Total Research Output Research Articles

A scientometric study of human computer interaction research in India

The research output of India in human computer interaction (HCI) research during 1987-2011 is analyzed in this paper on several parameters including total research output, its growth, rank and global publication share, citation impact. It also analyses the characteristics of most productive institutions, authors and high-cited papers. India is at 16 th position in the world in HCI research publications with 2656 papers by 3691 Indian authors from 693 institutions of India. The Transformative activity index suggests that India's research activity in the field of HCI is improved greatly in the last 5 years. Although highest number papers are contributed by Indian Statistical Institute, about half of publications are contributed by engineering colleges. All the papers published by Indian researchers have appeared in journals with impact factors between 0.090 and 5.211 with an average impact factor of 1.455. Indian authors preferred to publish in journals originated from United Kingdom, the Netherlands, USA and Germany. Citation analysis for Indian publications gives 9.8 citations/paper.

Mark A. Smith: The Scientist, the Man

Alzheimer disease (AD) research suffered a devastating loss with the death of Mark A. Smith on 19 December 2010. In addition to being the most prolific and fifth most cited AD author, Mark had a keen eye for innovation and quality of execution. Investigations into oxidative stress, cell cycle reentry, gonadotropins, mitochondria, metal homoeostasis and other novel ideas owe much of their origin and all of their continued influence to Mark’s unparalleled energy, as well as a progressiveness and generosity that enabled him to share his intellectual achievements and promote his colleagues and trainees. Mark was initially drawn to oxidative stress as a means of understanding the biology of AD and the necessity, in his view, of maintaining a fidelity to evolutionary adaptation for successful ageing. So at a time, when virtually all others were embracing classical notions of gain-of-function toxicity, Mark brought oxidative stress to the forefront with his first studies, one demonstrating glycation and another induction of heme oxygenase 1, in human AD in vivo. As a result, investigation into oxidative stress comprises 5% of the total AD research output and has continued to rise; something that was inconceivable only 20 years ago. In a short period of time, Mark became convinced that oxidation must be part of a programme of changes that surface at the initiation of AD if not sooner. Further demonstrating cell cycle reentry in neurons at risk of death in AD was the first success of his thought process, leading to the ‘two-hit’ hypothesis, in which he proposed that oxidative stress as well as cell cycle conspire to initiate non-apoptotic cell death. As data began to accumulate that the amyloid cascade hypothesis was fundamentally upside down, and the neuroscience community, in the quiet of private reflection, began to see the need for a paradigm shift, Mark’s call for objectivity, both in the literature and with his booming baritone voice in lectures all over the world, was a welcome instillation of courage and inspiration. Perhaps more than Mark realized, he was a voice of strength and scientific values that were badly needed in the face of a peer review system and granting agencies that, in Mark’s words, was caught in a game of ‘follow the leader’. In essence, by questioning the amyloid cascade hypothesis, Mark ushered the return of scientific values, the necessity for objectivity and the necessity to always question, for numerous colleagues thirsting for such a return. Yet questioning the amyloid cascade hypothesis was also a natural continuation of his efforts, and the extension of his experimental evidence and intuition. The notoriety of numerous debates, including the last this past October (Controversies in Neurology, Barcelona, Spain, October 2010), and over a decade of articles claiming analogy to protective responses were simply a continuation of Mark’s inclination towards objective appraisal of the evidence at hand. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PATHOLOGY Int. J. Exp. Path. (2011), 92, 297–298

HOW SHOULD RESEARCH PERFORMANCE BE MEASURED? A STUDY OF SWEDISH ECONOMISTS*

Billions are allocated annually to university research. The increased specialization and international integration of research and researchers has animated the need for comparisons of performance across fields, institutions and individual researchers. However, there is still no consensus regarding how such rankings should be conducted and what output measures to use. We rank all full professors in a particular discipline (economics) in one country using seven established measures of research performance. We show both that the rank order varies greatly across measures and that the distribution of total research output is valued very differently depending on the measure used.

