Science and technology indicators in & for the peripheries. A research agenda

Trabajo presentado a la 15th International Conference on Scientometrics & Informetrics, celebrada en Estambúl (Turquia) del 29 de junio al 4 de julio de 2015.This paper aims to propose a research agenda that explores the problems that emerge when S&T indicators are used in peripheral contexts, that is, in geographical or social spaces that are somehow marginal to the centres of scientific activity. In these situations evaluators and decision-makers are likely to use indicators that were designed to reflect variables relevant in the dominant social and geographical contexts --i.e. in the leading countries, languages, disciplines, etc.--, but that are usually not adequate in peripheral contexts. We propose to examine various dimensions of periphery. First, the cognitive dimension: areas of research, such as the humanities that capture less attention (and resources) than the more prestigious disciplines, such as molecular biology. Second, the geographical dimension: e.g. global south vs. global north, regions vs. metropolises. Third, the social group dimension: women, the poor, or perhaps the elderly have social needs that are different from those of richer or more powerful groups --and the problems affecting the former tend be less researched than those of the later. The research agenda proposed would investigate the mechanisms by which performance indicators tend to be biased against the peripheries (e.g. bias in language, journal or topic coverage in conventional databases). We suggest how these biases may suppress scientific diversity and shift research towards a higher degree of homogeneity.Peer reviewe

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF NOKOBIT – A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY OF IMPACT

publishedVersio

Citation endorsement framework for digital repository

Digital repository is one of the useful platform to manage digital materials especially conference proceedings. To date, conference proceedings have been published as printed and digital versions, the digital version has been stored in digital repository and the citation information of each article is collected. The limitation of the existing model is that the citation is automatically retrieved from certain databases and the other authors of that article who have information about the citation cannot update the information in to the repository. Therefore this study proposed citation endorsement framework for digital repository. Rapid application development (RAD) was used for the system development and interview were done to get the expert review of the system. The thematic analysis of the expert review shows that the participants agreed that the new digital repository can improve the citation indexing by allowing the author to update the citation information

Analyzing the disciplinary focus of universities: Can rankings be a one-size-fits-all?

The phenomenon of rankings is intimately related with the government interest in fiscalizing the research outputs of universities. New forms of managerialism have been introduced into the higher education system, leading to an increasing interest from funding bodies in developing external evaluation tools to allocate funds. Rankings rely heavily on bibliometric indicators. But bibliometricians have been very critical with their use. Among other, they have pointed out the over-simplistic view rankings represent when analyzing the research output of universities, as they consider them as homogeneous ignoring disciplinary differences. Although many university rankings now include league tables by fields, reducing the complex framework of universities' research activity to a single dimension leads to poor judgment and decision making. This is partly because of the influence disciplinary specialization has on research evaluation. This chapter analyzes from a methodological perspective how rankings suppress disciplinary differences which are key factors to interpret correctly these rankings.Comment: Robinson-Garcia, N., Jim\'enez-Contreras, E. (2017). Analyzing the disciplinary focus of universities: Can rankings be a one-size-fits-all? In: Downing, K., F.A. Ganotice (eds). World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education. IGI Global, pp. 161-185. doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-0819-9.ch00

A comprehensive comparison of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS)

Scientific exchange is increasingly shifting to the Internet. Today, online literature and citation databases are important tools for scientific work, e.g. for exchanging information or investigating the current state of the art on a topic. Due to the large number of literature and citation databases that exist, and the limited amount of time available for a search, it is necessary to choose few or even only one database. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive comparison between Web of Science and arXiv. We compile a list of criteria for the comparison of these resources based on a literature analysis. Finally, 62 documents were found that dealt with comparisons between literature databases. Based on these comparisons, a concept matrix was created according to Webster & Watson (2002), in which the criteria for the comparison were summarized. These criteria were then integrated into an adapted version of the criteria catalogue for the comparison of software packages from Jadhav & Sonar (2009) in order to provide a comprehensive picture, not only of content aspects, but also of functionality and usability issues. Based on these criteria, the Web of Science and arXiv databases were compared. The main results can be summarized as follows: arXiv covers only a limited number of disciplines and has a strong focus on physics, mathematics and computer science. Web of Science covers significantly more subject areas and generally includes significantly more papers, which in contrast to arXiv all come from peer-reviewed journals. arXiv's biggest advantage is the topicality of the articles, since preprints are also accepted and thus the peer-review process can be bridged. Both databases are intuitive to use and have a similarly good simple search, but Web of Science’s advanced search gives an experienced user much more possibilities to refine searches and to formulate distinctive queries. In general, Web of Science offers significantly more possibilities to conduct comprehensive literature searches due to the additionally stored citation data and corresponding analysis functions. arXiv, on the other hand, is particularly well suited to learn about the latest state of the offered disciplines

The Many Publics of Science: Using Altmetrics to Identify Common Communication Channels by Scientific field

Altmetrics have led to new quantitative studies of science through social media interactions. However, there are no models of science communication that respond to the multiplicity of non-academic channels. Using the 3653 authors with the highest volume of altmetrics mentions from the main channels (Twitter, News, Facebook, Wikipedia, Blog, Policy documents, and Peer reviews) to their publications (2016-2020), it has been analyzed where the audiences of each discipline are located. The results evidence the generalities and specificities of these new communication models and the differences between areas. These findings are useful for the development of science communication policies and strategies

A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS: RESEARCH OF URBAN FARMING IN INDONESIA PERIOD 1991-2023

This research is related to urban farming as a major variable in this publication. The aim of this research is to investigate the profile of original scientific articles along with reviews on the topic of urban farming in Indonesia in the period 1991-2023 using bibliometric analysis. Journals related to urban farming in Indonesia published between 1991-2023 are taken from Scopus. The records analyzed and taken from the research material as characteristic of the subsequent quotation containing the distribution of the author's name, year of publication, principal author institution, publisher processed using Microsoft Excel 2016 and VOSviewer v.1.61 are used to create bibliometric diagrams. A total of 81 journals published in Scopus were written by 160 identified authors. The number of published articles continued to increase from 1991 to 2023, with the majority of articles written in English. The most cited article is Aquaculture Research with a 10-year quotation. Visualization analysis based on the accuracy of connected words in titles and abstracts has revealed several groups of research. This research contributes to providing a systematic overview of the productivity and visibility of research projects focused on urban farming in Indonesia, which is expected to be used to organize and prioritize future research.

: An MCDM view

43 pagesInternational audienceThis paper proposes a critical analysis of the "Academic Ranking of World Universities", published every year by the Institute of Higher Education of the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai and more commonly known as the Shanghai ranking. After having recalled how the ranking is built, we first discuss the relevance of the criteria and then analyze the proposed aggregation method. Our analysis uses tools and concepts from Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). Our main conclusions are that the criteria that are used are not relevant, that the aggregation methodology is plagued by a number of major problems and that the whole exercise suffers from an insufficient attention paid to fundamental structuring issues. Hence, our view is that the Shanghai ranking, in spite of the media coverage it receives, does not qualify as a useful and pertinent tool to discuss the "quality" of academic institutions, let alone to guide the choice of students and family or to promote reforms of higher education systems. We outline the type of work that should be undertaken to oer sound alternatives to the Shanghai ranking