Qualitative conditions of scientometrics: the new challenges'

While scientometrics is now an established field, there are challenges. A closer look at how scientometricians aggregate building blocks into artfully made products, and point-represent these (e.g. as the map of field X) allows one to overcome the dependence on judgements of scientists for validation, and replace or complement these with intrinsic validation, based on quality checks of the several steps. Such quality checks require qualitative analysis of the domains being studied. Qualitative analysis is also necessary when noninstitutionalized domains and/or domains which do not emphasize texts are to be studied. A further challenge is to reflect on the effects of scientometrics on the development of science; indicators could lead to `induced¿ aggregation. The availability of scientometric tools and insights might allow scientists and science to become more reflexive

The Registry of Scientometric Data Sources

In this article, we describe the Registry of Scientometric Data Sources (RSDS) and several scientometric data sources recorded in this open registry that could be of interest for scientometricians, institutional researchers, librarians, practitioners, policy makers, students and other stakeholders with an interest in scientometrics. This registry was created after carrying out a literature review and a technical evaluation of several data sources. Each data source is recorded with descriptive metadata fields and URLs to further information. This article describes the motivation behind the development of the registry, explains the features that are available on its public website (https://labs.tib.eu/rosi), and closes with a call for participation.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Applying Blockchain Solutions to Address Research Reproducibility and Enable Scientometric Analysis

A worldwide reproducibility crisis around published scientific studies has gained attention from academics, journalists, and concerned citizens in recent decades. The inability to reliably reproduce experiments from scholarly research—especially in areas of high- impact science—has far-reaching social and economic implications. Fraud may seem an obvious culprit, but in our data-intensive world, vague methods, unclear standards, and even accidental mismanagement of digital resources can all be contributing factors. Reproducibility is an area of increasing focus within the scientometrics community and looking to emerging technologies to help mitigate reproducibility challenges makes practical sense. In the Web 3.0 era, the promise of distributed computing, the maturation of cloud services, and other novel convergences point toward new ways to enable bibliometric reproducibility. Concurrently, research artifacts beyond the peer-reviewed article are growing in prominence—datasets, algorithms, pre-prints—all serve an expanding role in research dissemination and discovery. In this paper we present an overview of some new approaches—with particular focus on the benefits of blockchain-based software systems—for managing research information and improving scientometric reproducibility

A review of the literature on citation impact indicators

Citation impact indicators nowadays play an important role in research evaluation, and consequently these indicators have received a lot of attention in the bibliometric and scientometric literature. This paper provides an in-depth review of the literature on citation impact indicators. First, an overview is given of the literature on bibliographic databases that can be used to calculate citation impact indicators (Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar). Next, selected topics in the literature on citation impact indicators are reviewed in detail. The first topic is the selection of publications and citations to be included in the calculation of citation impact indicators. The second topic is the normalization of citation impact indicators, in particular normalization for field differences. Counting methods for dealing with co-authored publications are the third topic, and citation impact indicators for journals are the last topic. The paper concludes by offering some recommendations for future research

Exploring WorldCat identities as an altmetric information source: A library catalog analysis experiment in the field of Scientometrics

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics on 03/01/2021, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03814-w The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Assessing the impact of scholarly books is a difficult research evaluation problem. Library Catalog Analysis facilitates the quantitative study, at different levels, of the impact and diffusion of academic books based on data about their availability in libraries. The WorldCat global catalog collates data on library holdings, offering a range of tools including the novel WorldCat Identities. This is based on author profiles and provides indicators relating to the availability of their books in library catalogs. Here, we investigate this new tool to identify its strengths and weaknesses based on a sample of Bibliometrics and Scientometrics authors. We review the problems that this entails and compare Library Catalog Analysis indicators with Google Scholar and Web of Science citations. The results show that WorldCat Identities can be a useful tool for book impact assessment but the value of its data is undermined by the provision of massive collections of ebooks to academic libraries

Author-Topic Modeling of DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology (2008-2017), India

This study presents a method to analyze textual data and applying it to the field of Library and Information Science. This paper subsumes a special case of Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Author-Topic models where each article has one unique author and each author has one unique topic. Topic Modeling Toolkit is used to perform the author-topic modeling. The study further which considers topics and their changes over time by taking into account both the word co-occurrence pattern and time. 393 full-text articles were downloaded from DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology and were analyzed accordingly. 16 core topics have been identified throughout the period of ten years. These core topics can be considered as the core area of research in the journal from 2008 to 2017. This paper further identifies top five authors associated with the representative articles for each studied year. These authors can be treated as the subject-experts for the modeled topics as indicated. The results of the study can serve as a platform to determine the research trend; core areas of research; and the subject-experts related to those core areas in the field the Library and Information Science in India

Social media metrics for new research evaluation

This chapter approaches, both from a theoretical and practical perspective, the most important principles and conceptual frameworks that can be considered in the application of social media metrics for scientific evaluation. We propose conceptually valid uses for social media metrics in research evaluation. The chapter discusses frameworks and uses of these metrics as well as principles and recommendations for the consideration and application of current (and potentially new) metrics in research evaluation.Comment: Forthcoming in Glanzel, W., Moed, H.F., Schmoch U., Thelwall, M. (2018). Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springe

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

Scientometrics have become an essential element in the practice and evaluation of science and research, including both the evaluation of individuals and national assessment exercises. Yet, researchers and practitioners in this field have lacked clear theories to guide their work. As early as 1981, then doctoral student Blaise Cronin published "The need for a theory of citing" —a call to arms for the fledgling scientometric community to produce foundational theories upon which the work of the field could be based. More than three decades later, the time has come to reach out the field again and ask how they have responded to this call. This book compiles the foundational theories that guide informetrics and scholarly communication research. It is a much needed compilation by leading scholars in the field that gathers together the theories that guide our understanding of authorship, citing, and impact

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

Scientometrics have become an essential element in the practice and evaluation of science and research, including both the evaluation of individuals and national assessment exercises. Yet, researchers and practitioners in this field have lacked clear theories to guide their work. As early as 1981, then doctoral student Blaise Cronin published The need for a theory of citing - a call to arms for the fledgling scientometric community to produce foundational theories upon which the work of the field could be based. More than three decades later, the time has come to reach out the field again and ask how they have responded to this call. This book compiles the foundational theories that guide informetrics and scholarly communication research. It is a much needed compilation by leading scholars in the field that gathers together the theories that guide our understanding of authorship, citing, and impact