Quantifying the research impact of the Sustainable Forest Management Network in the social sciences: a bibliometric study

This research note presents the results of a bibliometric analysis that was conducted to better understand the impact that Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN) funded research had in the forest-related social and Aboriginal research communities. We applied two indicators of research impact: (i) research outputs and (ii) citations. Our results suggest that the SFMN’s research outputs were highest in the fields of economics, sociology, and political science and law. The number of research articles that acknowledged the SFMN was 30% of the total research output of the SFMN-funded Principal Investigators. These articles represented 3% of the social science articles published in the Forestry Chronicle (the journal most frequently used by SFMN-funded Principal Investigators). Research output related to Aboriginal forestry indicated that the SFMN had a significant influence on the development of the field. Our citation analysis indicated that the average number of citations per SFMN-acknowledged publication in the social sciences was approximately the same as the international impact standard in the field. These results suggest that the SFMN-funded research in the social sciences compared very well with the international research standards in forest-related social sciences.

A long-term assessment of finance research performance among Asia–Pacific academic institutions (1990–2008)

We provide a long-term assessment of finance research in the Asia–Pacific region. Similar to the earlier findings in Chan et al. (2001) and Chan et al. (2005), the Asia–Pacific academic institutions, as a group, perform very well during 1990–2008. The two quality-adjusted weighted article metrics suggest that institutions in the region exhibit an increasing trend in the absolute number of articles and the relative percentage share of global research output. The Gini coefficients, while showing that the degree of concentration of research output continues to be high, suggest that the degree of research output concentration steadily decreases over the period. During the sample period, the top five institutions are Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of New South Wales, Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The top two researchers' percentage share of total research output ranges from a low of 18.7% in Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to a high of 59.8% in RMIT University. Among the top 25 institutions, a total of 14 top researchers (28%) have left their affiliated institutions as of June 1, 2009, suggesting considerable job mobility among active researchers.

Mapping of Indian computer science research output, 1999–2008

The research output of India in computer science during 1999---2008 is analyzed in this paper on several parameters including total research output, its growth, rank and global publication share, citation impact, share of international collaborative papers and major collaborative partner countries and patterns of research communication in most productive journals. It also analyses the characteristics of most productive institutions, authors and high-cited papers. The publications output and impact of India is also compared with China, South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.

Ranking and clustering of the faculties of commerce research performance in Australia

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. Using averaged and all available data for 2000–2004, cluster analysis is used to classify Australian Commerce Faculties into groups that exhibit similar research performance, measured by publication, PhD completion and secured competitive research grant funding. We also use factor analysis to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting two or three clusters. It is found that in terms of total research output, with the exception of Adelaide all the Group of 8 (Go8) members plus University of Technology, Sydney and Griffith always belong to ‘Clusters A’. However, when research performance is expressed in per academic staff terms, an additional 11 universities join this same cluster. Our results additionally show that eight Australian faculties of Commerce not only possess low total research output but their per capita performance is also poor.

Mapping of neuroscience research: a quantitative analysis of publications output of China, 1999-2008.

Neuroscience is one of the most active research fields in many countries including China since 1970. The Chinese neuroscientists are playing an ever growing and important role in IBRO activities for the development of worldwide cooperation in Brain research. The main objective of this study is to analyze the research performance of China in neurosciences in national and global context, as reflected in its publication output during 1999-2008. This study is based on the Chinese publication data in neurosciences retrieved from the Scopus Citation database for the 10 years (1999-2008). Several parameters including total research output, its growth, rank and global publication share, citation impact, share of international collaborative papers and major collaborative partner countries and patterns of research communication in most productive journals were studied. China's world ranking improved to 8(th) position in 2008. The cumulative publication output of China accounts for 39.69 % share of international collaborative papers during 1999-2008. Chinese authors in neuroscience field together contributed 794 papers, with an average of 49.63 papers per author. The top 49 highly cited papers in neurosciences from China had scored higher impact with 126.73 citations per paper. These 49 high-cited papers have appeared in 25 journals and are affiliated to 32 Chinese institutions.

