. They represented only 0.8% of biomedical research output but these diseases accounted for 4.7% of the European disease burden, as measured by Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), so the sub-field is seriously under-researched. Europe is prominent in the sub-field and published 56% of the world total, with the UK the most productive and publishing more than France and Italy, the next two countries, combined. Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) were the diseases with the most publications and the highest citation rates. They also received the most funding, with around two acknowledgments per paper (in 2009-13), whereas cystic fibrosis and emphysema averaged only one. Just over 37% of papers had no specific funding and depended on institutional support from universities and hospitals

A Study of Open Access Publishing by NHMRC Grant Recipients

This study is the first comprehensive study to measure open access compliance under Australia’s earliest national-level open access policy, the National Health and Medical Research Council Open Access Policy. The key findings were that over two-thirds of the journal articles were open access, most were in journals with a small number of postprints located in Australian institutional repositories. This study provides a greater understanding of open access publishing under a funder open access mandate

Declaracions de conflictes d’interès i política editorial a les revistes biomèdiques espanyoles publicades en castellà

[cat] Els vincles professionals i financers entre la indústria farmacèutica i les persones i institucions que duen a terme recerca, formació i pràctica mèdiques poden provocar que interessos individuals o corporatius influeixin en la presa de decisions i el judici professional. Aquestes situacions poden generar conflictes d'interès que amenacen la integritat de la recerca, l'objectivitat de l'educació mèdica, la qualitat de l'atenció al pacient i, de forma més general, la confiança pública en la medicina. Una de les estratègies proposades per a protegir la integritat de la recerca i mantenir la confiança pública és la comunicació dels possibles conflictes d'interès dels autors en les publicacions. El present treball analitza les polítiques editorials de les 16 revistes biomèdiques d'orientació clínica publicades a Espanya incloses en el JCR de l'any 2011 en relació a les declaracions de conflicte d'interessos dels autors, i quin és el resultat real de la seva implementació en 4 de elles. Els resultats posen de manifest que la majoria de revistes inclouen en les seves instruccions per a autors almenys un esment a la necessitat de fer declaració de conflictes d'interessos dels autors i ofereixen algun tipus de descripció d'aquestes situacions, si bé es tracta de definicions laxes que pocs cops precisen quines relacions econòmiques s'han de declarar, i que no especifiquen l'abast de les relacions personals. En la major part dels casos no hi ha formularis estàndard de declaració de conflictes d'interessos, no es determina el temps durant el qual es pot considerar que una relació és susceptible de generar-lo, no s'indica qui i com avaluarà les declaracions, ni s'indica si les declaracions es publicaran en els articles. Pel que fa a les conseqüències de l'aplicació de les polítiques, en les 4 revistes analitzades s'observa que si bé la freqüència de declaració de conflicte d'interessos en les publicacions és similar a la identificada en la literatura internacional, les declaracions que contenen realment activitats susceptibles de generar conflictes d'interès, així com el nombre d'autors que les realitzen, es troben molt per sota de la coneguda en les revistes internacionals, i són a més generalment inconsistents en un mateix autor. Com a conclusió, el treball assenyala la necessitat de l'establiment d'una política el més uniforme, clara i transparent possible de declaració de conflictes d'interès per part de les revistes espanyoles, ja que de no ser així és poc probable que els autors els reporten de manera proactiva i coherent. A més, realitza una proposta sobre les característiques que hauria de tenir la política editorial.[eng] Professional and financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and the people and institutions that carry out research, conduct medical training and practice medicine can cause that individual or corporate interests influence decision making and professional judgment. These conflicts of interest threaten the integrity of research, the objectivity of medical education, the quality of patient care and, more generally, public confidence in medicine. One of the strategies proposed to protect the integrity of research and maintain public trust is that authors communicate their interests in the studies they publish. This paper analyses the editorial policies of the 16 clinically oriented biomedical journals published in Spain included in the JCR in 2011 in relation to declaration of conflicts of interest by authors, and how these policies are implemented in 4 selected journals. Results show that most journals mention in their instructions to authors the need for disclosure of any conflicts of interest and offer some sort of description of these situations. However, these are lax definitions that point out which economic relations must be declared but not the extent of personal relationships. In most cases there is no standard form for the declaration of conflicts of interest, there is no indication of the period of time during which can be considered that a relationship is likely to generate a conflict, there is no indication of whom will evaluate these statements and how, and there is no indication of whether these statements will be published in the articles. In addition to this, the examination of conflicts of interest disclosures in the 4 selected journals shows a low number of disclosures really containing activities, and with low consistency

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

Collaboration - changing the global landscape of science: proceedings of 10th International Conference on Webometrics, Informetrics and Scientometrics & 15th COLLNET Meeting 2014, September 3 - 5, 2014, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany

The 10th WIS encourages continued investigation into the field of applied scientometrics. The broad focus of the conference is on collaboration and communication in science and technology, science policy, quantitative aspects of science and combination and integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in study of scientific practices. The conference thus aims to contribute to evidence-based and informed knowledge about scientific research and practices witch in turn may further provide input to institutional, regional, national and international research and innovation policy making