Scientometric Indicators Research Articles

Expert judgments versus publication-based metrics: do the two methods produce identical results in measuring academic reputation?

PurposeThis study aims to assess the validity of citation metrics based on the disciplinary representative survey.Design/methodology/approachThe present project compared citation rankings for individual scientists with expert judgments collected through a survey of 818 Russian sociologists. The Russian Index of Science Citation was used to construct the general population of 3,689 Russian sociologists, to whom the survey was sent by email. The regression analyses of bibliometric indicators and peer review scores for 723 names of scholars mentioned in the survey have been undertaken.FindingsFindings suggest that scientometric indicators predict with significant accuracy the names of the most influential sociologists and those scholars who are not mentioned while they are less relevant for prediction names which received moderate attention in the survey.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the research on the validity of citation metrics by focusing on scientometric indicators, not limited to traditional metrics but including non-standard publication metrics and indicators of potential metric abuse. Besides, the study presents the national bibliometric data source that is especially important for non-Western higher education systems, less presented in the Web of Science or Scopus.

The relationship of public investments in science and scientometric indicators from the perspective of Croatian universities

Aim: This study addresses the hypothesis that the invest-ments in science are positively correlated with the indica-tors of productivity and performance of the universities. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used with the datafrom 27 EU countries. The percentage of GDP invested in science in higher education in 2019 and investments ex-pressed as €/inhabitant were used. The criterion variables were total number of publications in Web of Science for 2020; number of publications categorized as article, review or note (ARN); change in the number of publications com-pared to 2016 in total and for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) research areas; productivity per inhabitant; productivity per researcher; productivity per researcher in higher education system; and number of Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) TOP1000 universities per inhabitant. Descriptive data and Pearson and Spearman correlations were calculat-ed. Additionally, partial Spearman correlations for detailed examinations were used.Results: Most of the productivity indicators were positivelycorrelated to the investment in science. The absolute invest-ment in science in €/inhabitant is more important than in-vestment expressed as the percentage of GDP. Unexpectedly, the correlations between investments and the growth rate in productivity were negative indicating that the less devel-oped countries have achieved a larger growth in productiv-ity in the examined 5-year period. Conclusion: The results indicate that the investments inscience as the percentage of GDP is important, but the ab-solute amount of money also has an important role in the prediction of scientific productivity. However, since the absolute amount of investments is limited in the less developed countries, they should be more focused on buildingthe strategies that capitalize on specific strengths and potentials. This further accentuates the need for science policychange in Croatia with the strategic focus on aligning the re-sources to the expected results.

A comparison of scientometric data and publication policies of ophthalmology journals.

Purpose:This retrospective database analysis study aims to present the scientometric data of journals publishing in the field of ophthalmology and to compare the scientometric data of ophthalmology journals according to the open access (OA) publishing policies.Methods:The scientometric data of 48 journals were obtained from Clarivate Analytics InCites and Scimago Journal & Country Rank websites. Journal impact factor (JIF), Eigenfactor score (ES), scientific journal ranking (SJR), and Hirsch index (HI) were included. The OA publishing policies were separated into full OA with publishing fees, full OA without fees, and hybrid OA. The fees were stated as US dollars (USD).Results:Four scientometric indexes had strong positive correlations; the highest correlation coefficients were observed between the SJR and JIF (R = 0.906) and the SJR and HI (R = 0.798). However, journals in the first quartile according to JIF were in the second and third quartiles according to the SJR and HI and in the fourth quartile in the ES. The OA articles published in hybrid journals received a median of 1.17-fold (0.15–2.71) more citations. Only HI was higher in hybrid OA; other scientometric indexes were similar with full OA journals. Full OA journals charged a median of 1525 USD lower than hybrid journals.Conclusion:Full OA model in ophthalmology journals does not have a positive effect on the scientometric indexes. In hybrid OA journals, choosing to publish OA may increase citations, but it would be more accurate to evaluate this on a journal basis.

Commentary: Paradigm shift in scientometric indices and publication policies of various ophthalmology journals.

Commentary: Paradigm shift in scientometric indices and publication policies of various ophthalmology journals.

