Essential Science Indicators Research Articles

Mapping of top papers in the subject category of Water Resources based on the Essential Science Indicators

Based on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database, this study analyzed 798 top papers in the subject category of Water Resources from 2008 to 2018. The 798 top papers include 797 highly cited papers and 21 hot papers in the field. Distributions of document type, language of publication, scientific output, and publication of journals are reported in this article. Co-authorship network visualization of author, organizations and countries, co-occurrence network visualization of all keywords was visualized using VOS viewer software. Results showed that 798 papers, all written in English, were from 2,845 authors, 80 countries/territories and 1,107 organizations, listed in 49 journals in the field of water resources. Top 5 core journals with higher impact factor ranked as Water Research, Journal of Hydrology, Desalination, Catena and Advances in Water Resources. Top 5 countries and regions were USA, China, Australia, England and Germany. Top 5 organizations were Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California System, Helmholtz Association, Delft University of Technology and Eth Zurich. Based on the analysis of network map of VOSviewer, there is cooperation for authors, organizations and countries or regions. The analysis of keywords showed that the research of water resource was separated 6 clusters. This study demonstrates that there are more top papers come from journals with the higher IF and higher rank in Category of Water Resources. Therefore, authors can choose their ideal Journal with a high impact factor to publish papers in the English language related to this research field.

УКРАЇНСЬКІ УНІВЕРСИТЕТИ В РЕЙТИНГАХ ПУБЛІКАЦІЙНОЇ АКТИВНОСТІ 2019 РОКУ

The article deals with publication activity as a part of the set of scientometric indicators used to assess national scientific potential. The international and national ratings of the publishing activity, in which the Ukrainian universities are involved, have been presented and analyzed, as well as with the help of some analytical and search tools of the scientific platform Web of Science, the publishing activity of the leading universities of the country have been studied. The dynamics of inclusion of Ukrainian higher education institutions in SCImago Institutional Ranking has been monitored and their most significant achievements have been determined by major groups of rating indicators – “Innovation”, “Social Impact” and “Research”. Identity of SCImago rating and all-Ukrainian Osvita.ua rating has been demonstrated for Ukrainian universities. The methodology and principles of CWTS Leiden Ranking and National Taiwan University Ranking, which are based on Web of Science, have been reviewed. With input from the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) Web of Science tool the publication activity of Ukrainian scientific organizations on the whole has been identified, and by means of “Result Analysis” tools the 2019 scientific periodicals have been identified where the researchers from four largest educational institutions in our country were published. It has been concluded that among Ukrainian scientists the trend towards increasing the total number of publications in periodicals with a low level of scientific influence and citation, as well as with their general misunderstanding of the importance of scientific and publication collaborations with researchers from foreign universities is still prevailing. Suggestions have been formulated to increase publication activity and to represent better the university's scientific results in international citation indices.

Achieving global academic leadership: an analysis of the highly cited segment of surgery publications

In the Strategic Academic Leadership Program, the number of publications included in the 1% of the most cited ones in the Web of Science Core Collection database over previous 10 full years is used as an indicator of research potential of universities and scientific centers. The purpose of this study was to analyze the segment of Highly Cited Papers and Hot Papers on surgery using the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) analytical application. According to ESI data, relevant for March 2020, highly cited publications on medicine have formed 2.425 research fronts including 211 ones in surgery. We have analyzed the directions of researches in surgery characterized by the greatest number of citations.

Publications in Integrative and Complementary Medicine: A Ten-Year Bibliometric Survey in the Field of ICM.

Background This article aims to analyze the research status of integrative complementary medicine (ICM) and features of highly cited papers in the field to provide reference of the future development of ICM. Methods Publications in the field of ICM from 2009 to 2018 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. The top 20 countries/territories, institutions, journals, keywords of highly cited and noncited papers, and characteristics of essential science indicator (ESI) papers, as well as open access (OA) and non-OA papers, were analyzed. Results Mainland China had the largest number of ICM publications. The top 20 journals published a total of 31667 papers in 2009–2018, which represented 92.9% of all publications. Keywords of highly cited and noncited papers point to different research directions. 48 ESI highly cited/hot papers were identified, most of which are related to phytochemistry. Furthermore, the average citation rate (percentage of publications that have been cited one or more times) of OA papers was lower than that of total papers and non-OA papers. Conclusions China leads in number of publications; however, publication quality in ICM field requires improvement. A few journals accounted for more than half of number of publications and citations, which are important for the development of ICM. Many of the keywords in ICM noncited publications pointed towards broad meaning that poorly reflect the exact research content. Most highly cited ICM studies focused on the identification and evaluation of plant active components. OA may not be an effective approach to increase paper citations in the field of ICM.

