Essential Science Research Articles

Bibliometric Profile of Global Microplastics Research from 2004 to 2019.

Microplastics (MPs) have generated worldwide attention due to their global distribution in the environment, and their potential harmful effects on human and animal health. To analyze MPs-related scientific publications from a global point of view, we created a bibliometric profile, by searching the Web of Science Core Collection database for the topic “microplastic* or (micro near/1 plastic*)”, in publications dated from 2004 to 2019. The results revealed an increasing trend in publication output, and identified contributions of different countries and their collaborations, as well as influential authors and productive journals in the field of MPs research. Using co-citation network analysis in VOSviewer, we mined cited references for knowledge bases about analytical methods, potential sources and spatial distributions of MPs, the impacts of MPs on organisms, and the interaction of MPs with contaminants, as well as microorganisms. We also identified four global hotspots for MPs related research, using author keywords co-occurrence network analysis of all extracted publications, as well as Essential Science Indicators highly cited papers from Clarivate Analytics. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for ongoing MPs-related research, which may be of intrigue and awesome noteworthiness for relevant researchers.

Longitudinal variation in national research publication portfolios: Steps required to index balance and evenness

National research diversity is explored through the balance of global and national papers in journal categories in the Web of Science (WoS) and Essential Science Indicators (ESI) and we examine the consequences of “normalizing” national publication counts against global baselines. Global balance across subject categories became more even as annual WoS indexing grew fourfold between 1981 and 2018, with a relative shift from biomedicine towards environment and technology. Change at the country level may have tracked this or been influenced by local policy and funding. We discuss choice of methods and indices for analysis: WoS categories provide better granularity than ESI; Lorenz curves are explored but found limiting; the Pratt index, Gini coefficient, and Shannon diversity are compared. At the national level, balance generally increases and is greatest in non-Anglophone countries, perhaps due to shifts in language and journal use. Two aspects of national change are revealed: the balance of actual WoS paper counts and the balance of counts normalized against world baseline. The broad patterns for these analyses are similar, but normalized data indicate relatively greater evenness. National patterns link to research capacity and regional networking opportunities, while international collaboration may blend national differences. A data set is provided for analytical use.

Occupational therapy: The key to unlocking locked-up occupations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Occupations refer to the everyday activities that people do as individuals, in families and with communities to occupy time and bring meaning and purpose to life. It is not always limited to just paid employment. Occupations of the global population have been adversely affected in one way or the other because of this COVID-19 pandemic. Four different key sects of occupations were majorly affected. These are the occupations of those who are or were COVID-positive, occupations of healthy individuals affected by COVID-19/lockdown, occupations of the population highly susceptible and vulnerable of contracting COVID-19 and occupations having a direct impact on global market, supply chain or economy. These occupations were locked up due to the pandemic lockdown. Occupational therapists can scientifically analyse occupations and help formulate exit strategies for the lockdown. They are experts who understand and study the different ways of measuring participation in occupation to develop innovative strategies and therapeutic interventions to facilitate individuals' engagement in occupations. They can unravel the pragmatic strategies for preventing transmission (physical distancing, hand hygiene, personal protective equipmentusage and decontamination) despite engaging in occupations safely and effectively. Nourishing this niche and essential science is pertinent, not just in this pandemic context but also against a backdrop of health and social care research, policy, practice and education for the future.

Psychology is an essential science: American Psychologist highlights the role of psychology in understanding and addressing COVID-19.

Psychology has much to contribute in terms of understanding and influencing the impact of the global coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To disseminate articles on key issues related to the pandemic in a time-sensitive manner, American Psychologist opened its Call for Papers in spring 2020. The journal applied a rapid review mechanism in order to publish articles on important aspects of the pandemic quickly. The response from around the world has been striking. The editors are pleased to publish the first articles in this ongoing series in the current issue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Informetric Analysis of Highly Cited Papers in Environmental Sciences Based on Essential Science Indicators.

