Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance

A comparison of two techniques for bibliometric mapping: Multidimensional scaling and VOS

VOS is a new mapping technique that can serve as an alternative to the well-known technique of multidimensional scaling. We present an extensive comparison between the use of multidimensional scaling and the use of VOS for constructing bibliometric maps. In our theoretical analysis, we show the mathematical relation between the two techniques. In our experimental analysis, we use the techniques for constructing maps of authors, journals, and keywords. Two commonly used approaches to bibliometric mapping, both based on multidimensional scaling, turn out to produce maps that suffer from artifacts. Maps constructed using VOS turn out not to have this problem. We conclude that in general maps constructed using VOS provide a more satisfactory representation of a data set than maps constructed using well-known multidimensional scaling approaches

Measuring Author Research Relatedness: A Comparison of Word-based,Topic-based and Author Cocitation Approaches

Relationships between authors based on characteristics of published literature have been studied for decades. Author cocitation analysis using mapping techniques has been most frequently used to study how closely two authors are thought to be in intellectual space based on how members of the research community co-cite their works. Other approaches exist to study author relatedness based more directly on the text of their published works. In this study we present static and dynamic word-based approaches using vector space modeling, as well as a topic-based approach based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation for mapping author research relatedness. Vector space modeling is used to define an author space consisting of works by a given author. Outcomes for the two word-based approaches and a topic-based approach for 50 prolific authors in library and information science are compared with more traditional author cocitation analysis using multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis. The two word-based approaches produced similar outcomes except where two authors were frequent co-authors for the majority of their articles. The topic-based approach produced the most distinctive map

Author Cocitation Analysis Using Custom Bibliographic Databases: An Exploratory Tool for Digging Up Reference Disciplines

Researchers in any academic discipline build on each other\u27s and their own previous work. Definitions, topics and concepts are shared. It is necessary to continuously follow up on interesting lines of inquiry. It is also necessary to identify, examine, and trace the intellectual linkage to each other in a given academic field as a basis of assessing the current state of its field to guide future development. Over the past 80 years, the way we count and analyze the intellectual linkage dramatically changed from the early manual transcribing and statistical computation of citation data to computer-based citation data creation and its manipulation. Most citation and cocitation analyses rely on commercial citation databases such as Social Science Citation Index. This paper introduces an alternative approach to conducting author cocitation analysis (ACA) without relying on commercial citation databases, based on custom bibliographic database and cocitation matrix generation systems specifically developed to use the custom database. The alternative approach overcomes several weaknesses of commercial online data-based ACA research. This guide to an alternative approach to ACA will encourage other researchers to explore the intellectual structures of various MIS fields and guide the future development as well as revealing their reference disciplines

Entrepreneurship, structural change, and economic growth

The ability to adjust to structural change is vital to economic development, and entries can be active participants in this process. While the importance of factor reallocations for growth is widely accepted, the role of entrepreneurs in managing these reallocations is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the empirical growth literature. This paper analyzes the role of entrepreneurial activity for adjustments of the sectoral structure and its relevance for regional economic development. The historical framework is the accelerated economic transformation that occurred in industrialized countries during the mid 1970s, resulting in an increasing need to adjust. Based on German data from 1975 to 2002, evidence is presented that sectoral reallocations are an important means for transforming entrepreneurial activity into growth.Entrepreneurship, new business formation, regional development, structural change