Mapping of the world rice research: A bibliometric analysis of top papers during 2008–2018

Based on the Essential Science Indicators database, this study analyzed 1225 top papers of rice research from 2008 to 2018, which include 1219 highly cited papers and 24 hot papers in the field. VOSviewer software was used to visually analyze documents. Results showed that 5100 authors belonging to 1428 organizations from 84 countries/territories authored the papers in 277 core journals. There are 10 papers that have received more than 1000 citations. Top five core journals are Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, PNAS, Food Chemistry and Journal of Experimental Botany. Top 5 countries and regions were China, USA, Japan, England and Germany. Top 5 organizations identified are Chinese Academy of Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science, Huazhong Agricultual University, Nanjing Agricultural University and Zhejiang Univ.

The influence of discipline rankings of essential science indicators on medical related disciplines research work in Chinese universities

Objective To analyze the influence of discipline rankings of essential science indicators on medical related disciplines research work in Chinese universities. Methods Characteristics and influencing factors of indicator data in ESI were analyzed. Results The indicators of ESI are unique, objective and predictable, and does not distinguish between author rankings. The subject classification system is unique. Conclusions The positive roles of ESI in medical related discipline research of universities includes promoting the impact of articles, promoting international cooperation of medical related disciplines in universities, and paying attention to the papers of non-first and corresponding authors. Its limitations include affecting the balanced development of medical related disciplines, some medical related disciplines do not have independent rankings, encourage more paper publishing in journals outside mainland China, and medical college institutional statistics is difficult to improve. Key words: Essential science indicators; Double Frist-Class; Discipline classification

Research and analysis of domestic highly cited papers of clinical medicine in ESI database during 2013-2017

Objective To investigate and analyze the highly cited papers of clinical medicine by Chinese authors in recent 5 years based on the ESI database, and to understand the publication condition of highly cited papers of clinical medicine in China. Methods We retrieved the domestic highly-cited papers from the ESI database from 2013 to 2017 by computer, and analyzed the regional distribution, citation frequency, research institutions, research fields, fund sources, paper types, journal distribution and subject terms. Results A total number of 487 highly cited clinical papers were included in the study. About 50% of the authors were from Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu and Guangdong province, which mainly distributed in major research institutes nationwide. During the year 2014 to 2016, there were about 110 highly cited papers per year. Cancer research was the main concern to scientists all over the world. Conclusions The clinical research in China is still at an unbalanced and uncoordinated level of development. Research institutions should grasp the hot spots of scientific research, increase research invest, track scientific research frontiers and expand their influence. Key words: Essential Science Indicators database; Chinese highly cited papers; Clinical medicine

Research Excellence in the Era of Online Attention: Altmetrics of South Africa’s Highly Cited Papers in Selected Research Fields

The use of highly cited papers (HCPs) to assess research excellence (RE) is widespread but the emergence of alternative metrics for assessing research impact has ignited debates on their role in measuring RE. This paper undertakes an altmetrics analysis of South Africa’s highly cited papers with a view to assessing the extent of online attention to these papers; the correlation between citation and altmetrics data and nuances in research fields, using conventional and altmetrics data. The Web of Science’s (WoS) Incites Essential Science Indicator (ESI) database was used to extract the metrics of HCPs while the online portal altmetric.com was used to obtain the altmetrics data for each HCP. The Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between citation data and altmetrics of the HCPs. The results indicate that clinical medicine posted the highest number of HCPs but was behind Space Science and Molecular Biology & Genetics in terms of citations per paper. Only six fields recorded more than 100 HCPs. Overall, South Africa’s HCPs have the highest altmetrics presence in Dimensions followed by Mendeley, Twitter, Facebook, News Outlets and Blogs. However, each research field exhibited different patterns as far as online attention of their papers is concerned. The implications of the plausibility of using altmetrics in assessing RE in South Africa are offered.