Scientometrics in the sociohumanistic sciences: Problems and solutions

Scientometrics is a valuable asset in science management. However, application of scientometric indicators in the sociohumanistic sciences reveals some drawbacks. The problems of assessing researcher efficiency are analyzed and several solutions are proposed. The number of citations in the sociohumanistic sciences and STEMS are analyzed in terms of languages presented in the Web of Science. The author agrees with the expert opinion that research activities in the social sciences and the humanities cannot be correctly assessed with scientometric indicators. On the basis of the study, the author formulates the proposals on how to eliminate these problems. The study covers the wide time period (over 40 years) revealing citation trends in the social sciences, STEM and the humanities. The proposals can be applied in science management in universities and academic organizations.

Scientometrics Analysis of World Scientific Research of Pathology and Forensic Medicine.

Background & Objective:This study examines the extent of scientific publications and patents in pathology and forensic medicine globally and the citation relationship between them from 2011 to 2020, indexed in the Scopus database. Methods:In this scientometric study, data were extracted from the SciVal citation database. Search feature and library study method and annual growth rate, relative growth rate, and linear model were used to retrieve and analyze the data. The scientometric indicators included the number of publications and patents of the university in collaboration with industry, the number of articles cited by patents, the number of patents cited by articles, the average number of patents cited by articles, and the number of articles cited.Results:The results showed a poor collaboration between academia and industry in pathology and forensic Medicine, and North America is the busiest region in this field. The average growth of patents based on articles, the number of articles mentioned in patents, citations to patents, and the average number of patents of an institute in the articles of that institute have a positive exponential relationship. Based on the linear model, the relationship between articles and citations equals R2 = 0.982, which is inverse and negative. The data set of articles and citations was suitable for polynomial (R2 = .994), linear (R2= .982) and exponential (R2 = .887) models. Conclusion:The research process of pathology and forensic medicine is inappropriate, and the citation relationships between articles and patents in this field are weak. Strengthening the link between academia and industry in pathology and forensic medicine can strengthen research in this field.

The state of optics research in Colombia: a scientometric analysis

Although there is a perception in the community that the state of optics research in Colombia has reached a mature state with international recognition, to date, there is no study that supports this view quantitatively. We aimed to assess the state of optics research in Colombia based on international journal publications. Therefore, we determined scientometric indicators using the research articles published by authors with Colombian affiliation in journals indexed in the Scopus database belonging to the Atomic and Molecular Physics and Optics subject category. The research output has increased dramatically in the past two decades, with an average of 169 articles per year since 2016. Most of these articles are published in high-impact journals. A little over 10\% of that research is in the top 10\% most cited in the world. Over 25 higher education institutions contribute significantly to this research with many international and national collaborations. The normalized citation impact for Colombian optics research is 0.95, only five points below the world average, and ranked second in Latin America, only superseded by Chile (1.33). Our results show that optics research is an established research area in Colombia with high impact and many active groups from different institutions spread throughout the country.

A study of research publications of top NIRF ranked engineering institutions in Karnataka

The study evaluates the research performance of top-six NIRF ranked engineering institutions in Karnataka. The study uses scientometrics indicators like publication and citation growth, AGR, RGR, DT, citation productivity of open access publications, and document types. The analysis revealed that publication productivity increased after the introduction of NIRF in 2016. The average citations of all the institutions increased, and MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT) recorded the highest 1.7 citations per paper, followed by Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) with 1.69 citations per paper. The decreasing trend of relative growth and increased doubling time reveal that the institutes are reaching their saturation point in their publication productivity. The open-access articles' average citations are higher than non-OA articles. The Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering (RVCE) open access articles received the highest citations, 11.8 average citations—nearly four times higher than closed access articles, with 2.58 average citations.

