10,651 research outputs found

    Diffusion of scientific credits and the ranking of scientists

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    Recently, the abundance of digital data enabled the implementation of graph based ranking algorithms that provide system level analysis for ranking publications and authors. Here we take advantage of the entire Physical Review publication archive (1893-2006) to construct authors' networks where weighted edges, as measured from opportunely normalized citation counts, define a proxy for the mechanism of scientific credit transfer. On this network we define a ranking method based on a diffusion algorithm that mimics the spreading of scientific credits on the network. We compare the results obtained with our algorithm with those obtained by local measures such as the citation count and provide a statistical analysis of the assignment of major career awards in the area of Physics. A web site where the algorithm is made available to perform customized rank analysis can be found at the address http://www.physauthorsrank.orgComment: Revised version. 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. The portal to compute the rankings of scientists is at http://www.physauthorsrank.or

    Tracing scientific influence

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    Scientometrics is the field of quantitative studies of scholarly activity. It has been used for systematic studies of the fundamentals of scholarly practice as well as for evaluation purposes. Although advocated from the very beginning the use of scientometrics as an additional method for science history is still under explored. In this paper we show how a scientometric analysis can be used to shed light on the reception history of certain outstanding scholars. As a case, we look into citation patterns of a specific paper by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton.Comment: 25 pages LaTe

    The Hirsch spectrum: a novel tool for analysing scientific journals

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    This paper introduces the Hirsch spectrum (h-spectrum) for analyzing the academic reputation of a scientific journal. h-Spectrum is a novel tool based on the Hirsch (h) index. It is easy to construct: considering a specific journal in a specific interval of time, h-spectrum is defined as the distribution representing the h-indexes associated to the authors of the journal articles. This tool allows defining a reference profile of the typical author of a journal, compare different journals within the same scientific field, and provide a rough indication of prestige/reputation of a journal in the scientific community. h-Spectrum can be associated to every journal. Ten specific journals in the Quality Engineering/Quality Management field are analyzed so as to preliminarily investigate the h-spectrum characteristic

    Citation Counts and Evaluation of Researchers in the Internet Age

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    Bibliometric measures derived from citation counts are increasingly being used as a research evaluation tool. Their strengths and weaknesses have been widely analyzed in the literature and are often subject of vigorous debate. We believe there are a few fundamental issues related to the impact of the web that are not taken into account with the importance they deserve. We focus on evaluation of researchers, but several of our arguments may be applied also to evaluation of research institutions as well as of journals and conferences.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

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

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    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

    Unraveling the dynamics of growth, aging and inflation for citations to scientific articles from specific research fields

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    We analyze the time evolution of citations acquired by articles from journals of the American Physical Society (PRA, PRB, PRC, PRD, PRE and PRL). The observed change over time in the number of papers published in each journal is considered an exogenously caused variation in citability that is accounted for by a normalization. The appropriately inflation-adjusted citation rates are found to be separable into a preferential-attachment-type growth kernel and a purely obsolescence-related (i.e., monotonously decreasing as a function of time since publication) aging function. Variations in the empirically extracted parameters of the growth kernels and aging functions associated with different journals point to research-field-specific characteristics of citation intensity and knowledge flow. Comparison with analogous results for the citation dynamics of technology-disaggregated cohorts of patents provides deeper insight into the basic principles of information propagation as indicated by citing behavior.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Elsevier style, v2: revised version to appear in J. Informetric

    On the compliance of women engineers with a gendered scientific system

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    There has been considerable effort in the last decade to increase the participation of women in engineering through various policies. However, there has been little empirical research on gender disparities in engineering which help underpin the effective preparation, co-ordination, and implementation of the science and technology (S&T) policies. This article aims to present a comprehensive gendered analysis of engineering publications across different specialties and provide a cross-gender analysis of research output and scientific impact of engineering researchers in academic, governmental, and industrial sectors. For this purpose, 679,338 engineering articles published from 2008 to 2013 are extracted from the Web of Science database and 974,837 authorships are analyzed. The structures of co-authorship collaboration networks in different engineering disciplines are examined, highlighting the role of female scientists in the diffusion of knowledge. The findings reveal that men dominate 80% of all the scientific production in engineering. Women engineers publish their papers in journals with higher Impact Factors than their male peers, but their work receives lower recognition (fewer citations) from the scientific community. Engineers —regardless of their gender—contribute to the reproduction of the male-dominated scientific structures through forming and repeating their collaborations predominantly with men. The results of this study call for integration of data driven gender-related policies in existing S&T discourse
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