Nature s Top 100 Re-Revisited

"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Martín-Martín, A., Ayllon, J. M., López-Cózar, E. D., & Orduna-Malea, E. (2015). Nature's top 100 Re-revisited. JASIST, 66(12), 2714., which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23570. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."To mark the 50th anniversary of the Science Citation Index, Nature published a list of the 100 most-cited papers of all time. It also included an alternative ranking from data provided by Google Scholar, which, as this letter illustrates, contains certain inconsistencies. This does not, however, diminish the usefulness of Google Scholar, not only in identifying the most-cited articles of all time, but also in reflecting the impact of other document types (especially books), thus redefining the concept of academic impact. Keywords:Martín-Martín, A.; Ayllón, JM.; Delgado López-Cózar, E.; Orduña Malea, E. (2015). Nature s Top 100 Re-Revisited. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 66(12):2714-2714. doi:10.1002/asi.23570271427146612Bornmann , L. Nature's top 100 revisited. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology http://www.lutz-bornmann.de/icons/top_100.pdfGarfield , E. 2005 The agony and the ecstasy-the history and meaning of the Journal Impact Factor http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jifchicago2005.pdfMartin-Martin , A. Orduna-Malea , E. Ayllon , J.M. Delgado Lopez-Cozar , E. 2014 Does Google Scholar contain all highly cited documents (1950-2013)? http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.8464Van Noorden, R., Maher, B., & Nuzzo, R. (2014). The top 100 papers. Nature, 514(7524), 550-553. doi:10.1038/514550

The silent fading of an academic search engine: the case of Microsoft Academic Search

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the obsolescence process of Microsoft Academic Search (MAS) as well as the effects of this decline in the coverage of disciplines and journals, and their influence in the representativeness of organizations. Design/methodology/approach - The total number of records and those belonging to the most reputable journals (1,762) and organizations (346) according to the Field Rating indicator in each of the 15 fields and 204 sub-fields of MAS, have been collected and statistically analysed in March 2014, by means of an automated querying process via http, covering academic publications from 1700 to present. Findings - MAS has no longer been updated since 2013, although this phenomenon began to be glimpsed in 2011, when its coverage plummeted. Throughout 2014, indexing of new records is still ongoing, but at a minimum rate, without following any apparent pattern. Research limitations/implications - There are also retrospective records being indexed at present. In this sense, this research provides a picture of what MAS offered during March 2014 being queried directly via http. Practical implications - The unnoticed obsolescence of MAS affects to the quality of the service offered to its users (both those who engage in scientific information seeking and also those who use it for quantitative purposes). Social implications - The predominance of Google Scholar (GS) as monopoly in the academic search engines market as well as the prevalence of an open construction model (GS) vs a closed model (MAS). Originality/value - A complete longitudinal analysis of disciplines, journals and organizations on MAS has been performed for the first time identifying an unnoticed obsolescence. Any public explanation or disclaimer note has been announced from the responsible company, something incomprehensible given its implications for the reliability and validity of bibliometric data provided on disciplines, journals, authors and congress as well as their fair representation on the academic search engine.This research was funded under Project HAR2011-30383-C02-02 from Direccion General de Investigacion y Gestion del Plan Nacional de I+D+I (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and Project APOSTD/2013/002 from the Regional Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (Generalitat Valenciana) in Spain.Orduña Malea, E.; Martín-Martín, A.; Ayllón, JM.; Delgado-López-Cózar, E. (2014). The silent fading of an academic search engine: the case of Microsoft Academic Search. Online Information Review. 