Bibliometric and mapping of top papers in the subject category of green and sustainable science and technology based on ESI

Based on the Essential Science Indicators database, this study analyzed 2,138 top papers in the subject category of Green & Sustainable Sci- ence & Technology database from 2008 to 2018, including 2,130 highly cited papers and 61 hot papers. Results showed there are total 19 Web of Science subject categories, all paper written in English, were from 6,228 authors, 2,019 organizations and 94 countries/territories, listed in 30 journals in the field. Top 4 core journals with higher impact factor ranked as Renewable sustainable energy reviews, Journal of cleaner production, Renewable energy, Green chemistry. Based on the analysis of network map of VOSviewer, there is cooperation for authors, organizations and countries or regions. The analysis of keywords showed that the researches were separated into nine clusters. Therefore, authors can choose their ideal journal with a high impact factor to publish papers in the English language related to this research field.

The Professional Activities of the Scientific Diasporas of the Pushchino Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences Abroad

This paper presents the final results of a study on the activities of the scientific diaspora of the Pushchino Scientific Center (PSC RAS) abroad, which began in 2016. The information on the scientific careers of scientists from nine scientific research institutes of the PSC RAS who emigrated abroad for permanent residence is given: the proportion of former scientific researchers who continue to engage in scientific activities, the geography of the distribution of representatives of the diaspora; scientific organizations, where and how successfully they work. The research was conducted using scientometric, bibliometric, bibliographic, factual, and sociological methods. The professional “success” of representatives of the diaspora was assessed according to formal indicators: a Hirsch index (h-index) with a threshold value of 17 and higher; information about publications in the Essential Science Indicators (Clarivate Analytics) at the time of data collection; and distribution of published works by quartiles of publications.

Drivers of Article Processing Charges in Open Access

Large publishing companies have been dominating scientific publishing for long, which leads to high subscription fees and inhibited access to scientific knowledge. At digital era, the opportunity of an unrestricted access appears feasible, because the cost of publishing should be low. It is no longer the readers and libraries to pay subscription fees, but scientific organizations and authors themselves who pay for the cost of having their article published. As the data shows, there is a tremendous variance of article processing charges (APC) across journals, which obviously cannot be explained by the costs. One of the explanatory variables could be reputation, but it only contributes less than 5\% to the variance in APC. This study is meant to shed light on the various determinants of APC. Based on data from the OpenAPC Initiative, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Journal Impact Factor and the Essential Science Indicators of Web of Science, we employ ANOVA and multivariate regressions. The results show that market power plays an important role to explain APCs, inter alia, through market concentration, market position of individual publishers (publisher size), and the choice of hybrid publishing model.

Can we predict ESI highly cited publications?

The highly cited papers defined by Clarivate Analytics’ Essential Science Indicators (ESI) have been widely used to measure the scientific performance of scientists, research institutions, universities and countries. However, researchers have seldom studied which factors can affect a paper to be an ESI highly cited paper. The prediction of ESI highly cited papers is much less studied, too. According to the existing researches about factors influencing paper’s citations, four classical papers’ factors are chosen in this study, which are scientific impact of the first author, scientific impact of the potential leader, scientific impact of the team and the relevance of authors’ existing papers. Similar to the definition of ESI highly cited papers, we develop a new measure of papers’ scientific impact. Firstly, we get statistics properties of four factors with APS data and Nobel data in order to study four factors’ performance of ESI highly cited papers. Then, Spearman correlation and Logistic regression are applied to explore the relationship between four factors and papers’ scientific impact. At last, we try to predict highly cited papers by NN algorithms incorporating four factors. The results show that the potential leader factor plays a more important role in the short term than in the long term, while the team factor is on the contrary, more important in the long term. Interestingly, the first author factor doesn’t have an obvious effect on papers’ scientific impact among top 1%. The prediction results are better than random.

Medical research productivity in the Arab countries: 2007-2016 bibliometric analysis.

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to assess recent trends in medical research productivity in Arab countries.MethodsWe collected bibliometric data for the world countries, Arab countries, and Arab institutions for 2007-2016, using Essential Science Indicators, Journal Citation Reports, and Web of Science database. We collected the number of published papers overall and per year, citations per paper, and number of papers published in top quartile and top 10% journals. For the 10 most productive institutions, we additionally collected the number of papers with correspondence authors affiliated with the institution.ResultsThe Arab world produced 189 papers per one million people, about a quarter of the value for other world countries. Four Arab countries (Qatar, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Kuwait) produced more than 695 papers per one million people, exceeding the world average. The average number of citations per paper was 9.2; it rose to more than 15 for papers with international collaboration. At the institutional level, the number of citations showed upward trends, with six institutions having an average citation per paper higher than that of all Arab countries. For the 10 most productive institutions in Arab countries, the percentage of papers involving international collaborations ranged from 42% to 79%; of these, 9% to 29% were led by authors from the same institution. For these 10 most productive institutions, the percentage of papers published in the top quartile journals and with a lead/corresponding author from the institution ranged from 7 to 32%; that percentage drops to 1% to 10% for papers published in top 10% journals.ConclusionsAlthough medical research output in Arab countries at both the country and the institution levels has increased over the past 10 years, it is still lagging behind the rest of the world. The percentage of papers involving international collaborations was relatively high, but the majority of these papers were led by authors from outside the local institution, particularly when published in the top 10% journals.