Scientific Progress of Global Research on BCG Vaccine: A Scientometric Study

ABSTRACT The study presents an overview of global research output on the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine from 1989–2021 using various scientometric indicators. The objective is to inform and present a comprehensive analysis of BCG vaccine research to health practitioners, researchers, and librarians that has not been explored from the perspective of scientometrics. Using a search strategy, data was collected from the Web of Science database and 2416 original articles were identified. Computed analysis of the literature was done through the software bibloshiny (a web interface for bibliometrix analysis) in the R statistical programming environment. The study examined the pattern of growth of research output, prolific authors, institutions, key journals, and countries involved in BCG vaccine research. Findings reveal an increase in research output on BCG vaccine from 2008 onwards. The highest number of articles 163 were published in 2016. Key journals, authors, and institutions working in the field of BCG vaccine research have been identified. A Sankey diagram has been used to depict the evolution of BCG vaccine research. This article reports the evolution of BCG vaccine research in terms of annual growth of publications, relevant authors, institutions, countries, and the evolution of author keywords and the growth of BCG vaccine research areas.

Does the Increase of the Scientific Achievements Lead to Decrease in the Quality of Education?

This research article is devoted to the problem of training personnel with higher medical education during the transition to an independent assessment of the graduates’ qualifications and new requirements for the effectiveness of scientific work of universities. The aim of this work was to study the correspondence between the quality of graduate training and the scientific productivity of medical universities. The authors analyzed the results of the accreditation examination of graduates of medical universities as an indicator of the quality of specialists’ training and scientometric indicators in the relevant specialty. As a result of the data analysis, the problem of discrepancy between high scientific productivity of universities and successful completion of accreditation by young specialists was revealed. The authors believe that a possible reason for this discrepancy is the high load on the teaching staff.Furthermore, detailed study of this problem is needed and, most likely, a revision of the approach to the work organization of medical universities’ teaching staff.

Methodological approach to assessing the productivity of scientific activity of higher school teachers

An integral criterion for evaluating the scientific effectiveness and publication activity of scientists on domestic and international scientometric databases is proposed. The developed criterion was tested in the process of evaluating the scientific activities of teachers of the Faculty of Industrial and Digital Economics and the Faculty of Information Technologies of the Bryansk State Technical University. Examples of calculating the developed integral criterion based on a set of such scientometric indicators as the number of publications, the number of citations, the average number of citations per publication, the number of articles according to the lists of the Higher Attestation Commission, Web of Science and Scopus are given. Conclusions are drawn on the objectification of scientometric indicators for evaluating the publication activity of teachers and researchers and prospects for further research are outlined.

Exploring the Role of International Research Collaboration in Building China’s World-Class Universities

This study explored the international research collaboration led by China’s world-class universities and its impact during the first construction cycle of the “Double First-Class” initiative (2016–2020). We collected international collaborative publications based on the Scopus database and examined the performance of international research collaboration in terms of quantity, impact, collaborative networks, and subject areas using scientometric indicators and social network analysis. We found that international collaboration accounts for only a quarter of the total output but is far above the overall level of scientific papers in terms of quality and impact. The United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Hong Kong remain China’s closest partners. Meanwhile, ties with Belt and Road partner countries have become stronger with the introduction of foreign policy. China’s medicine and multidisciplinary research have gained prominence in the context of the global health crisis. Thus, international research collaboration effectively improves research performance, deepens academic networks, and disseminates local issues and solutions to the world, thereby enabling China’s world-class universities to reconcile global engagement with Chinese characteristics.

Cluster dynamics of knowledge on efficiency of and demand for Russian studies in quantum technologies

The author evaluates the effectiveness of Russian research studies in quantum technologies (including use of quantum computers, quantum cryptography, quantum communications) in 2011–2020. The analysis is based on the Russian Science Citation Index and scientometric indicators: researcher publication activity – yearly number of publications of research findings, citations and penetration of these publications.The author found that almost till the end of the reviewed decade the number of publications and citation had been constantly increasing which evidenced on the increasing interest of Russian researches toward this area not prevented even by the 2014 crisis: at the end of the period, the number of publications outstripped the minimum of 2011 four times, and in 2013, it exceeded the citation maximum two times. The author points to the fact that the highest publication activity and citation of Russian researchers was in the area of quantum computers, and the lowest – in quantum communications; the highest demand was demonstrated in 2012 in quantum communications. The maximum penetration in the area of quantum computers of 2017 is approx. by half and twice lower than the similar indicator in quantum cryptography in 2011 and quantum communications.The relatively low indicators of penetration of research products in 2020 via all vectors are obviously of the same nature as the low citation indexes in 2020: the delayed response of scientific community to current year publications. The highly demanded vectors of studies in various areas of quantum technologies are determined. The illustrations are provided.

