Citation Scores Research Articles

Research performance by Federal and National Research Universities and impact of competitive funding on their publication activity

Bibliometrics has become a very important tool in government science policy in nowadays Russia. The paper describes the bibliometric performance by two research communities: the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) and Higher education sector (HES). Sources were the Science Citation Index-Expanded for 2007-2011 and the Journal Citation Reports, 2010. More than 141,600 records and their citation scores were analyzed by broad subject categories, organizations, source of publications and share of internationally collaborative papers. Despite huge financial inflow in HES in the last seven year, RAS performance is still much stronger. The RAS is responsible for 56.3% of the research output, the HES for 42.6%. Research portfolio is focused on “hard sciences”. A significant involvement of RAS in collaboration with HES was observed. Its share of collaborative papers with HES increased from 26.6% in 2007 up to 33.8% in 2011. Federal Universities and National Research demonstrate more strong collaboration with the RAS. A special study was conducted of papers cited at least 30 times (1153 unique records). International collaboration had a significant impact on Russian citation scores. Among 1153 highly cited papers 86.6% were internationally collaborative papers. The RAS contributed 59.4% to number of highly cited papers, twice more than HES. Our data demonstrate a dominannce by Russian Academy of Sciences performance over performance of Higher Education Sector and provide a better empirical basis for science policy.

Nanomaterials: A Scientometric Analysis

The emergence of the nanomaterials in the growing innovative technologies stimulates to do an analysis on the research work on nanomaterials by means of Scientometric techniques. The research work has been conducted by means of the selection of database of sample of 10 years from 2003 to 2010 which reveals that the total no. publication is 16958, along with the total Global Citation Score of 208085 and 9969 as total Local Citation Score. It was proved that the literatures on nanomaterials published in 11 different documents and that too in 17 different languages throughout the world. The Chi-square test proves that the significant error value is lesser than the critical value which is a proven possibility to predict the future trend of the no. of publications. The different types of publication proves that the journal article alone may no longer stand as a mark of the research output and as well as for citations. English language research work tends to be at the first place among the other language publications. The authorship pattern proves that the multi authored papers plays a dominant role in the research publication. Bradford’s Law has been utilized to find out the core journals which produced more articles. A suggestion has been given through this article to the global research society to enhance the scientists with exclusive opportunities to do more and more research on nanomaterials towards the betterment of the society.

Informetric explanation of some Leiden Ranking graphs

The S‐shaped functional relation between the mean citation score and the proportion of top 10% publications for the 500 Leiden Ranking universities is explained using results of the shifted Lotka function. Also the concave or convex relation between the proportion of top 100θ% publications, for different fractions θ, is explained using the obtained new informetric model.

Field‐normalized impact factors (IFs): A comparison of rescaling and fractionally counted IFs

Two methods for comparing impact factors and citation rates across fields of science are tested against each other using citations to the 3,705 journals in the Science Citation Index 2010 (CD‐Rom version of SCI) and the 13 field categories used for the Science and Engineering Indicators of the U.S. National Science Board. We compare (a) normalization by counting citations in proportion to the length of the reference list (1/N of references) with (b) rescaling by dividing citation scores by the arithmetic mean of the citation rate of the cluster. Rescaling is analytical and therefore independent of the quality of the attribution to the sets, whereas fractional counting provides an empirical strategy for normalization among sets (by evaluating the between‐group variance). By the fairness test of Radicchi and Castellano (), rescaling outperforms fractional counting of citations for reasons that we consider.

A heuristic hierarchical scheme for academic search and retrieval

We present PubSearch, a hybrid heuristic scheme for re-ranking academic papers retrieved from standard digital libraries such as the ACM Portal. The scheme is based on the hierarchical combination of a custom implementation of the term frequency heuristic, a time-depreciated citation score and a graph-theoretic computed score that relates the paper’s index terms with each other. We designed and developed a meta-search engine that submits user queries to standard digital repositories of academic publications and re-ranks the repository results using the hierarchical heuristic scheme. We evaluate our proposed re-ranking scheme via user feedback against the results of ACM Portal on a total of 58 different user queries specified from 15 different users. The results show that our proposed scheme significantly outperforms ACM Portal in terms of retrieval precision as measured by most common metrics in Information Retrieval including Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG), Expected Reciprocal Rank (ERR) as well as a newly introduced lexicographic rule (LEX) of ranking search results. In particular, PubSearch outperforms ACM Portal by more than 77% in terms of ERR, by more than 11% in terms of NDCG, and by more than 907.5% in terms of LEX. We also re-rank the top-10 results of a subset of the original 58 user queries produced by Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic Search, and ArnetMiner; the results show that PubSearch compares very well against these search engines as well. The proposed scheme can be easily plugged in any existing search engine for retrieval of academic publications.

