Would it be possible to increase the Hirsch-index, pi-index or CDS-index by increasing the number of publications or citations only by unity?

The aim of the study is to explore the effects of the increase in the number of publications or citations on several impact indicators by a single journal paper or citation. The possible change of the h-index, A-index, R-index, pi-index, pi-rate, Journal Paper Citedness (JPC), and Citation Distribution Score (CDS) is followed by models. Particular attention is given to the increase of the indices by a single plus citation. The results obtained by the “Successively Built-up Indicator” model show that with increasing number of citations or self-citations the indices may increase substantially

Determinants of the international influence of a R&D organisation: a bibliometric approach

Traditionally, studies on the influence and impact of knowledge-producing organisations have been addressed by means of strict economic analysis, stressing their economic impact to a local, regional or national extent. In the present study, an alternative methodology is put forward in order to evaluate the international scientific impact and influence of a knowledge-producing and -diffusing institution. We introduce a new methodology, based on scientometric and bibliometric tools, which complement traditional assessments by considering the influence of a R&D institution when looking at the scientific production undertaken and the recognition of its relevance by its international peer community. Focusing on the most prolific scientific areas of INESC Porto, and resorting to published scientific work recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI), we show that INESC Porto has enlarged its international scientific network. The logit estimations demonstrate that the wide geographical influence of INESC Porto scientific research is a result not of its international positioning in terms of co-authorships, but rather a result of the quality of its scientific output.Impact and influence assessment methods; R&D Institutions; Bibliometrics, Scientometrics; knowledge network; INESC Porto

A reverse engineering approach to the suppression of citation biases reveals universal properties of citation distributions

The large amount of information contained in bibliographic databases has recently boosted the use of citations, and other indicators based on citation numbers, as tools for the quantitative assessment of scientific research. Citations counts are often interpreted as proxies for the scientific influence of papers, journals, scholars, and institutions. However, a rigorous and scientifically grounded methodology for a correct use of citation counts is still missing. In particular, cross-disciplinary comparisons in terms of raw citation counts systematically favors scientific disciplines with higher citation and publication rates. Here we perform an exhaustive study of the citation patterns of millions of papers, and derive a simple transformation of citation counts able to suppress the disproportionate citation counts among scientific domains. We find that the transformation is well described by a power-law function, and that the parameter values of the transformation are typical features of each scientific discipline. Universal properties of citation patterns descend therefore from the fact that citation distributions for papers in a specific field are all part of the same family of univariate distributions.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Supporting information files available at http://filrad.homelinux.or

Determinants of the international influence of a R&D organisation: a bibliometric approach

Traditionally, studies on the influence and impact of knowledge-producing organisations have been addressed by means of strict economic analysis, stressing their economic impact to a local, regional or national extent. In the present study, an alternative methodology is put forward in order to evaluate the international scientific impact and influence of a knowledge-producing and -diffusing institution. We introduce a new methodology, based on scientometric and bibliometric tools, which complement traditional assessments by considering the influence of a R&D institution when looking at the scientific production undertaken and the recognition of its relevance by its international peer community. Focusing on the most prolific scientific areas of INESC Porto, and resorting to published scientific work recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI), we show that INESC Porto has enlarged its international scientific network. The logit estimations demonstrate that the wide geographical influence of INESC Porto scientific research is a result not of its international positioning in terms of co-authorships, but rather a result of the quality of its scientific output.Impact and influence assessment methods; R&D Institutions; Bibliometrics, Scientometrics; knowledge network; INESC Porto

The role of handbooks in knowledge creation and diffusion: A case of science and technology studies

Genre is considered to be an important element in scholarly communication and in the practice of scientific disciplines. However, scientometric studies have typically focused on a single genre, the journal article. The goal of this study is to understand the role that handbooks play in knowledge creation and diffusion and their relationship with the genre of journal articles, particularly in highly interdisciplinary and emergent social science and humanities disciplines. To shed light on these questions we focused on handbooks and journal articles published over the last four decades belonging to the research area of Science and Technology Studies (STS), broadly defined. To get a detailed picture we used the full-text of five handbooks (500,000 words) and a well-defined set of 11,700 STS articles. We confirmed the methodological split of STS into qualitative and quantitative (scientometric) approaches. Even when the two traditions explore similar topics (e.g., science and gender) they approach them from different starting points. The change in cognitive foci in both handbooks and articles partially reflects the changing trends in STS research, often driven by technology. Using text similarity measures we found that, in the case of STS, handbooks play no special role in either focusing the research efforts or marking their decline. In general, they do not represent the summaries of research directions that have emerged since the previous edition of the handbook.Comment: Accepted for publication in Journal of Informetric

Universality of citation distributions: towards an objective measure of scientific impact

We study the distributions of citations received by a single publication within several disciplines, spanning broad areas of science. We show that the probability that an article is cited $c$ times has large variations between different disciplines, but all distributions are rescaled on a universal curve when the relative indicator $c_f=c/c_0$ is considered, where $c_0$ is the average number of citations per article for the discipline. In addition we show that the same universal behavior occurs when citation distributions of articles published in the same field, but in different years, are compared. These findings provide a strong validation of $c_f$ as an unbiased indicator for citation performance across disciplines and years. Based on this indicator, we introduce a generalization of the h-index suitable for comparing scientists working in different fields.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. accepted for publication in Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. US

Research in emerging fields: Who takes the lead?.

In the present piece we study research performance and collaboration of the European Union and the most active countries in emerging topics that have been identified in a dynamic cluster analysis of selected Web of Science Subject Categories in the period 1999-2008.