Citation analysis as a practical tool for managers and entrepreneurs: selected scientometric concepts relevant for business model improvement

Entrepreneurs often face the challenge of hiring academic researchers who could provide know-how or serve as potential business partners, collaborators or expert consultants. Since hiring experts may be costly, it is essential that only the best specialists be used. I describe some quantitative scientometric tools (such as h-index and gindex) aimed at evaluating academic quality of institutions or of individual researchers. Such tools provide information that is easily accessible, comprehensible and merit-based, although they must be used with caution, since disciplines differ in the absolute values of indexes. I show how to use scientometrics in a comparative manner to document low output and poor quality of the publications of Polish academic authors in the area of business and management. I also argue that some governmental procedures for rewarding academic excellence are not effective because they reduce incentives for publishing academic papers in English.Przedsiębiorcy stają coraz częściej przed wyzwaniem nawiązania współpracy z badaczami, którzy są potencjalnym źródłem wiedzy eksperckiej i mogą służyć jako partnerzy biznesowi, współpracownicy lub eksperci. Ponieważ wynajęcie ekspertów może być kosztowne, istotnym jest, aby byli to specjaliści o najwyższej jakości. Niniejsza praca zawiera przegląd podstawowych narzędzi naukometrycznych (takich jak indeksy h oraz g), dzięki którym menedżer lub przedsiębiorca może w sposób ilościowy oszacować naukową jakość konkretnych osób albo instytucji. Informacja uzyskana w ten sposób jest ogólnie dostępna, łatwo zrozumiała oraz w dużym stopniu oparta na wartości merytorycznej (a nie np. aktywności administracyjnej) ekspertów, aczkolwiek należy jej używać z ostrożnością. Porównawcza ocena całych dyscyplin może być zilustrowana krytyczną analizą aktywności krajowych badaczy w dziedzinie biznesu i zarządzania, którzy publikują w markowych czasopismach mało prac i o niskiej jakości. Naukometria może również udokumentować niską jakość przyjętych standardów ministerialnych (np. przy ocenie parametrycznej), które zniechęcają autorów do publikowania prac w języku angielskim

A Bibliometric Analysis of an International Research Ethics Trainee Program

We used bibliometric analysis to evaluate the citations associated with publications by trainees in the Fogarty International Center’s International Research Ethics Education and Curriculum Development program. Papers published between 2004 and 2008 were identified for analysis. The outcome measures were total citations, h-index, and i-10. A total of 328 manuscripts were identified, with a yearly average of 66 publications and 363 citations. The median number of citations per paper is 3 (IQR Q1–Q3:6). 12.6% (n = 53) of papers were cited over 10 times and the h-index is 22, indicating that 22 papers had been cited at least 22 times. The data indicate that trainees have been productive and contributed to the scholarly literature. Future studies to benchmark this performance with other bioethics education programs are required to make interpretation of citation analysis more meaningful

Research performance of tenured professors in Portuguese civil engineering departments

This paper presents a bibliometric evaluation of the research performance of tenured Professors in Civil Engineering Departments of six Portuguese Universities using Scopus/Elsevier database. The research performance of Full Professors in Civil Engineering Departments at the Imperial College London (ICL) and MIT was used as benchmark. The bibliometric indexes used in this assessment were the number of papers in SCI journals, ratio SCI papers/year, number of citations (self-citations excluded); ratio citations/SCI paper, h-index, ratio h-index/year, self-citations percentage and uncitedeness rate. Results show that only the Portuguese Civil Engineering Professor with the highest h-index exceeds the average h-index of Full Professors in ICL and almost reach the average h-index of Full Professors in MIT. Top 5% Portuguese Full Professors have more citations and also a higher ratio citations/SCI papers than their counterparts at ICL. The comparison between the average performance of the Top 5% Portuguese Full Professors in the five year period (2009-2013) and their counterparts at the ICL and MIT shows that the former produced slightly more papers, received almost the same citations of ICLs and 64% of the citations received by MITs Top 5% Full Professors in that period

Avaliação da produção científica de professores de Departamentos de Engenharia Civil em Universidades Portuguesas