The impact of citations in International Finance

The globalization of business and economic activities is expected to increase readership and citation performance for articles with an international focus. This study measures the impact of such articles on rankings and citation scores of thirty-one academic journals in accounting, economics and finance. Sample statistics show that these journals increased their proportion of global articles from a median of 15% in 2001 to a median of 25% in 2008. Two regression models (logistic and OLS) support the increasing role of international articles on journal performance. Both approaches show that improvements in ranking and citation scores were positively affected by global coverage, especially in economics. The results also highlight that two research topics dominate the field of global finance: International Corporate Governance and International Banking.

Cross-pollination of research findings, although uncommon, may accelerate discovery of human disease genes

BackgroundTechnological leaps in genome sequencing have resulted in a surge in discovery of human disease genes. These discoveries have led to increased clarity on the molecular pathology of disease and have also demonstrated considerable overlap in the genetic roots of human diseases. In light of this large genetic overlap, we tested whether cross-disease research approaches lead to faster, more impactful discoveries.MethodsWe leveraged several gene-disease association databases to calculate a Mutual Citation Score (MCS) for 10,853 pairs of genetically related diseases to measure the frequency of cross-citation between research fields. To assess the importance of cooperative research, we computed an Individual Disease Cooperation Score (ICS) and the average publication rate for each disease.ResultsFor all disease pairs with one gene in common, we found that the degree of genetic overlap was a poor predictor of cooperation (r2=0.3198) and that the vast majority of disease pairs (89.56%) never cited previous discoveries of the same gene in a different disease, irrespective of the level of genetic similarity between the diseases. A fraction (0.25%) of the pairs demonstrated cross-citation in greater than 5% of their published genetic discoveries and 0.037% cross-referenced discoveries more than 10% of the time. We found strong positive correlations between ICS and publication rate (r2=0.7931), and an even stronger correlation between the publication rate and the number of cross-referenced diseases (r2=0.8585). These results suggested that cross-disease research may have the potential to yield novel discoveries at a faster pace than singular disease research.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the frequency of cross-disease study is low despite the high level of genetic similarity among many human diseases, and that collaborative methods may accelerate and increase the impact of new genetic discoveries. Until we have a better understanding of the taxonomy of human diseases, cross-disease research approaches should become the rule rather than the exception.

Heterogeneity of collaboration and its relationship with research impact in a biomedical field

This paper analyses existing trends in the collaborative structure of the Pharmacology and Pharmacy field in Spain and explores its relationship with research impact. The evolution in terms of size of the research community, the typology of collaborative links (national, international) and the scope of the collaboration (size of links, type of partners) are studied by means of different measures based on co-authorship. Growing heterogeneity of collaboration and impact of research are observed over the years. Average journal impact (MNJS) and citation score (MNCS) normalised to world average tend to grow with the number of authors, the number of institutions and collaboration type. Both national and international collaboration show MNJS values above the country's average, but only internationally co-authored publications attain citation rates above the world's average. This holds at country and institutional sector levels, although not all institutional sectors obtain the same benefit from collaboration. Multilateral collaboration with high-level R&D countries yields the highest values of research impact, although the impact of collaboration with low-level R&D countries has been optimised over the years. Although scientific collaboration is frequently based on individual initiative, policy actions are required to promote the more heterogeneous types of collaboration.

MicroRNA 21 in tissue injury and inflammation: AUTHORS' RETROSPECTIVE

This editorial refers to an article by S. Roy et al .[1][1] published in Cardiovascular Research in 2009. It is accompanied by an editorial by J. Bauersachs (doi:10.1093/cvr/cvs200) as part of this Spotlight on Landmark Papers in Cardiovascular Research. This editorial celebrates the extraordinary citation of our recent publication1 in Cardiovascular Research highlighting the emerging significance of miR-21 in the heart, particularly in the context of tissue injury, inflammation, and remodelling. The work was first submitted to a leading cardiovascular journal in January 2008. The submission was summarily rejected, citing ‘paucity of novel mechanistic insight’. The work went on to be published in Cardiovascular Research and has now been cited 150 times in 3 years, being recognized as one of the most highly cited articles in the journal. Had the work been published in the original journal it would have been published almost a year in advance and would have today ranked third in citation score among all of nearly 300 articles published in that journal in 2009. Here, we briefly review the progress in the field since our original work was published.⇓ Box 1 Title page including abstract from the original 2009 publication in Cardiovascular Research .1 Used with permission of Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. Identified as one of the first mammalian microRNAs (miRs), the miR-21 sequence is strongly conserved throughout evolution. During the early phase of development of miR-21 biology, most of the target coding genes reported were tumour suppressors. Thus, miR-21 represents one of the first ‘oncomirs’ named. Two concurrent works1,2 published by the Engelhardt laboratory2 and us1 markedly changed the landscape by introducing the cardiac fibroblast as a major hub for miR-21 action. Taken together, these studies drew attention to the role of miR-21 … [1]: #ref-1