Highly cited papers in the Essential Science Indicators database refer to papers with citations in the top 1% of all papers in a research field, and they are considered to be symbols of scientific excellence and top performance of the past ten years. This study provided an informetric analysis of 7791 highly cited papers in the environmental sciences category during 2009–2019. Informetric indicators and visualization tools were applied to evaluate and present the performances of journals, countries/territories, institutions, top cited papers, and research hotspots. The results showed that the cumulative number of publications has increased exponentially, suggesting strong development of the environmental sciences category. There were 211 journals publishing highly cited papers, with Energy & Environmental Science as the leading journal. The USA ranked first with the highest number of publications and occupied the core position in the collaboration network, while Mainland China took the first place in independent research output. Review articles have an obvious advantage in terms of achieving high citations. “Adsorption”, “climate change”, and “heavy metal” were the most frequent keywords, with “microplastic” rising rapidly as a new research frontier in recent years. Five research hotspots were visualized from highly cited papers via cluster analysis.

Factors Predicting the Scientific Wealth of Nations

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that economic affluence is one of the main predictors of the scientific wealth of nations. Yet, the link is not as straightforward as is often presented. First, only a limited set of relatively affluent countries is usually studied. Second, there are differences between equally rich countries in their scientific success. The main aim of the present study is to find out which factors can enhance or suppress the effect of the economic wealth of countries on their scientific success, as measured by the High Quality Science Index ( HQSI). The HQSI is a composite indicator of scientific wealth, which in equal parts considers the mean citation rate per paper and the percentage of papers that have reached the top 1% of citations in the Essential Science Indicators ( ESI; Clarivate Analytics) database during the 11-year period from 2008 to 2018. Our results show that a high position in the ranking of countries on the HQSI can be achieved not only by increasing the number of high-quality papers but also by reducing the number of papers that are able to pass ESI thresholds but are of lower quality. The HQSI was positively and significantly correlated with the countries’ economic indicators (as measured by gross national income and Research and Development expenditure as a percentage from GDP), but these correlations became insignificant when other societal factors were controlled for. Overall, our findings indicate that it is small and well-governed countries with a long-standing democratic past that seem to be more efficient in translating economic wealth into high-quality science.

Macro-level collaboration network analysis and visualization with Essential Science Indicators: A case of social science

Cross-national collaboration has been shaped by internationalization of scientific relationships. To study the synergic network of high quality research patterns, this paper collects a total of 300 top 50 items, in each indicator from the big database, Essential Science Indicators, which lists top-ranking papers, scientists and institutions from 2005 to 2015. First, the country level relations of co-authorship addresses in five indicator variables are extracted in the field of social sciences to build international collaboration networks. The social network analysis (SNA) method was applied to calculate the metrics of vertices, edges, average degree, average shortest path, diameter, clustering coefficient and betweenness centrality to illuminate the structural characters and collaboration patterns. Based on the international collaboration similarities, this paper also visualizes the endemic clustering groups of six networks, as cluster dendrograms, using Hierarchical Clustering (HC) method. Findings illustrate that USA, England and Canada are outstanding countries in the international collaboration networks of five indicators. There are geographical groups in European countries in the collaboration networks of scientists, institutes and countries/territories. It is also found that international collaboration contributes to both highly cited papers in the recent 10 years and hot papers in the recent 2 years in this field, rather than geographical similarity does. Those conclusions are critical for policy makers to produce guidelines on how to encourage researchers to build collaboration networks with high-level scholars in different countries

How much is too much? The difference between research influence and self-citation excess

Citations can be an indicator of publication significance, utility, attention, visibility or short-term impact but analysts need to confirm whether a high citation count for an individual is a genuine reflection of influence or a consequence of extraordinary, even excessive, self-citation. It has recently been suggested there may be increasing misrepresentation of research performance by individuals who self-cite inordinately to achieve scores and win rewards. In this paper we consider self-referencing and self-citing, describe the typical shape of self-citation patterns for carefully curated publication sets authored by 3517 Highly Cited Researchers and quantify the variance in the distribution of self-citation rates within and between all 21 Essential Science Indicators’ fields. We describe both a generic level of median self-referencing rates, common to most fields, and a graphical, distribution-driven assessment of excessive self-citation that demarcates a threshold not dependent on statistical tests or percentiles (since for some fields all values are within a central ‘normal’ range). We describe this graphical procedure for identifying exceptional self-citation rates but emphasize the necessity for expert interpretation of the citation profiles of specific individuals, particularly in fields with atypical self-citation patterns.