Conduct of clinical trials in developing countries: a perspective

To provide a broad perspective of contextual factors involved in the conduct of clinical trials in developing countries. The quantity of research in developing countries continues to be inadequate, with clinical trials comprising a small fraction of the total research output. Most trials done in developing countries tend to be designed in developed countries and led by investigators in those nations. The main challenges in the conduct of trials in developing countries stem from the vulnerability of the populations due to illiteracy, poverty, limited research infrastructure, lack of sufficient numbers of experienced investigators and trained support personnel, and fragmented healthcare system. There is a need to formulate and conduct trials to test treatments that are context-specific and socially relevant. With careful planning in advance and shared partnership among sponsors, host-country research practitioners, government agencies and the community, many of the challenges facing clinical trial research can be overcome over the medium to long term. This would enable conformity to contemporary guidelines in both letter and spirit and hopefully develop research questions addressing the needs of developing countries.

Assessing the impact of biomedical research in academic institutions of disparate sizes

BackgroundThe evaluation of academic research performance is nowadays a priority issue. Bibliometric indicators such as the number of publications, total citation counts and h-index are an indispensable tool in this task but their inherent association with the size of the research output may result in rewarding high production when evaluating institutions of disparate sizes. The aim of this study is to propose an indicator that may facilitate the comparison of institutions of disparate sizes.MethodsThe Modified Impact Index (MII) was defined as the ratio of the observed h-index (h) of an institution over the h-index anticipated for that institution on average, given the number of publications (N) it produces i.e. (α and β denote the intercept and the slope, respectively, of the line describing the dependence of the h-index on the number of publications in log10 scale). MII values higher than 1 indicate that an institution performs better than the average, in terms of its h-index. Data on scientific papers published during 2002–2006 and within 36 medical fields for 219 Academic Medical Institutions from 16 European countries were used to estimate α and β and to calculate the MII of their total and field-specific production.ResultsFrom our biomedical research data, the slope β governing the dependence of h-index on the number of publications in biomedical research was found to be similar to that estimated in other disciplines (≈0.4). The MII was positively associated with the average number of citations/publication (r = 0.653, p < 0.001), the h-index (r = 0.213, p = 0.002), the number of publications with ≥ 100 citations (r = 0.211, p = 0.004) but not with the number of publications (r = -0.020, p = 0.765). It was the most highly associated indicator with the share of country-specific government budget appropriations or outlays for research and development as % of GDP in 2004 (r = 0.229) followed by the average number of citations/publication (r = 0.153) whereas the corresponding correlation coefficient for the h-index was close to 0 (r = 0.029). MII was calculated for first 10 top-ranked European universities in life sciences and biomedicine, as provided by Times Higher Education ranking system, and their total and field-specific performance was compared.ConclusionThe MII should complement the use of h-index when comparing the research output of institutions of disparate sizes. It has a conceptual interpretation and, with the data provided here, can be computed for the total research output as well as for field-specific publication sets of institutions in biomedicine.