The problems associated with the evaluation of world-class competitiveness of Russia’s science, as illustrated by clinical medicine

The main vectors for reforming Russia's scientific-technological and innovative spheres, which are reflected in program documents that were adopted in late 2011 and early 2012, are discussed in the article. The authors propose to formalize the concepts that were used in these documents, such as world-class research competence and world-leading science and technology sectors. Using the Field Normalized Citation Score (NCSf) as a bibliometric indicator for the analysis of different research areas of Russia's clinical medicine, the authors show the degree of variance between individual research areas within the same national subject field in terms of their correspondence to world-class excellence. The authors also emphasize the necessity of developing Russia's national methodology for auditing Russian science, which will take its Russian-language segment into account where the world's recognized methodologies are not always adequately applicable.

A fitness model for scholarly impact analysis

We propose a model to analyze citation growth and influences of fitness (competitiveness) factors in an evolving citation network. Applying the proposed method to modeling citations to papers and scholars in the InfoVis 2004 data, a benchmark collection about a 31-year history of information visualization, leads to findings consistent with citation distributions in general and observations of the domain in particular. Fitness variables based on prior impacts and the time factor have significant influences on citation outcomes. We find considerably large effect sizes from the fitness modeling, which suggest inevitable bias in citation analysis due to these factors. While raw citation scores offer little insight into the growth of InfoVis, normalization of the scores by influences of time and prior fitness offers a reasonable depiction of the field’s development. The analysis demonstrates the proposed model’s ability to produce results consistent with observed data and to support meaningful comparison of citation scores over time.

Quality of Scholarly Journals and Major Selection Criteria for Coverage by the Web of Science

The major criteria for scholarly journals selection to be covered by the Web of Science are discussed. These criteria include the compliance of a journal with world standards, the international diversity, citation score of authors and editorial board members, the journal impact factor and journals self-citation. The demand for the unified transliteration of the authors name and the use of the unified English-language name and address of a research organization, as well as for including the information on funding organization (grant number and agency name) is emphasized.

Quality of Scholarly Journals and Major Selection Criteria for Coverage by the Web of Science

The major criteria for scholarly journals selection to be covered by the Web of Science are discussed. These criteria include the compliance of a journal with world standards, the international diversity, citation score of authors and editorial board members, the journal impact factor and journals self-citation. The demand for the unified transliteration of the authors name and the use of the unified English-language name and address of a research organization, as well as for including the information on funding organization (grant number and agency name) is emphasized.

Sub-field normalization in the multiplicative case: Average-based citation indicators

This paper investigates the citation impact of three large geographical areas – the U.S., the European Union (EU), and the rest of the world (RW) – at different aggregation levels. The difficulty is that 42% of the 3.6 million articles in our Thomson Scientific dataset are assigned to several sub-fields among a set of 219 Web of Science categories. We follow a multiplicative approach in which every article is wholly counted as many times as it appears at each aggregation level. We compute the crown indicator and the Mean Normalized Citation Score (MNCS) using for the first time sub-field normalization procedures for the multiplicative case. We also compute a third indicator that does not correct for differences in citation practices across sub-fields. It is found that: (1) No geographical area is systematically favored (or penalized) by any of the two normalized indicators. (2) According to the MNCS, only in six out of 80 disciplines – but in none of 20 fields – is the EU ahead of the U.S. In contrast, the normalized U.S./EU gap is greater than 20% in 44 disciplines, 13 fields, and for all sciences as a whole. The dominance of the EU over the RW is even greater. (3) The U.S. appears to devote relatively more – and the RW less – publication effort to sub-fields with a high mean citation rate, which explains why the U.S./EU and EU/RW gaps for all sciences as a whole increase by 4.5 and 5.6 percentage points in the un-normalized case. The results with a fractional approach are very similar indeed.