Computational Thinking in Introductory Physics

Computational thinking” (CT) is still a relatively new term in the lexicon of learning objectives and science standards. The term was popularized in an essay by Wing, who said, “To reading, writing and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability.” Agreeing with this premise, in 2013 the authors of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) included “mathematical and computational thinking” as one of eight essential science and engineering practices that K-12 teachers should strive to develop in their students. There is not yet widespread agreement on the precise definition or implementation of CT, and efforts to assess CT are still maturing, even as more states adopt K-12 computer science standards. In this article we will try to summarize what CT means for a typical introductory (i.e., high school or early college) physics class. This will include a discussion of the ways that instructors may already be incorporating elements of CT in their classes without knowing it.

A bibliometric analysis of core articles of international nursing research frontiers based on the Web of Science database

Abstract Objective To review and analyze the basic information and distribution of core articles in the global research frontier of nursing, so as to ascertain the current trend in the field. Methods A total of 37 highly cited essential science indicator (ESI) papers in the nursing discipline were retrieved, which were compared with the core article collection of the ESI research frontier in January 2019 to understand the current nursing research frontiers. Subsequently, a statistical analysis of the core articles that constituted the nursing research frontiers was performed using a bibliometric method. The analysis was conducted with multiple aspects including the number of core articles, total number of citations, average publication year, issuing country, participating institution, citing paper, journal distribution, and core researcher. Results At present, the two international research frontiers of nursing are patient-centered care (Research Frontier 1) and missed care (Research Frontier 2). These two frontiers include a total of 12 core articles, 6 of which are highly cited Web of Science-indexed nursing papers. Research Frontier 1 includes three core articles that were cited 389 times. Research Frontier 2 includes nine core articles that were cited 841 times. Articles in the two frontiers were cited by 454 and 841 papers, respectively, most of which are in the United States. In addition, the 12 core articles were published across eight journals, the impact factors of which are all relatively high. Lastly, Research Frontier 1 involves 11 authors, whereas Research Frontier 2 involves 49 authors, of which seven authors have published more than two articles. Conclusions The core articles in the frontier of international nursing research demonstrate distinctive features in their issuing country/region, journal distribution, and participating institution. Review and analysis of the core articles of international nursing research frontiers can help nursing staff understand the current research hotspots and consequently perform corresponding scientific research to promote the development of the nursing discipline.

Piloting a Community of Student Data Consultants that Supports and Enhances Research Data Services

Research ecosystems within university environments are continuously evolving and requiring more resources and domain specialists to assist with the data lifecycle. Typically, academic researchers and professionals are overcommitted, making it challenging to be up-to-date on recent developments in best practices of data management, curation, transformation, analysis, and visualization. Recently, research groups, university core centers, and Libraries are revitalizing these services to fill in the gaps to aid researchers in finding new tools and approaches to make their work more impactful, sustainable, and replicable. In this paper, we report on a student consultation program built within the University Libraries, that takes an innovative, student-centered approach to meeting the research data needs in a university environment while also providing students with experiential learning opportunities. This student program, DataBridge, trains students to work in multi-disciplinary teams and as student consultants to assist faculty, staff, and students with their real-world, data-intensive research challenges. Centering DataBridge in the Libraries allows students the unique opportunity to work across all disciplines, on problems and in domains that some students may not interact with during their college careers. To encourage students from multiple disciplines to participate, we developed a scaffolded curriculum that allows students from any discipline and skill level to quickly develop the essential data science skill sets and begin contributing their own unique perspectives and specializations to the research consultations. These students, mentored by Informatics faculty in the Libraries, provide research support that can ultimately impact the entire research process. Through our pilot phase, we have found that DataBridge enhances the utilization and openness of data created through research, extends the reach and impact of the work beyond the researcher’s specialized community, and creates a network of student “data champions” across the University who see the value in working with the Library. Here, we describe the evolution of the DataBridge program and outline its unique role in both training the data stewards of the future with regard to FAIR data practices, and in contributing significant value to research projects at Virginia Tech. Ultimately, this work highlights the need for innovative, strategic programs that encourage and enable real-world experience of data curation, data analysis, and data publication for current researchers, all while training the next generation of researchers in these best practices.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Index to Titles and Authors/Editors of Books Reviewed

Index to Titles and Authors/Editors of Books Reviewed

Guest Editorial: On the Potential Role of Psi in an Expanded Science of the Physical, Experiential, and Spiritual

Guest Editorial: On the Potential Role of Psi in an Expanded Science of the Physical, Experiential, and Spiritual

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