38(7):936-953. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-07-2014-0169S936953387Beel, J. , Gipp, B. and Wilde, E. (2010), “Academic search engine optimization (ASEO)”, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Vol. 41 No. 2, pp. 176-190.Butler, D. (2011), “Computing giants launch free science metrics: new Google and Microsoft services promise to democratize citation data”, Nature, Vol. 476 No. 7358, p.Carlson, S. (2006), “Challenging Google, Microsoft unveils a search tool for scholarly articles”, Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 52 No. 33, p.Delgado-López-Cózar, E., & Cabezas-Clavijo, Á. (2013). Ranking journals: could Google Scholar Metrics be an alternative to Journal Citation Reports and Scimago Journal Rank? Learned Publishing, 26(2), 101-113. doi:10.1087/20130206Delgado López-Cózar, E., Robinson-García, N., & Torres-Salinas, D. (2013). The Google scholar experiment: How to index false papers and manipulate bibliometric indicators. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(3), 446-454. doi:10.1002/asi.23056Haley, M. R. (2014). Ranking top economics and finance journals using Microsoft academic search versus Google scholar: How does the new publish or perish option compare? Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(5), 1079-1084. doi:10.1002/asi.23080Haustein, S., Peters, I., Bar-Ilan, J., Priem, J., Shema, H., & Terliesner, J. (2014). Coverage and adoption of altmetrics sources in the bibliometric community. Scientometrics, 101(2), 1145-1163. doi:10.1007/s11192-013-1221-3Jacsó, P. (2005), “As we may search – comparison of major features of the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar”, Current Science, Vol. 89 No. 9, pp. 1537-1547.Jacsó, P. (2008). Google Scholar revisited. Online Information Review, 32(1), 102-114. doi:10.1108/14684520810866010Jacsó, P. (2011). The pros and cons of Microsoft Academic Search from a bibliometric perspective. Online Information Review, 35(6), 983-997. doi:10.1108/14684521111210788Jacsó, P. (2012). Google Scholar Metrics for Publications. Online Information Review, 36(4), 604-619. doi:10.1108/14684521211254121Khabsa, M. and Giles, C.L. (2014), “The number of scholarly documents on the public web”, PloS One, Vol. 9 No. 5, p.Labbé, C. (2010), “Ike Antkare one of the greatest stars in the scientific firmament”, ISSI Newsletter, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 48-52.Orduña-Malea, E., & Delgado López-Cózar, E. (2013). Google Scholar Metrics evolution: an analysis according to languages. Scientometrics, 98(3), 2353-2367. doi:10.1007/s11192-013-1164-8Ortega, J. L. (2014). Influence of co-authorship networks in the research impact: Ego network analyses from Microsoft Academic Search. Journal of Informetrics, 8(3), 728-737. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2014.07.001Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2013). Institutional and country collaboration in an online service of scientific profiles: Google Scholar Citations. Journal of Informetrics, 7(2), 394-403. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2012.12.007Ortega, J. L., & Aguillo, I. F. (2014). Microsoft academic search and Google scholar citations: Comparative analysis of author profiles. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(6), 1149-1156. doi:10.1002/asi.23036Van Noorden, R. (2014). Online collaboration: Scientists and the social network. Nature, 512(7513), 126-129. doi:10.1038/512126