Making an impact instead of 'publish or perish'

The time has come to thoroughly reconsider the current dominance of scientific impact scores as a measure of the performance of health researchers. We advocate a more balanced approach which values societal impact as well. Some valuable efforts are being made to measure societal impact and it is now a matter of courage to give both of these impact scores equal weight. Since science has always been considered a public good, academics have felt it their responsibility to ensure scientific quality. In 1731, the Royal Society of Edinburgh described how medical essays were judged by editors having comparable knowledge of the topic, to ensure objectivity. This practice gradually developed into the peer-review system for scientific reports, to ensure high quality in science. After the Second World War, this system gained momentum, and the process was institutionalized. Nowadays, the Web of Science (WoS) covers more than 12 000 journals on all subject areas, and journals that can be tracked for ≥3 years are given an impact factor. In addition to the annual Journal Impact Factors, the cumulative impact of an individual researcher’s scientific output can be quantified by bibliometric methods. Similarly, metrics for the academic ranking of world universities include the numbers of highly cited authors and numbers of articles in Nature and Science , as well as the mean citation score and the number of awards per university. These are used to measure the performance of universities, while …

The evaluation of Indian cancer research, 1990–2010

Cancer research outputs in India have expanded greatly in recent years, with some concomitant increase in their citation scores. Part of the increase in output is attributable to greater coverage in the Web of Science of Indian journals, which are more clinical than international ones, and much less often cited. Other measures of esteem have also increased, such as the percentage of reviews and the immediacy with which Indian cancer articles are cited. Most of the output came from just nine of the 35 Indian states and Union Territories, led by New Delhi and Maharashtra. The distribution of the amount of research by cancer site correlates moderately positively with the relative disease burden, with mouth (head and neck) cancer (often caused by the chewing of tobacco or areca, betel or paan) causing the highest number of deaths and also being well researched. We also analysed the articles by type of research, with articles in genetics and chemotherapy being the most numerous. For articles published in 2009---2010, data were available on the funding acknowledgements, and we found, as expected, that articles in clinical subjects were less often supported by external funding than ones in basic research. The major source of support was the Government of India, with relatively small contributions from charities and industry, unlike the situation in the UK and other western European countries.

The changing landscape of technology and innovation management: An updated ranking of journals in the field

This paper presents an up-to-date ranking of the leading technology and innovation management (TIM) specialty journals. Citation data from the years 2006–2010 of the fifteen base journals are collected and analyzed. Based on the total citation score, frequency adjusted score, age adjusted score, self-citation adjusted score, and overall adjusted score, the new top 50 journals list for TIM is offered. Compared with the results from the earlier period, no statistically significant change is detected in the top half of the list; however, a significant number of well-regarded journals that did not appear in the 1997–2001 period have surfaced in the bottom half of the list. Overall, the top ten journals of this latest ranking are Research Policy, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Management Science, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management Review, Research-Technology Management, Organization Science, and Technovation. The ranking order of the top ten TIM specialty journals is as follows: Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research-Technology Management, Technovation, R&D Management, Industrial and Corporate Change, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Technology Transfer, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Journal of Engineering and Technology Management. A fresh perspective on how TIM specialty journals relate to each other and how they link to business, economics, and management disciplines is provided. A detailed discussion of these findings, together with concluding remarks, also helps answer the question “Do things change or remain the same?”

The Social Worker in Interdisciplinary Care Planning

Nursing home social work services are integral to resident interdisciplinary care planning and treatments to meet residents' psychosocial needs. Data from the Online Survey Certification and Reporting database examine the relationship among numbers of qualified social workers, social service staff, and deficiency citation scores for resident assessment violations in 16,511 United States nursing homes in 2007. Using a generalized estimating equation, we show a relationship between numbers of qualified social workers, social service staff, and facilities' resident assessment-related deficiency scores. Having more qualified social workers and more social service staff is related to lower assessment deficiency scores supporting the important role of social workers and social services in nursing homes. Implications for evidence-based practice and policy are discussed.

Measuring academic productivity: don’t drop your ‘h’s!*

Measuring academic productivity: don’t drop your ‘h’s!*

A recursive field-normalized bibliometric performance indicator: an application to the field of library and information science

Two commonly used ideas in the development of citation-based research performance indicators are the idea of normalizing citation counts based on a field classification scheme and the idea of recursive citation weighing (like in PageRank-inspired indicators). We combine these two ideas in a single indicator, referred to as the recursive mean normalized citation score indicator, and we study the validity of this indicator. Our empirical analysis shows that the proposed indicator is highly sensitive to the field classification scheme that is used. The indicator also has a strong tendency to reinforce biases caused by the classification scheme. Based on these observations, we advise against the use of indicators in which the idea of normalization based on a field classification scheme and the idea of recursive citation weighing are combined.