Scientific workflows for bibliometrics

Scientific workflows organize the assembly of specialized software into an overall data flow and are particularly well suited for multi-step analyses using different types of software tools. They are also favorable in terms of reusability, as previously designed workflows could be made publicly available through the myExperiment community and then used in other workflows. We here illustrate how scientific workflows and the Taverna workbench in particular can be used in bibliometrics. We discuss the specific capabilities of Taverna that makes this software a powerful tool in this field, such as automated data import via Web services, data extraction from XML by XPaths, and statistical analysis and visualization with R. The support of the latter is particularly relevant, as it allows integration of a number of recently developed R packages specifically for bibliometrics. Examples are used to illustrate the possibilities of Taverna in the fields of bibliometrics and scientometrics.Proteomic

Stability and longevity in the publication careers of U.S. doctorate recipients

Since the 1950s, the number of doctorate recipients has risen dramatically in the United States. In this paper, we investigate whether the longevity of doctorate recipients’ publication careers has changed. This is achieved by matching 1951–2010 doctorate recipients with rare names in astrophysics, chemistry, economics, genetics and psychology in the dissertation database ProQuest to their publications in the publication database Web of Science. Our study shows that pre-PhD publication careers have changed: the median year of first publication has shifted from after the PhD to several years before PhD in most of the studied fields. In contrast, post-PhD publication career spans have not changed much in most fields. The share of doctorate recipients who have published for more than twenty years has remained stable over time; the shares of doctorate recipients publishing for shorter periods also remained almost unchanged. Thus, though there have been changes in pre-PhD publication careers, post-PhD career spans remained quite stable

On the map: Nature and Science editorials

Bibliometric mapping of scientific articles based on keywords and technical terms in abstracts is now frequently used to chart scientific fields. In contrast, no significant mapping has been applied to the full texts of non-specialist documents. Editorials in Nature and Science are such non-specialist documents, reflecting the views of the two most read scientific journals on science, technology and policy issues. We use the VOSviewer mapping software to chart the topics of these editorials. A term map and a document map are constructed and clusters are distinguished in both of them. The validity of the document clustering is verified by a manual analysis of a sample of the editorials. This analysis confirms the homogeneity of the clusters obtained by mapping and augments the latter with further detail. As a result, the analysis provides reliable information on the distribution of the editorials over topics, and on differences between the journals. The most striking difference is that Nature devotes more attention to internal science policy issues and Science more to the political influence of scientists

Bibliometric Mapping: Eight Decades of Analytical Chemistry, With Special Focus on the Use of Mass Spectrometry

Bibliometric Mapping: Eight Decades of Analytical Chemistry, With Special Focus on the Use of Mass Spectrometr

Effects of appointment types on the availability of research infrastructure, work pressure, stress, and career attitudes of PhD candidates of a Dutch university

Middle Eastern Studie

Career length by five-year period and field.

<p>Papers published after publications interruptions of over five years removed (only plotted when number of doctorate recipients with one or more published papers in a five-year period > 25, and when all doctorate recipients in a five-year period have had the opportunity to publish in a given period). Shortest careers are at the bottom of the stacked bars, the longest at the top.</p

First publication relative to the year of PhD.

<p>For doctorate recipients with at least one publication, the relative year of their first publication was determined (with 0 being the year of PhD). Relative year of first publication is plotted by year of PhD (in ten-year periods; only plotted when number of doctorate recipients with at least one publication in a period > 50). The diamond represents the mean relative year of first publication. Stars denote the median of a group differs significantly from the ‘01-’10 group (p < 0.001 in Kruskal-Wallis test). The selection of doctorate recipients was restricted to having a first publication between five years before and three years after PhD (astrophysics, chemistry and genetics) or between five years before and five years after PhD (economics and psychology; see<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0154741#sec002" target="_blank">Data and methods</a> section).</p

Percentage of doctorate recipients with at least one publication.

<p>Datapoint only shown when number of doctorate recipients with a unique name in a given period > 100.</p