O presente artigo contém uma análise da produção científica, na base de dados Scopus/Elsevier, de Professores Associados e Catedráticos de Departamentos de Engenharia Civil em seis Universidades Portuguesas. A mesma é baseada no número de artigos em revista, no rácio artigos/ano, no número de citações, no rácio citações/artigo, no índice-h, no rácio índice-h/ano, na percentagem de auto-citações e na percentagem de artigos não citados. O artigo contém ainda uma comparação com desempenho da produção científica média de Professores “Catedráticos” (Full Professors) do Imperial College em Londres (ICL) e do MIT. A referida análise permite concluir que a produção científica Portuguesa na área da Engenharia Civil apresenta diferenças significativas entre os Professores Associados e os Professores Catedráticos das diferentes Universidades, que os Professores de Departamentos de Engenharia Civil mais antigos apresentam uma menor produtividade média que os seus congéneres em Departamentos de Engenharia Civil mais recentes. Particularmente desfavorável é a comparação entre o número médio das citações recebidas pelos artigos publicados em revista dos Professores Catedráticos Portugueses. O grupo dos 5% de Professores Catedráticos de Engenharia Civil em Portugal com o melhor desempenho, apresentam um maior número de citações e um maior rácio citações/artigo do que os seus congéneres no ICL. Quando a comparação de desempenho é feita somente para o quinquénio 2009-2013, os resultados mostram que os primeiros produziram um número de artigos em revista ligeiramente superior ao grupo dos 5% de Professores Catedráticos de Engenharia Civil no ICL e no MIT, mostra também que os artigos dos primeiros receberam quase o mesmo número de citações que os artigos dos seus congéneres no ICL e 64% das citações dos artigos dos “Catedráticos” do MIT. Propõe-se que os indicadores bibliométricos referentes à produção científica mínima, durante um quinquénio, para efeitos de um desempenho excecional incluam cumulativamente 5 artigos/ano, 6 citações/artigo e um índice-h de 7

Universality of Performance Indicators based on Citation and Reference Counts

We find evidence for the universality of two relative bibliometric indicators of the quality of individual scientific publications taken from different data sets. One of these is a new index that considers both citation and reference counts. We demonstrate this universality for relatively well cited publications from a single institute, grouped by year of publication and by faculty or by department. We show similar behaviour in publications submitted to the arXiv e-print archive, grouped by year of submission and by sub-archive. We also find that for reasonably well cited papers this distribution is well fitted by a lognormal with a variance of around 1.3 which is consistent with the results of Radicchi, Fortunato, and Castellano (2008). Our work demonstrates that comparisons can be made between publications from different disciplines and publication dates, regardless of their citation count and without expensive access to the whole world-wide citation graph. Further, it shows that averages of the logarithm of such relative bibliometric indices deal with the issue of long tails and avoid the need for statistics based on lengthy ranking procedures.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, 11 pages of supplementary material. Submitted to Scientometric

Modified Impact Factor (MIF) at Specialty Level: A Way Forward

AbstractJournal Impact Factor (JIF) is gold standard in the field of bibliometric whether published or perished. Its opposition is mainly because of inter- and intra-disciplinary discrepancies. By normalization compared to highest JIF, Modified Impact Factor (MIF) were calculated at disciplines, branches and specialties level & termed as Red, Yellow and Green MIF respectively. For this purpose 10 Top JIF during 2010 from some disciplines of medical & engineering were taken. Then JIF of their branches and specialties were accounted and converted to MIF. Comparative analysis of MIF was more meaningful to remove inter- and intra-disciplinary discrepancies. This new method will help universities as well as researchers to find their proper place values at the specialty level in the era of advancing bibliometric in general & journal reputation, in particular

Bibliometric scoring of an individual’s research output in science and engineering

The relevance of various citation metrics used for parameterization of the research outputs of scientists is reviewed. The rationale of judging the performance of scientists on the basis of the total number of research papers published, the total citations received for these papers or the average citation reckoning per paper has often been criticized. The significance of impact factor of journals in which the papers have appeared has also been debated. The h-index introduced by Jorge E. Hirsch in 2005 has gained some acceptance in this regard but its value is highly dependent on the academic discipline concerned and also varies across sub-disciplines. Because citation practices exhibit wide variations among different fields, a scientist working in a particular discipline need not be disheartened with a low h-index as compared to fellow scientists of a different discipline. The h-index has been successful in assessing the performance of scientists of the same field and at the same stage of their careers. By appropriately scaling the discipline-dependence of h-index, it has also enabled comparison among those working in different disciplines, serving as a simplified, robust, intelligible measure. Several metrics proposed to overcome the flaws of h-index are briefly described