Science education in and from Asia

As part of my doctoral research on learning, identity, and history from an activity-theoretic perspective, I examined the science of artificially making salmon in British Columbia. It was certainly hard work going through boxes of policy documents, technical reports, and official/private letters at the archives but I do recall slowly becoming aware of two seemingly contradictory phenomena. On the one hand, I observed the deep commitment of everyone involved in saving the icon of the Pacific Northwest—the collapse of these fish would bring local culture and economy to its knees. On the other hand, I lost my naivety in thinking that science and conservation efforts were spared from socio-political influences. One pundit made the wisecrack that saving the salmon on the west coast of Canada should really be a lot easier and free from the present bureaucratic morass, for here we have five species of Pacific salmon under the jurisdiction of one province while on the opposite coast there are five provinces protecting a single species of Atlantic salmon! I found this hilarious and revealing of the inherent complexities in trying to achieve a common goal with many interested stakeholders; who ultimately speaks for the salmon? Lest it be misunderstood, my story draws attention to an equally pressing situation in this editorial, ‘‘Who speaks for science education research in Asia?’’ The simplistic, but by no means simple answer is that every science educator working in Asia or someone who is tackling some science education issue within this region can speak. Whereas these educators are cognizant that they provide an important voice to the rest of the world about their successes stories (as well as failures), their total research output lags far behind that of other players in the field. If we were to judge national research productivity by publication output among the three highest ISI-ranked science education journals, Taiwan was the sole Asian state that appeared at least thrice during the years 1998–2002 in the top-ten list of nations (Tsai and Wen 2005). China and Singapore

Do we ecologically model what we economically value?

For the period 1991–2005 inclusive we categorise peer-reviewed journal output depending on whether it pertains to case-studies in a) cropland or b) aggregate semi-natural and natural terrestrial (ASNNT) ecosystems for three applications in ecological modelling: 1) modelling of terrestrial carbon and nitrogen fluxes; 2) modelling of terrestrial root systems; 3) geographic information systems. Next we compare these research output magnitudes for case-studies in cropland and ASNNT ecosystems with estimates of the total economic value (TEV) of either system. For applications 1) and 3) the magnitude of research output for ASNNT ecosystems between 1991–2005 is greater than for cropland and research into the former is increasing at a faster rate over time compared to the latter. Given that the TEV of ASNNT ecosystems is 82 times greater than the TEV of cropland we deem these trends in research output as desirable under the assumption that value and research should be interdependent. However for application 2), although research into ASNNT ecosystems is increasing at a faster rate compared to cropland, total research output between 1991–2005 is greater for cropland. We conclude that increased research output which focuses on ASNNT ecosystems in this particular application should be a priority, given the high TEV of ASNNT ecosystems relative to cropland.

Changing the research culture at the Section of Psychiatry, The University of the West Indies, Mona

To compare the medical research output of the Section of Psychiatry, The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, before and after the implementation of strategies aimed at stimulating research. Specific strategies such as weekly research and journal club meetings, with an emphasis on team activities and the establishment of bi-annual targets for submission of research papers were instituted in 2000. All research outputs from the Section of Psychiatry over the period 1995 to 2005 were identified from the Departmental Reports of the University of the West Indies and the published abstracts of the UWI Faculty of Medical Sciences and the Caribbean Health Research Council annual research conferences. A number of variables were extracted from each paper and comparisons made between the five-year period before and the five-year period after the implementation of the research enhancing strategies. Statistical analyses were performed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS; version 11.5) and included chi-squared and Mann Whitney U tests. One-hundred and sixty-two items of research output were identified for the entire period under study. In the period after the implementation of the research enhancing strategies, there were significant increases in the total research output (p = 0.008) and refereed publications (p = 0.016). There were considerable increases in the overall research output of the department as well as in many sub-categories of output. These strategies are presented as a model to other departments seeking to augment their output of research.

Efficiency of New Zealand universities and the impact of the performance based research fund

The Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) system introduced to the New Zealand tertiary sector in 2003 will reallocate some public funding to universities from a student enrolments basis to criteria partially based on the past research output performance of the universities. This paper uses the PBRF research quality scores as input to an analysis of the overall cost efficiency of the eight NZ universities. We find that performance differs markedly across the sector. We find that total research output could be increased by reallocating funding between the universities, but that the actual PBRF funding system will realise only a small proportion of the potential improvements. We raise concerns about the long‐run implications of the new policy regime.

The lack of public health research output from India.