Публикационная активность и продуктивность преподавателей в зеркале наукометрии

A review of domestic and foreign studies related to analyzing the factors of the lecturers’ scientific productivity and publication activity and the main approaches to their assessment is carried out. The main reasons preventing the creation of a competency-based model of the teaching success based on a set of different-sized assessment indicators are shown. A correlation-regression model is proposed for assessing the lecturers’ scientific productivity based on calculating an integral indicator that allows forming candidates for the dissertation council members in the related specialties, taking into account the significance of publications and the number of their citations. The developed integral indicator makes it possible to compare the scientific productivity of lecturers and both structural units and universities with each other.
 The integral criterion is based on assessing the lecturers’ scientific performance and publication activity on the domestic and international scientometric databases. The developed criterion was tested in the process of evaluating the lecturers’ scientific activities of the Department of Industrial and Digital Economics and the Department of Information Technology of Bryansk State Technical University. Examples of calculating the developed integral criterion based on the totality of such scientometric indicators as the number of publications, the number of citations, the average number of citations per publication, the number of articles on the lists of the State Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles, Web of Science and Scopus are given. Conclusions are drawn on the objectification of scientometric indicators for evaluating the lecturers’ publication activity and the examples of the practical use of indicators for assessing the lecturers’ scientific activity are given.

An Analysis of the Factors with Influence on Scientometric Indicators of Researchers from Pedagogical Universities of Ukraine

The article is devoted to a scientometric study of pedagogical universities of Ukraine, involving an analysis of the influence of external and internal factors on the scientometric indicators of researchers from this category of universities, which data were extracted from the scientometric Scopus database. The authors selected seventeen universities forming the population of Ukrainian pedagogical universities which profiles are presented in this database. The following variables were used as external factors: the number of years since the university founding, the number of doctors and candidates of sciences, the population of the city where the university is located. The characteristics of the indexed scientific publications were chosen as the internal factors of influence: the number of authors of each article included in the h-index (one author, 2 to 5 authors, more than 5 authors); type of access to the article (open or closed); “age” of the article; article funding (available or absent); quartile of the journal in which the article is published. All the involved computations were made by the authors in the statistical package SPSS.
 To identify the impact of external factors on the scientometric indicators of the pedagogical universities, the authors calculated pair correlation coefficients of factor variables with Hirsch index. The impact of internal factors was determined by a series of single-factor analyses of variance, to identify their impact on citation rates of the articles included in the nuclei of h-indexes of universities.
 The calculated Spearman correlation coefficients between the h-index and the factor variables suggest that there is no significant correlation between the external factors and Hirsch index. That is, none of these external factors affect the scientometric indicators of the pedagogical universities. A series of single-factor analyses of variance showed that the formation of the core h-index of the pedagogical universities was significantly influenced by the internal factors “availability of funding for a particular publication”, “journal’s quartile” and “article’s age”. But an impact of the factors “number of the article’s authors” and “open access to the article” on the formation of the core h-index of the pedagogical universities was not found.

A Decade of Activity of the Medical Journal of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences through Scientometric Method (2010-2019)

A Decade of Activity of the Medical Journal of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences through Scientometric Method (2010-2019)

Prof. S. Shcheklein – One of the founders of the scientific and methodical school of energy saving, increasing energy efficiency and hydrogen energy in the Urals

