Bibliometrics, reference enhanced databases and research evaluation

This study presents the panoramic view of the described issues related to coverage, services and bibliometrics for Research Evaluation (RE) purposes by three reference enhanced databases. The researchers’ viewpoint is based on the relevant literature and data accessed from most preferred citation sources: Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.The study seeks the worldview challenges, highlights and theorizes the core issues for those regions and disciplines that have more challenges and fewer opportunities in getting publishing, citing and cited by. It discusses the new insights and directs the stakeholders to explore other possible sources, metrics and evaluation techniques for RE

The development of computer science research in the People's Republic of China 2000-2009: A bibliometric study

This paper reports a bibliometric study of the development of computer science research in the People's Republic of China in the 21st century, using data from the Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports and CORE databases. Focusing on the areas of data mining, operating systems and web design, it is shown that whilst the productivity of Chinese research has risen dramatically over the period under review, its impact is still low when compared with established scientific nations such as the USA, the UK and Japan. The publication and citation data for China are compared with corresponding data for the other three BRIC nations (Brazil, Russian and India). It is shown that China dominates the BRIC nations in terms of both publications and citations, but that Indian publications often have a greater individual impact. © The Author(s) 2012

Ranking forestry journals using the h-index

An expert ranking of forestry journals was compared with journal impact factors and h-indices computed from the ISI Web of Science and internet-based data. Citations reported by Google Scholar appear to offer the most efficient way to rank all journals objectively, in a manner consistent with other indicators. This h-index exhibited a high correlation with the journal impact factor (r=0.92), but is not confined to journals selected by any particular commercial provider. A ranking of 180 forestry journals is presented, on the basis of this index.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables. New table added in response to reviewer comment

Convergent validity of bibliometric Google Scholar data in the field of chemistry: Citation counts for papers that were accepted by Angewandte Chemie International Edition or rejected but published elsewhere, using Google Scholar, Science Citation Index, Scopus, and Chemical Abstracts

Examining a comprehensive set of papers (n = 1837) that were accepted for publication by the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition (one of the prime chemistry journals in the world) or rejected by the journal but then published elsewhere, this study tested the extent to which the use of the freely available database Google Scholar (GS) can be expected to yield valid citation counts in the field of chemistry. Analyses of citations for the set of papers returned by three fee-based databases – Science Citation Index, Scopus, and Chemical Abstracts – were compared to the analysis of citations found using GS data. Whereas the analyses using citations returned by the three fee-based databases show very similar results, the results of the analysis using GS citation data differed greatly from the findings using citations from the fee-based databases. Our study therefore supports, on the one hand, the convergent validity of citation analyses based on data from the fee-based databases and, on the other hand, the lack of convergent validity of the citation analysis based on the GS data

H-Index: The key to research output assessment

The capacity of research has increased enormously with number of working and published research papers, research journals, research repositories, indexing and abstracting agencies and research scholars/authors proffering varied knowledge. Every field has its own way of monitoring and evaluation and similarly so does the research field. There are multiple ways of assessing the research journals, published papers and authors in order to classify research output time to time and also to acknowledge and recognize the new knowledge and information creation by the authors. Narrowing our research domain to research ranking then just few years ago, H-Index has developed its importance and use to justify the authors profile, research papers and journals in evaluating the research quality of an author or may it be a Research Journal or even universities. This paper describes the H-Index default purpose, accuracy, assessment of how it assesses the research work of author/ journals/ Universities and for which of them it matters much. The findings revealed very frankly that h-index is comparatively a better method to rank researchers only, while, interesting to foretell if any other competing ranking method is more better or a new invention it’s on it way. Let’s dig in more to have a brighter enlightenment than H-Index

H-Index: The key to research output assessment

The capacity of research has increased enormously with number of working and published research papers, research journals, research repositories, indexing and abstracting agencies and research scholars/authors proffering varied knowledge. Every field has its own way of monitoring and evaluation and similarly so does the research field. There are multiple ways of assessing the research journals, published papers and authors in order to classify research output time to time and also to acknowledge and recognize the new knowledge and information creation by the authors. Narrowing our research domain to research ranking then just few years ago, H-Index has developed its importance and use to justify the authors profile, research papers and journals in evaluating the research quality of an author or may it be a Research Journal or even universities. This paper describes the H-Index default purpose, accuracy, assessment of how it assesses the research work of author/ journals/ Universities and for which of them it matters much. The findings revealed very frankly that h-index is comparatively a better method to rank researchers only, while, interesting to foretell if any other competing ranking method is more better or a new invention it’s on it way. Let’s dig in more to have a brighter enlightenment than H-Index

Involvement and productivity of research and development workers: A case study of a publicly-funded research laboratory

Purpose The effect of global integration of businesses and interchange of ideas and technology through internet has many facets. Increase in economic recessions and decrease in research funding has forced both private and public sector research organizations to introduce measures of self-sustainability. Enhancing research and development (R&D) productivity of researchers can be one of those measures. The purpose of this paper is to attempt toward identifying and analyzing those factors of productivity that may be related to the manpower in R&D. Design/methodology/approach Based upon the theoretical background and the nature of data available, this empirical study has been carried out as a case study for a public sector research laboratory. The extent of involvement in research projects have been analyzed with respect to the R&D outputs generated by the researchers, which if found to be positively related, may be focussed upon, for increasing productivity of manpower in R&D. Several other determinants of R&D productivity were identified from the literature review and were analyzed in association with the “involvement.” “Robust Regression” technique was used for the statistical analysis. Findings It was found that the R&D productivity of researchers has a positive correlation with their extent of involvement in the R&D projects. Practical implications The result may help in creation of the policies for enhancing organizational self-sustainability. Originality/value Several prior studies have been conducted with different determinants of R&D productivity but hardly any studies were found considering “extent of manpower involvement in research projects.” This study can be useful for public sector research organizations to relate the findings with their endeavors of enhancing R&D productivity

Open access and Scopus: A new approach to scientific visibility from the standpoint of access

The last few years have seen the emergence of several open access (OA) options in scholarly communication, which can be grouped broadly into two areas referred to as gold and green roads. Several recent studies have shown how large the extent of OA is, but there have been few studies showing the impact of OA in the visibility of journals covering all scientific fields and geographical regions.This research presents a series of informative analyses providing a broad overview of the degree of proliferation of OA journals in a data sample of about 17,000 active journals indexed in Scopus. This study shows a new approach to scientific visibility from a systematic combination of four databases: Scopus, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Rights Metadata for Open Archiving (RoMEO)/Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access (SHERPA), and SciMago Journal Rank] and provides an overall, global view of journals according to their formal OA status. The results primarily relate to the number of journals, not to the number of documents published in these journals, and show that in all the disciplinary groups, the presence of green road journals widely surpasses the percentage of gold road publications. The peripheral and emerging regions have greater proportions of gold road journals. These journals belong for the most part to the last quartile. The benefits of OA on visibility of the journals are to be found on the green route, but paradoxically, this advantage is not lent by the OA, per se, but rather by the quality of the articles/journals themselves regardless of their mode of access.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació