Science Subject Categories Research Articles

Scientific subject categories of Web of Knowledge ranked according to their multidimensional prestige of influential journals

A journal may be considered as having dimension-specific prestige when its score, based on a given journal ranking model, exceeds a threshold value. But a journal has multidimensional prestige only if it is a prestigious journal with respect to a number of dimensions—e.g., Institute for Scientific Information Impact Factor, immediacy index, eigenfactor score, and article influence score. The multidimensional prestige of influential journals takes into account the fact that several prestige indicators should be used for a distinct analysis of the impact of scholarly journals in a subject category. After having identified the multidimensionally influential journals, their prestige scores can be aggregated to produce a summary measure of multidimensional prestige for a subject category, which satisfies numerous properties. Using this measure of multidimensional prestige to rank subject categories, we have found the top scientific subject categories of Web of Knowledge as of 2010. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A forward diversity index

We introduce an indicator to measure the diffusion of scientific research. Consistent with Stirling's 3-factor diversity model, the diffusion score captures not only variety and balance, but also disparity among citing article cohorts. We apply it to benchmark article samples from six 1995 Web of Science subject categories (SCs) to trace trends in knowledge diffusion over time since publication. Findings indicate that, for most SCs, diffusion scores steadily increase with time. Mathematics is an outlier. We employ a typology of citation trends among benchmark SCs and correlate this with diffusion scores. We also find that self-cites do not, in most cases, significantly influence diffusion scores.

The journal relative impact: an indicator for journal assessment

This paper presents the journal relative impact (JRI), an indicator for scientific evaluation of journals. The JRI considers in its calculation the different culture of citations presented by the Web of Science subject categories. The JRI is calculated considering a variable citation window. This citation window is defined taking into account the time required by each subject category for the maturation of citations. The type of document considered in each subject category depends on its outputs in relation to the citations. The scientific performance of each journal in relation to each subject category that it belongs to is considered allowing the comparison of the scientific performance of journals from different fields. The results obtained show that the JRI can be used for the assessment of the scientific performance of a given journal and that the SJR and SNIP should be used to complement the information provided by the JRI. The JRI presents good features as stability over time and predictability.

The web of science subject category 'primary health care'

Earlier this year, the introduction was announced of the Subject Category ‘Primary Health Care’ in Thomson Reuters Web of Science. In its Journals Citations Report 2010, this Category is now officially published (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/ science_products/a-z/web_of_science/). The list contains 13 (and not as initially expected 14) titles, ranked in Table 1 by Impact Factor with, when available, the 5-year Impact Factor. More bibliographic details can be found on the Web of Science. This Subject Category will make it possible for primary care and family medicine to better clarify its scientific production. A next priority may be to bring more journals in the category and thus further raise the profile of primary care science and research.

The impact of research in primary care and family medicine: the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Subject Category 'Primary Health Care'

The impact of research in primary care and family medicine: the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Subject Category 'Primary Health Care'

Research in Emerging Fields: Who Takes the Lead?

In the present piece we study research performance and collaboration of the European Union and the most active countries in emerging topics that have been identified in a dynamic cluster analysis of selected Web of Science Subject Categories in the period 1999-2008.

Citation levels and collaboration within library and information science

AbstractCollaboration is a major research policy objective, but does it deliver higher quality research? This study uses citation analysis to examine the Web of Science (WoS) Information Science & Library Science subject category (IS&LS) to ascertain whether, in general, more highly cited articles are more highly collaborative than other articles. It consists of two investigations. The first investigation is a longitudinal comparison of the degree and proportion of collaboration in five strata of citation; it found that collaboration in the highest four citation strata (all in the most highly cited 22%) increased in unison over time, whereas collaboration in the lowest citation strata (un‐cited articles) remained low and stable. Given that over 40% of the articles were un‐cited, it seems important to take into account the differences found between un‐cited articles and relatively highly cited articles when investigating collaboration in IS&LS. The second investigation compares collaboration for 35 influential information scientists; it found that their more highly cited articles on average were not more highly collaborative than their less highly cited articles. In summary, although collaborative research is conducive to high citation in general, collaboration has apparently not tended to be essential to the success of current and former elite information scientists.

Is multidisciplinary research more highly cited? A macrolevel study

AbstractInterdisciplinary collaboration is a major goal in research policy. This study uses citation analysis to examine diverse subjects in the Web of Science and Scopus to ascertain whether, in general, research published in journals classified in more than one subject is more highly cited than research published in journals classified in a single subject. For each subject, the study divides the journals into two disjoint sets called Multi and Mono. Multi consists of all journals in the subject and at least one other subject whereas Mono consists of all journals in the subject and in no other subject. The main findings are: (a) For social science subject categories in both the Web of Science and Scopus, the average citation levels of articles in Mono and Multi are very similar; and (b) for Scopus subject categories within life sciences, health sciences, and physical sciences, the average citation level of Mono articles is roughly twice that of Multi articles. Hence, one cannot assume that in general, multidisciplinary research will be more highly cited, and the converse is probably true for many areas of science. A policy implication is that, at least in the sciences, multidisciplinary researchers should not be evaluated by citations on the same basis as monodisciplinary researchers.

Import-export of knowledge between scientific subject categories: The iceberg hypothesis

The capacity to attract citations from other disciplines — or knowledge export — has always been taken into account in evaluating the quality of scientific papers or journals. Some of the JCR’s (ISI’s Journal Citation Report) Subject Categories have a greater exporting character than others because they are less isolated. This influences the rank/JIF (ISI’s Journal Impact Factor) distribution of the category. While all the categories fit a negative power law fairly well, those with a greater External JIF give distributions with a more sharply defined peak and a longer tail — something like an iceberg. One also observes a major relationship between the rates of export and import of knowledge.