Measuring the vitality and effectiveness within social sciences and humanities research. an attempt in Italian LIS studies

This study constitutes the beginning of a PhD research in Library and information science at Sapienza University of Rome, aimed at investigating the level of internationalisation, vitality and effectivenessof Italian Library and information studies. The paper describes the methodology of search in international citational database, Web of science and Scopus, and in Google scholar for any scholarly work published by Italian LIS tenured researchers and university professors. The results in WoS and Scopus are illustrated and compared with a first collection of data within Italian similar field of Social sciences and humanities (SSH). The reliability of the data collected in citation database within the areas of Social sciences and humanities and their significance are limited; also the comparison with Italian historical and paleographic fields seems to confirms that a substantial impact of SSH non-Anglophone scientific production within citational database is influenced by a number of factors (number of indexed core journals, language of publication, level of coverage of journals, etc.). On the other hand, Google scholar could be a valuable tool for humanistic fields, but it is necessary to deal with the comple xity of the analysis and the problems of homonyms. Therefore, these first research results made it clear that, in order to investigate the presence and impact of Italian LIS studies, a correct use and organization of quantitative data is essential

Search engine user behaviour: How can users be guided to quality content?

The typical behaviour of the Web search engine user is widely known: a user only types in one or a few keywords and expects the search engine to produce relevant results in an instant. Search engines not only adapt to this behaviour. On the contrary, they are often faced with criticism that they themselves created this kind of behaviour. As search engines are trendsetters for the whole information world, it is important to know how they cope with their users’ behaviour. Recent developments show that search engines try to integrate results from different collections into their results lists and to guide their users to the right results. These results should not only be relevant in general, but also be pertinent in the sense of being relevant to the user in his current situation and in accordance to his background. The article focuses on the problems of guiding the user from his initial query to these results. It shows how the general users are searching and how the intents behind their queries can be used to deliver the right results. It will be shown that search engines try to give some good results for everyone instead of focusing on complete result sets for a specific user type. If the user wishes, he can follow the paths laid out by the engines to narrow the results to a result set suitable to him

Female scholars need to achieve more for equal public recognition

Different kinds of "gender gap" have been reported in different walks of the scientific life, almost always favouring male scientists over females. In this work, for the first time, we present a large-scale empirical analysis to ask whether female scientists with the same level of scientific accomplishment are as likely as males to be recognised. We particularly focus on Wikipedia, the open online encyclopedia that its open nature allows us to have a proxy of community recognition. We calculate the probability of appearing on Wikipedia as a scientist for both male and female scholars in three different fields. We find that women in Physics, Economics and Philosophy are considerable less likely than men to be recognised on Wikipedia across all levels of achievement.Comment: Under revie

Growth in Public Interest and Scientific Research on Kinesiology Taping

Kinesiology taping has grown in popularity, though there are a number of unsubstantiated claims made by some kinesiology taping advocates. An investigation was conducted into trends in general and scientific interest in kinesiology taping. Data in the public domain (Google Trends and Google Scholar data) indicated significant growth of interest both in terms of public search queries and scientific publications relevant to kinesiology taping. Cyclical trends in interest relevant to kinesiology taping were identified. Segmented regression indicated some of the growth in interest in kinesiology taping may be attributed to exposure of spectators of the Olympic Games to kinesiology taping in athletes. Despite substantial growth in research on kinesiology taping there remain unsubstantiated claims

Ranking forestry journals using the h-index

An expert ranking of forestry journals was compared with journal impact factors and h-indices computed from the ISI Web of Science and internet-based data. Citations reported by Google Scholar appear to offer the most efficient way to rank all journals objectively, in a manner consistent with other indicators. This h-index exhibited a high correlation with the journal impact factor (r=0.92), but is not confined to journals selected by any particular commercial provider. A ranking of 180 forestry journals is presented, on the basis of this index.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables. New table added in response to reviewer comment

Research assessment in the humanities: problems and challenges

Research assessment is going to play a new role in the governance of universities and research institutions. Evaluation of results is evolving from a simple tool for resource allocation towards policy design. In this respect "measuring" implies a different approach to quantitative aspects as well as to an estimation of qualitative criteria that are difficult to define. Bibliometrics became so popular, in spite of its limits, just offering a simple solution to complex problems. The theory behind it is not so robust but available results confirm this method as a reasonable trade off between costs and benefits. Indeed there are some fields of science where quantitative indicators are very difficult to apply due to the lack of databases and data, in few words the credibility of existing information. Humanities and social sciences (HSS) need a coherent methodology to assess research outputs but current projects are not very convincing. The possibility of creating a shared ranking of journals by the value of their contents at either institutional, national or European level is not enough as it is raising the same bias as in the hard sciences and it does not solve the problem of the various types of outputs and the different, much longer time of creation and dissemination. The web (and web 2.0) represents a revolution in the communication of research results mainly in the HSS, and also their evaluation has to take into account this change. Furthermore, the increase of open access initiatives (green and gold road) offers a large quantity of transparent, verifiable data structured according to international standards that allow comparability beyond national limits and above all is independent from commercial agents. The pilot scheme carried out at the university of Milan for the Faculty of Humanities demonstrated that it is possible to build quantitative, on average more robust indicators, that could provide a proxy of research production and productiivity even in the HSS

Citation matters: two essays on the student journey of citation and how Google Scholar and the principle of least effort can affect academic writing

The paper consists of two short essays on citation matters. The aim is to get the academy thinking about citing and referencing from a student point of view. The first essay (on the student journey of citation) is an attempt of a framework for the academic writer, from the time they are an undergraduate student to an academic researcher. The worldview of citing and referencing is argued to develop in accordance to academic level. The second essay is on academic writing and the principle of least effort. With a few searches on Google Scholar, cyberplagiarism and the pilfering of citation context was demonstrated. With emphasis on patchwriting, the temptation of the academic writer to corner cut is not argued as being exclusive to students but more apparent by students. Technology is also argued to create a conflict for the academic writer showing a path where they can reduce effort