The article gives the main results of scientific and educational activities of a prominent and well-known scientist in the field of energy saving and energy efficiency improvement, hydrogen energy, development of methods and technologies for the use of renewable energy sources, environmentally efficient projects, head of the Department of Nuclear Power Plants and Renewable Energy Sources of Ural Federal University (UrFU), Honored Power Engineer of Russia, Full Member of the International Energy Academy, Dr. Tech. Sciences, Professor Sergei Shcheklein. It is shown the achievements of the Ural Scientific and Methodological School in this area of knowledge, as well as the history of the creation of the first in Russia Department of Energy Saving at UrFU, the Center for the Training and Certification of Specialists in the Field of Energy Saving, the Regional Educational and Methodological Center for Energy Saving. The results of the work of the Interuniversity Coordination Council on Energy Saving in educational institutions of the Ural Region under the Regional Energy Commission of the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region on the implementation of the Energy Saving Program of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation in 1999–2005 are described. The article expounds twenty years of experience in organizing and holding all-Russian, and recently – international student olympiads, youth scientific and practical conferences, exhibitions of scientific and technical creativity of students, graduate students and young scientists on energy and resource saving, renewable energy sources and nuclear energy. We have presented some results of scientific research of the laboratory “Eurasian Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Saving”, created and operated under the guidance of prof. Sergei Shcheklein and described briefly the textbooks published in recent years in the field of hydrogen energy, on the safe use of nuclear energy at modern and promising nuclear power plants, the development of a methodology for calculating complex energy systems based on the use of renewable energy sources, the classification of renewable energy clusters, performed in collaboration and under the guidance of prof. Sergei Shcheklein. Moreover, references to the main federal and regional regulatory documents, scientific publications and educational publications related to the scientist's many years of work in this area, scientometric indicators are given.

Jorge Eduardo Hirsch and the Hirsch-index** a Personal Chronicle

The paper tries to find out the working mechanism of birth of one of the nowadays most used scientometric indicators, the Hirsch-index. The effort spent deals with the human feeling called frustration. It is shown how the frustration of a physicist became the basis of an invention of an indicator considered worldwide the best for evaluating the scientific performance of individual researchers.

Altmetrics analysis of selected articles in the field of social sciences

PurposeThis study aims to measure the impact of the selected papers in the field of social sciences indexed in Scopus using altmetrics tools.Design/methodology/approachThe research community consists of the articles of the Iranian researchers in the field of social sciences indexed in the Scopus database in 2014–2018. Some of the most important altmetric service providers have been used to assess the presence of the research outputs in the social media and their impact assessment. Also, the relationship between variables such as scientific collaboration of researchers, open access journals and the quality of research journals with altmetric activity have been investigated through appropriate correlation tests.FindingsThe findings indicated that the most important social media publishing Iranian articles are Mendeley, Twitter and Facebook. The results of the correlation test showed a statistically significant positive and weak relationship between the scientific collaboration of researchers and their altmetric activity. Also, there is a significant and weak statistical relation between journal openness and the altmetric scores. In this study, the findings suggest that the published articles in the journals with higher quality indicators have higher altmetric scores and are more likely to be present in social media.Research implicationsIn this study, the social network indicators have been introduced as a solution to examine the effectiveness of research activities on social media. These indicators can be used to evaluate the impact and usefulness of the articles and other scientific outputs with the aim of completing and eliminating the shortcomings of traditional scientometrics indicators. What distinguishes altmetric criteria from other criteria related to the scientometric studies is the speed, ease and transparency of these scales. This allows the publications to be evaluated regardless of their formal form and in the shortest possible time, and in addition to the scientific impact, the social impact of the works is also measured.Originality/valueThe results of these studies show that using altmetric service providers not only reflects the social impact of publications on authors in different subject areas but also helps libraries, universities, research organizations and politicians in planning, budgeting and allocating resources.

Modeling scientometric indicators using a statistical data ontology

Scientometrics is the field of study and evaluation of scientific measures such as the impact of research papers and academic journals. It is an important field because nowadays different rankings use key indicators for university rankings and universities themselves use them as Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The purpose of this work is to propose a semantic modeling of scientometric indicators using the ontology Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX). We develop a case study at Tecnologico de Monterrey following the Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) methodology. We evaluate the benefits of storing and querying scientometric indicators using linked data as a mean for providing flexible and quick access knowledge representation that supports indicator discovery, enquiring and composition. The semi-automatic generation and further storage of this linked data in the Neo4j graph database enabled an updatable and quick access model.