Bibliometric analysis for highly cited papers in operations research and management science from 2008 to 2017 based on Essential Science Indicators

The Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database is widely used to assess scientific outputs. The ESI database contains papers that entered the top 1% of sum citations in one discipline in the past ten years. Therefore, highly cited papers included in ESI database are of high quality in each field. This paper provides a bibliometric overview on the papers included in the ESI database in the field of operations research & management science. During the years of 2008–2017, there are 646 ESI highly cited papers in this area. Based on these 646 papers, we identify the most influential actors including journals, counties/regions, and institutes. The co-authorship relations among countries, institutes and authors characterize the collaboration status in the field of operations research and management science. The most cited papers are then presented. Finally, author keywords, keywords plus and words in title are analyzed, with hot research topics and future directions being provided.

Arab Spring’s effect on scientific productivity and research performance in Arab countries

This study focuses on the Arab literature published by researchers from all 22 members of the Arab League during the last 5 years before Arab Spring (2006–2010) and the 5 years after Arab Spring (2011–2015), in order to identify effects of the Arab Spring on research in the Arab world both performance and Productivity, based on bibliometrics analysis of the data extracted from Web of Science and InCites Essential Science Indicators provided by Thomson Reuters, and by using the statistical software package SPSS. The total productivity of Arab researchers before the Arab Spring was (103,917) document. Countries that witnessed revolution and government overthrown produced the largest productivity (42.5%). The Arab countries’ production doubled after the Arab Spring (214,864 document). Countries that witnessed Minor protests advanced to second place (30%) as a result of the leap that occurred in Saudi Arabia publications. The extent of collaboration among Arab countries before the Arab Spring was twice the number of publications in which they collaborated with the rest of the world. The number of citations was positive after the Arab Spring for 12 countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Egypt and United Arab Emirates, while it was negative for 10 countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon. There is no significant difference between Arab countries exposed to different levels of protests of Arab Spring, and between Counties’ performance after and before Arab Spring. However, counties’ productivity after Arab Spring has increased higher than before Arab Spring.

Four pitfalls in normalizing citation indicators: An investigation of ESI’s selection of highly cited papers

Abstract InCites Essential Science Indicators is becoming increasingly used to identify top-performing research and evaluate the impact of institutes. Unfortunately, our study shows that ESI indicators, as well as other normalized citation indicators, have the following flaws. First, the publication month and the online-to-print delay affect a paper’s probability of becoming a Highly Cited Paper (HCP). Papers published in the earlier months of the year are more likely to accumulate enough citation counts to rank at the top 1% compared with those published in later months of the year. Papers with longer online-to-print delays have an apparent advantage for being selected as HCPs. Research field normalizations lead to the third pitfall. Different research fields have different citation thresholds for HCPs, making research field classification important for a journal. In addition, the uniform thresholds for both articles and reviews in ESI affect the reliability of HCP selection because, on average, reviews tend to have higher citation rates than articles. ESI’s selection of HCPs provides an intuitive feel for the problems of normalized citation impact indicators, such as those provided in InCites and SciVal.

Analysis on the trend of innovation and development in the field of ophthalmology

