TimeRank: A dynamic approach to rate scholars using citations

Rating has become a common practice of modern science. No rating system can be considered as final, but instead several approaches can be taken, which magnify different aspects of the fabric of science. We introduce an approach for rating scholars which uses citations in a dynamic fashion, allocating ratings by considering the relative position of two authors at the time of the citation among them. Our main goal is to introduce the notion of citation timing as a complement to the usual suspects of popularity and prestige. We aim to produce a rating able to account for a variety of interesting phenomena, such as positioning raising stars on a more even footing with established researchers. We apply our method on the bibliometrics community using data from the Web of Science from 2000 to 2016, showing how the dynamic method is more effective than alternatives in this respect

The role of mentorship in protege performance

The role of mentorship on protege performance is a matter of importance to academic, business, and governmental organizations. While the benefits of mentorship for proteges, mentors and their organizations are apparent, the extent to which proteges mimic their mentors' career choices and acquire their mentorship skills is unclear. Here, we investigate one aspect of mentor emulation by studying mentorship fecundity---the number of proteges a mentor trains---with data from the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which tracks the mentorship record of thousands of mathematicians over several centuries. We demonstrate that fecundity among academic mathematicians is correlated with other measures of academic success. We also find that the average fecundity of mentors remains stable over 60 years of recorded mentorship. We further uncover three significant correlations in mentorship fecundity. First, mentors with small mentorship fecundity train proteges that go on to have a 37% larger than expected mentorship fecundity. Second, in the first third of their career, mentors with large fecundity train proteges that go on to have a 29% larger than expected fecundity. Finally, in the last third of their career, mentors with large fecundity train proteges that go on to have a 31% smaller than expected fecundity.Comment: 23 pages double-spaced, 4 figure

Fostering national research networks: The case of Turkish coauthorship patterns in the social sciences

We analyse the coauthorship networks of researchers affiliated at universities in Turkey by using two databases: the international SSCI database and the Turkish ULAKBIM database. We find that coauthorship networks are composed largely of isolated groups, permitting little knowledge diffusion. Moreover, there seems to be two disparate populations of researchers. While some scholars publish mostly in the international journals, others target the national audience, and there is very little intersection between the two populations. The same observation is valid for universities, among which there is very little collaboration. Our results point out that while Turkish social sciences and humanities publications have been growing impressively in the last decade, domestic networks to ensure the dissemination of knowledge and of research output are very weak and should be supported by domestic policies.Research collaboration, coauthorship, networks, research policy.

Co-authorship trends and collaboration patterns in the Slovenian sociological community

The article deals with some processes generating increases in research collaboration; one of the most characteristic tendencies of modern science. The major empirical focus is the increasing tendency to co-authorship in sociological publications in Slovenia. Bibliometric analyses, based on two joint national research information systems (SICRIS and COBISS), show the amount of coauthored publications in the field of sociology have increased over the last two decades. Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in sociology has shown that sociologists who are not systematically tied to strongly connected and wellestablished research groups produce the best scientific publications in their field

FEED: FEAST Extension, Enhancement and Demonstration project: Final report

" Since its launch in 2001, FEAST has defined and promoted a model for international research cooperation facilitation units that have been rolled out on a wider scale by the European Union. As FEAST has evolved it has also informed the evolution of this wider network of international research facilitation bodies. The FEAST Extension, Enhancement and Demonstration (FEED) project marked a significant new phase in this developmental process. It has made significant progress in its aims of defining and demonstrating new, more strategic and policy-related approaches to fostering international research and innovation systems." - page 2Australian National UniversityThis project is supported by International Science Linkages established under the Australian Government’s innovation statement, Backing Australia’s Ability, and has received funding from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme, Capacities: International Cooperation (222747)

Popular and/or Prestigious? Measures of Scholarly Esteem

Citation analysis does not generally take the quality of citations into account: all citations are weighted equally irrespective of source. However, a scholar may be highly cited but not highly regarded: popularity and prestige are not identical measures of esteem. In this study we define popularity as the number of times an author is cited and prestige as the number of times an author is cited by highly cited papers. Information Retrieval (IR) is the test field. We compare the 40 leading researchers in terms of their popularity and prestige over time. Some authors are ranked high on prestige but not on popularity, while others are ranked high on popularity but not on prestige. We also relate measures of popularity and prestige to date of Ph.D. award, number of key publications, organizational affiliation, receipt of prizes/honors, and gender.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figure