Characterization, description, and considerations for the use of funding acknowledgement data in Web of Science

Funding acknowledgements found in scientific publications have been used to study the impact of funding on research since the 1970s. However, no broad scale indexation of that paratextual element was done until 2008, when Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science started to add funding acknowledgement information to its bibliographic records. As this new information provides a new dimension to bibliometric data that can be systematically exploited, it is important to understand the characteristics of these data and the underlying implications for their use. This paper analyses the presence and distribution of funding acknowledgement data covered in Web of Science. Our results show that prior to 2009 funding acknowledgements coverage is extremely low and therefore not reliable. Since 2008, funding information has been collected mainly for publications indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded; more recently (2015), inclusion of funding texts for publications indexed in the Social Science Citation Index has been implemented. Arts & Humanities Citation Index content is not indexed for funding acknowledgement data. Moreover, English-language publications are the most reliably covered. Finally, not all types of documents are equally covered for funding information indexation and only articles and reviews show consistent coverage. The characterization of the funding acknowledgement information collected by Thomson Reuters can therefore help understand the possibilities offered by the data but also their limitations

Author-level metrics: Its impact on scholarly output evaluation among various publication metrics

Publication metrics indicate the visibility and reach of a research publication. The metrics can be at article-level, author-level, and journal-level to measure the scholarly output and its impact.1 Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyze various publications mostly used in the field of library and information science; whereas, scientometrics is the sub-field concerned with the science of metrics for the measurement and analysis of scholarly publications.2,3 Readers are not always well informed about the various publication metrics, and use them without knowing how to interpret them, their strength and limitations.4,5   The Internet has revolutionized the dissemination, visibility, and impact of documented evidence available on the Web. The author-level metrics (ALmetrics) provides a measure for the research output of an individual author.6 It summarizes and aggregates the impact of an author's publications by using metrics like h-index (Hirsch-index7, calculated from the number of articles N by an author that have each received at least N citations), i10-index (measures the number of publications with at least 10 citations, Google Scholar), g-index (an improvement of h-index by giving more weight to highly-cited articles), e-index (differentiates between scientists with similar h-indices but different citation patterns) and others.8   The h-index (proposed by J.E. Hirsch in 2005) is a well-accepted metric to assess the scientific impact of an individual author and/or institution due to its simplicity for cumulative research output to indicate a number of papers (h) with at least h citations, e.g. h-index 9 means that among all publications by an author, 9 publications have at least 9 citations each.9,10 Various other new additions are proposed to complement the h-index to minimize its shortcomings in calculations of the index due to co-authors, self/collaborative citation, publication age, publication count, etc.11 The h-core is a contextualized evaluation considered more useful.12 Combination of newer variants help complement and eliminate some of the limitations of h-index, for example, R-index (to measure citation intensity of h-score) and AR-index (to include the age of publications).13 14 The w-index is another simple and useful improvement to the h-index to assess the integrated impact of a researcher's work.15 The rh-index (robust h-index) adds value for the self- and collaborative citation.1

Könyvszemle = Book reviews

The research field of scientometrics is concerned with measuring and analyzing science. In practice, this is often done by restricting the impact of publications, journals, and researchers to a mere frequency. However, scientific activities (co-publication, citation, labor mobility) display clear spatiotemporal patterns, and such patterns have rarely been considered in traditional scientometrics. In this work we focus on the study of citations and present a spatiotemporal scientometrics framework to measure the citation impact of research output by taking physical space, place, and time into account. Specifically, we use the statistics of categorical places (institutions, cities, and countries), spatiotemporal kernel density estimations, cartograms, distance distribution curves, and point-pattern analysis to identify spatiotemporal citation patterns. Moreover, we propose a series of s-indices, such as S institution-index, S city-index, and S country-index to evaluate a scientist’s impact as a complement to non-spatial citation indicators, e.g., h-index and g-index. In addition, we have developed an interactive web application which allows users to visually explore research topics, authors, publications, as well as the spread of citations through space and time. Our work offers insights on the role of location in scientific knowledge diffusion

Exploiting citation networks for large-scale author name disambiguation

We present a novel algorithm and validation method for disambiguating author names in very large bibliographic data sets and apply it to the full Web of Science (WoS) citation index. Our algorithm relies only upon the author and citation graphs available for the whole period covered by the WoS. A pair-wise publication similarity metric, which is based on common co-authors, self-citations, shared references and citations, is established to perform a two-step agglomerative clustering that first connects individual papers and then merges similar clusters. This parameterized model is optimized using an h-index based recall measure, favoring the correct assignment of well-cited publications, and a name-initials-based precision using WoS metadata and cross-referenced Google Scholar profiles. Despite the use of limited metadata, we reach a recall of 87% and a precision of 88% with a preference for researchers with high h-index values. 47 million articles of WoS can be disambiguated on a single machine in less than a day. We develop an h-index distribution model, confirming that the prediction is in excellent agreement with the empirical data, and yielding insight into the utility of the h-index in real academic ranking scenarios.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

