Constructing bibliometric networks: A comparison between full and fractional counting

The analysis of bibliometric networks, such as co-authorship, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation networks, has received a considerable amount of attention. Much less attention has been paid to the construction of these networks. We point out that different approaches can be taken to construct a bibliometric network. Normally the full counting approach is used, but we propose an alternative fractional counting approach. The basic idea of the fractional counting approach is that each action, such as co-authoring or citing a publication, should have equal weight, regardless of for instance the number of authors, citations, or references of a publication. We present two empirical analyses in which the full and fractional counting approaches yield very different results. These analyses deal with co-authorship networks of universities and bibliographic coupling networks of journals. Based on theoretical considerations and on the empirical analyses, we conclude that for many purposes the fractional counting approach is preferable over the full counting one

Differences in scientific collaboration and their effects on research influence: A quantitative analysis of nursing publications in Latin America (Scopus, 2005-2020)

This work is mainly aimed at the detection, visualization and description of the scientific collaboration patterns in the Nursing field in Latin America as a response to the lack of evidence on the implications of collaboration and its effects on the scientific influence in the Nursing field. For this purpose, a retrospective quantitative analysis was conducted by including all the publications classified under the code 2900 in All Science Journal Classification Codes of Scopus, corresponding to the field of General Nursing during 2005¿2020. A total of 40 countries and 362,354 unique publications were analyzed, although the main subset herein consists of 18,371 unique publications authored by Latin-American institutions. World proportion of Latin-American publications in Nursing is higher than all the publications in the region. This increase is especially remarkable in the latest year of the studied period, which may result from the progressive increase in the numbers of nursing schools, the diversity in the graduate and specialization programs, the creation of scientific societies, and the many conferences carried out recently on Nursing.This work was supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of Excellence of University Professors (EPUC3M02), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation) to pay off the onerous article processing charges