Objective: To systematically analyze the innovation and development trend in the field of ophthalmology. Methods: The latest ophthalmology funding program from the National Eye Institute and National Natural Science Foundation of China, and funding project for 2012 to 2016 from the National Institutes of Health, National Natural Science Foundation of China and National key research and development plan of China was collected. Using the comparative analysis method, the major ophthalmology funding areas at home and abroad were analyzed. Papers published in 2012 to 2016 in the field of ophthalmology were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection, among which ESI highly cited papers and hot papers were particularly selected. Using bibliometric methods, the time trend of the number of papers and the citation frequency were analyzed. Using the co-occurrence cluster analysis method, the continued focuses and emerging concerns of ophthalmology papers was analyzed. Results: The funding plan of the National Eye Institute mainly covers nine major diseases in ophthalmology. NSFC focuses on retinal damage and repair mechanisms. The National Key Research and Development Program of China focuses on research on high-end ophthalmic implants. NIH continues to focus on the molecular mechanisms of blinding eye disease such as diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, corneal disease and cataracts, basic research in genetics, and advanced diagnostic techniques such as imaging. Latest areas of interest involve gene editing techniques and the application of stem cell technology in ophthalmology. In China, research and application of stem cells in ophthalmic diseases, intraocular sustained-release drug carrier, and precision medicine research in ophthalmology are emerging areas of funding. In 2012 to 2016, research topics of 168 papers collected by ESI focused on macular degeneration, retinal diseases, glaucoma and other eye diseases. How to quickly promote new drugs and new technological achievements to the clinical application is a problem in the field of ophthalmology. How to change the ophthalmology clinic model, so as to provide patients with convenient and quality service, has become a research topic that needs to be given attention to. Conclusions: Based on the multidimensional analysis of innovation and development in the field of ophthalmology, cross application and integration of ophthalmology and high - tech fields such as advanced imaging technology, stem cell technology, gene editing technology, molecular targeting, and artificial intelligence will provide a strong basis for the enhancement of China's ophthalmology research innovation and international competitiveness. Research efforts for ophthalmic transformation should be strengthened, in order to realize the clinical application of the achievements as soon as possible. (Chin J Ophthalmol, 2018, 54: 452-463).

A bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers in the field of Economics and Business based on the Essential Science Indicators database

Based on the Essential Science Indicators database, this study analyzed 2140 highly cited papers (HCPs) in the field of Economics and Business from 4499 authors, 914 universities, and 64 countries/territories. From this data, three lists were created: the top 76 scientists, 50 most influential universities, and 33 most influential countries/territories. The results show that the USA is the global leader in Business and Economics with 1517 HCPs, ranking number 1. Also, 46 of the top scientists (60.5%), and 37 of the most influential universities (74%) are from the USA. This study also found: (1) the collaboration network among the top 76 scientists is not very close but a relatively tight sub-network with 13 top scientists has formed; (2) all 50 most influential universities are interconnected, and the cooperation between Harvard University and MIT was the strongest, producing 23 HCPs together; (3) the collaboration network among the most influential countries is quite close with a large network of 60 nodes and only four isolated nodes. In addition, this study demonstrates that significant positive correlations exist between authors’ HCP and h-index, between universities’ HCP and h-index, and between countries’ HCP and h-index. Since h-index is known to be a reliable indicator, these correlations indicate that when evaluating the academic impact of scholars, universities, and countries, the HCP approach is also considerably useful.

On the advancement of highly cited research in China: An analysis of the Highly Cited database.

This study investigates the progress of highly cited research in China from 2001 to 2016 through the analysis of the Highly Cited database. The Highly Cited database, compiled by Clarivate Analytics, is comprised of the world’s most influential researchers in the 22 Essential Science Indicator fields as catalogued by the Web of Science. The database is considered an international standard for the measurement of national and institutional highly cited research output. Overall, we found a consistent and substantial increase in Highly Cited Researchers from China during the timespan. The Chinese institutions with the most Highly Cited Researchers- the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, the University of Science and Technology of China, and BGI Shenzhen- are all top ten universities or primary government research institutions. Further evaluation of separate fields of research and government funding data from the National Natural Science Foundation of China revealed disproportionate growth efficiencies among the separate divisions of the National Natural Science Foundation. The most development occurred in the fields of Chemistry, Materials Sciences, and Engineering, whereas the least development occurred in Economics and Business, Health Sciences, and Life Sciences.

Bibliometric Analysis on Discipline Advantages and Potential of 14 Universities (Z14) in Mid-West China

Joint application of Web of ScienceTM, ESISM, InCitesTM, JCR® and ISIS Database, by means of bibliometric methods and SPSS® statistic analysis tools, from multi-dimensional and multi-index factors such as the number of published papers, journal source, cited frequencies, highly cited papers and cooperation fields and institutions, ESI (Essential Science Indicators) , potential disciplines and other 16 indicators, the study tracks the growth and inheritance of the dominant disciplines in the last 10 years (2007.1.1-2016.12.31), and the academic contribution of “one province, one university” universities (Z14) in Mid-West China were assessed and analyzed. The characteristics, strengths, and research levels of 14 peer universities were revealed. The paper provides an example of the evaluation of academic productivity and academic influence of peer universities based on bibliometrics.