The rate of growth in scientific publication and the decline in coverage provided by Science Citation Index

The growth rate of scientific publication has been studied from 1907 to 2007 using available data from a number of literature databases, including Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Traditional scientific publishing, that is publication in peer-reviewed journals, is still increasing although there are big differences between fields. There are no indications that the growth rate has decreased in the last 50 years. At the same time publication using new channels, for example conference proceedings, open archives and home pages, is growing fast. The growth rate for SCI up to 2007 is smaller than for comparable databases. This means that SCI was covering a decreasing part of the traditional scientific literature. There are also clear indications that the coverage by SCI is especially low in some of the scientific areas with the highest growth rate, including computer science and engineering sciences. The role of conference proceedings, open access archives and publications published on the net is increasing, especially in scientific fields with high growth rates, but this has only partially been reflected in the databases. The new publication channels challenge the use of the big databases in measurements of scientific productivity or output and of the growth rate of science. Because of the declining coverage and this challenge it is problematic that SCI has been used and is used as the dominant source for science indicators based on publication and citation numbers. The limited data available for social sciences show that the growth rate in SSCI was remarkably low and indicate that the coverage by SSCI was declining over time. National Science Indicators from Thomson Reuters is based solely on SCI, SSCI and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). Therefore the declining coverage of the citation databases problematizes the use of this source

Bibliographic review of research publications on access to and use of medicines in low-income and middle-income countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: identifying the research gaps.

BJECTIVES: We assessed the situation of academic publications on access to and use of medicines (ATM) in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) of the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). We aimed to inform priority setting for research on ATM in the region. DESIGN: Bibliographic review of published studies. SETTING: LMICs in EMR. INCLUSION CRITERIA: Publications on ATM issues originating from or focusing on EMR LMICs covering the period 2000-2011. Publications involving multinational studies were included if at least one eligible country had been included in the study. INFORMATION SOURCES AND DATA EXTRACTION: We conducted comprehensive searches of the PubMed, Social Science Citation Index and Science Citation Index. We used the WHO ATM framework for data extraction and synthesis. We analysed the data according to the ATM issues, health system levels, year of publication and the countries of origin or focus of the studies. RESULTS: 151 articles met the inclusion criteria. Most articles (77%) originated from LMICs in EMR, suggesting that the majority of evidence on ATM in the region is home-grown. Over 60% of articles were from Iran, Pakistan, Jordan and Lebanon (in order of volume), while we found no studies assessing ATM in Somalia, Djibouti and South Sudan, all low-income countries. Most studies focused on the rational use of medicines, while affordability and financing received limited attention. There was a steady growth over time in the number of ATM publications in the region (r=0.87). CONCLUSIONS: There is a growing trend, over the years, of more studies from the region appearing in international journals. There is a need for further research on the financing and affordability aspects of ATM in the region. Cross-border issues and the roles of non-health sectors in access to medicines in the region have not been explored widely

The production and diffusion of policy knowledge

"The published works of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) represent the most immediate and tangible measure of the new policy-related knowledge attributable to the institute, its staff, and research partners. This study provides a quantitative assessment of the number, nature, form, and use of IFPRI's published products since 1979 and compares and contrasts that with the publication performance of several similar agencies, including the economics and social sciences programs of the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) respectively, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), the Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies (BIDS), and the now defunct Stanford University Food Research Institute (SFRI). Overall, IFPRI's circulated output is extensive, published not only in a broad portfolio of leading scholarly journals, but also in a wide range of books, technical reports, and extension documents. The amount of published output has tended to increase throughout IFPRI's history, and it continues to do so. Going beyond counting and classifying IFPRI's published record, we report the results of a bibliometric assessment of IFPRI and the comparison institutes for the period 1981–96 using the publication and citation performance details recorded in the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI) Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index data bases. Citations to published literature are not indicative of an impact on policy or the economy generally but on further research and analysis. An analysis of coauthorship patterns provides an indication of impact too (more directly through the conduct of joint research), as well as indications of the way the research is carried out. Our analysis reveals the role IFPRI plays as a knowledge intermediary between the scholarly community and policy clienteles, but that a high proportion of its research collaborations leading to formal publications (and especially publications in the leading journals covered in ISI's data bases) involve researchers in advanced agencies. This partly reflects the limited capacity to perform food policy research in many developing countries — itself a reflection of local priorities for education and limited, long-term international support to increase scientific capacity in developing countries — and also underscores the role IFPRI could, and arguably should, play in redressing this state of affairs." Authors' AbstractInternational Food Policy Research Institute History ,Research institutes Evaluation ,Communication in learning and scholarship ,Bibliometrics ,Information science Statistical methods ,Knowledge management ,International Food Policy Research Institute Communications systems Evaluation ,Food policy Research ,