BackgroundSystematic assessment of recent health research output from India, and its relation with the estimated disease burden, is not available. This information would help understand the areas in health research that need improvement in India to enhance the health of India's population.MethodsThe health research output from India during 2002, which was accessible in the public domain, was assessed by searching PubMed and other internet health literature databases, and was related to the disease burden suggested by the Global Burden of Disease Study. The main outcome measures were number of health papers with abstracts in basic, clinical and public health sciences; quality-adjusted research output based on the impact factors of journals in which the papers were published; classification of papers in disease/condition categories and comparison of research output with the estimated disease burden in each category. Comparison of the health papers from India during 2002 included in PubMed was done with those from Australia during one quarter of 2002.ResultsOf the 4876 health papers from India in 2002 in PubMed, 48.4%, 47.1% and 4.4% were in basic, clinical and public health sciences, respectively. Of the 4495 papers based on original research, only 3.3% were in public health. Quality-adjusted original research output was highest for non-communicable diseases (62% of total). Of the total quality-adjusted original research output, the proportions in injuries (0.7%), cardiovascular diseases (3.6%), respiratory infections (0.2%), diarrhoeal diseases (1.9%), perinatal conditions (0.4%), childhood cluster diseases (0.5%), unipolar major depression (0%), and HIV/AIDS (1.5%) were substantially lower than their proportional contribution to the disease burden in India. Human resources, health policy, health economics, and impact assessment of interventions were particularly poorly represented in public health research. The Australia-India ratio for quality-adjusted health research output per unit gross domestic product was 20 and for public health research output was 31.ConclusionsGood-quality public health research output from India is grossly inadequate, and strategic planning to improve it is necessary if substantial enhancement of population health were to be made possible. There is inordinately low relative research output in several diseases/conditions that cause major disease burden in India.

Composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals.

BackgroundResearchers from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading medical education journals. Some of them believe that there is a substantial editorial bias against their work. To obtain an objective basis for further discussion the present study was designed to assess the composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals.MethodsThe editorial boards of the three leading medical education journals according to their impact factor were retrieved from the respective January issue of the year 2003. We evaluated in which countries the editorial board members were based and classified these countries using the World Bank income criteria.ResultsIndividuals from a number of countries can be found on the editorial boards of the investigated journals, but most of them are based in high-income countries.ConclusionThe percentage of editorial board members which are based in developing world countries is higher for the leading medical education journals than in most of their psychiatry and general medicine counterparts. But it is still too low.

Revisiting bibliometric issues using new empirical data

Using research funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the classification of the grant that funded the research which led to the publication was contrasted with the use of a common proxy, journal set classification. Frequently, the two measures produce very similar results but major differences can occur. Acknowledgments data appear to accurately reflect a funding body's total research output, but lack the ability to identify individual funding schemes within such bodies. In contrast to the output funded by long-term grants, publications from research funded on a limited, three-year cycle exhibit a very fast publication turn-around — considerably faster than the often-quoted four years. The accuracy with which researchers report links between publications and the grants from which they emanate is examined.

Productivity of authors as reflected byduration of their scientific participation and speed of publication

The paper analyses the frequency distribution of scientific productivity of authors active for same lengh of time in theoretical population genetics speciality. The focus of analysis is on two aspects: their actual duration of participation in total research output and the speed at which they are able to produce their research publications.

Publication types, citation rates and evaluation

In order to resolve questions frequently raised in the context of research evaluation about the citation rates of journal publications in relation to other types of publications, the total research output of substantial institutions or systems has to be brought under bibliographic control. That precondition has rarely been met: there are few published studies of the total range of publications of major research institutions, including books, book chapters, technical reports and published conference proceedings. The Research Evaluation and Policy Project (REPP) at the Australian National University (ANU) has established a database covering all the publications from the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), a fulltime research institution at the ANU, and has examined in detail citations in the journal literature accruing to all types of publications. The database contains a significant number of publications, nearly 30 000 items, and covers the sciences and the social sciences and humanities. This data enables us to examine whether the citation record of research publications appearing in journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is a useable surrogate for the citation record within ISI journals of all model of publication. We contend that, if certain preconditions are met, the choice of citation rate is not critical.