Uncited Papers Research Articles

Uncited papers in the structure of scientific communication

Uncited papers in the structure of scientific communication

How Do Editorial Board Members Contribute to Journal Ranking in Library and Information Science?

The paper aims to detect publication contributions of editorial board members (EBMs) to academic journal ranking as exemplified by Russian LIS serials divided into three groups according to their authority. To reveal the EBMs’ contribution in each group, papers by EBMs in their parent journals as well as other sources were studied with comparative analyses of EBMs’ papers in parent journals and papers by other authors in the same journals. The Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) was used for collecting indicators that reflect journal ranks and scholarly output of EBMs. We found no relationship between journal ranking and a share of EBMs’ papers in a parent journal. Citation analyses of EBMs’ papers as well as citations of parent journals made by EBMs from other sources reveals a significant effect of EBMs on the rank of top-tiered and low-tiered journals pointing at active participation of EBMs in the development of parent journals. Zero or even negative impact of EBMs’ papers on the journal rank is registered in the middle-tiered group implying formalistic engagement of researchers to join the editorial boards, lack of interest in the journal work, or possible violation of the publication ethics by publishing poorly cited or uncited papers in parent journals due to less strict peer-review processes. The paper adds to a better understanding of the nature of journal ranking, particularly, impact factors, as well as performance of EBMs in the field of LIS publications. The ethics and possible conflict of interests related to publishing in parent journals are discussed. The results of the study can be useful for revising journal policy or editorial board composition.

Multifactor Citation Analysis over Five Years: A Case Study of SIGMETRICS Papers

Performance evaluation is a broad discipline within computer science, combining deep technical work in experimentation, simulation, and modeling. The field’s subjects encompass all aspects of computer systems, including computer architecture, networking, energy efficiency, and machine learning. This wide methodological and topical focus can make it difficult to discern what attracts the community’s attention and how this attention evolves over time. As a first attempt to quantify and qualify this attention, using the proxy metric of paper citations, this study looks at the premier conference in the field, SIGMETRICS. We analyze citation frequencies at monthly intervals over a five-year period and examine possible associations with myriad other factors, such as time since publication, comparable conferences, peer review, self-citations, author demographics, and textual properties of the papers. We found that in several ways, SIGMETRICS is distinctive not only in its scope, but also in its citation phenomena: papers generally exhibit a strongly linear rate of citation growth over time, few if any uncited papers, a large gamut of topics of interest, and a possible disconnect between peer-review outcomes and eventual citations. The two most-cited papers in the dataset also exhibit larger author teams, higher than typical self-citations, and distinctive citation growth curves. These two papers, sharing some coauthors and a research focus, could either signal the area where SIGMETRICS had the most research impact, or they could represent outliers; their omission from the analysis reduces some of the otherwise distinctive observed metrics to nonsignificant levels.

Bibliometric Analysis of Papers Published in Indian Journal of Chemistry-Section A and Section B during 2015-2020

An analysis of 456 papers published in IJCA and 548 papers in IJCB during 2015-2020 indicates that the average number of articles published per year was 76 in IJCA and 91.3 in IJCB. Academic institutions from India and abroad were the major contributors to both the journals, however, their share varied in the two journals. India and China were the major contributors to IJCA, while India and Iran were the major contributors to IJCB. The value of CPP for Indian and foreign authored papers was almost the same for both the journals. Among the prolific countries, highest value of CPP was for Bangladesh for papers published in IJCA and no significant difference was observed in the values of CPP for prolific countries in IJCB. Islamic Azad University (Iran) contributed the highest number of papers in IJCA, while CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIRIICT) topped the list of institutions in IJCB. Among the prolific institutions, CSIR-CSMCRI (Bhavnagar) had the highest value of CPP for IJCA. In case of IJCB, Gujarat University and Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University (MBKU) had the highest value of CPP. The Proportion of uncited papers was slightly more in IJCA as compared to IJCB. Of the 12 highly cited papers in IJCA five papers were written in domestic collaboration and one in international collaboration, while of the nine highly cited papers in IJCB four papers were written in domestic collaboration and none in international collaboration.

Uncited papers are not useless

Abstract We study the citation dynamics of the papers published in three scientific disciplines (Physics, Economics, and Mathematics) and four broad scientific categories (Medical, Natural, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities). We measure the uncitedness ratio, namely, the fraction of uncited papers in these data sets and its dependence on the time following publication. These measurements are compared with a model of citation dynamics that considers acquiring citations as an inhomogeneous Poisson process. The model captures the fraction of uncited papers in our collections fairly well, suggesting that uncitedness is an inevitable consequence of the Poisson statistics.

Characteristics of the least-cited and most-cited articles in ophthalmology journals: A pilot study.

Limited research has examined differences between uncited papers and their most-cited counterparts. By comparing characteristics of each cohort, it is possible to better determine factors associated with increased citation count in the ophthalmology literature. We initially identified all research articles published in six popular general ophthalmology journals (Ophthalmology, JAMA Ophthalmology, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, American Journal of Ophthalmology, British Journal of Ophthalmology, and Graefe's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology) between 2001 and 2011. Forty-nine articles were identified as having accrued zero citations as of March 2021 and were compared with an equivalent number of articles with the highest number of citations published in the same journals and time period. Significance (p < 0.05) for comparisons was determined using the Mann-Whitney U test and Fisher's exact test. Compared to the least-cited articles, the most-cited articles were significantly more likely to be clinical, multi-institutional, and multi-national in scope, report a statistically significant result, have a conflict of interest, state a funding source, and have higher sample sizes. These publications had significantly more words in the abstract and manuscript and more references. Overall, the first authors of the most-cited articles were significantly more likely to be female and report greater prior research productivity, as assessed by the relative citation ratio (RCR). Considering a small number of articles were uncited at least a decade after publication, it appears most research is useful for future investigations. However, there remain distinct differences between uncited articles and their most-cited equivalents in ophthalmology.

CONTRIBUTION OF EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS TO JOURNAL’S SCHOLARLY OUTPUT

Editorial board members (EBMs) of academic journals have been frequently studied for better understanding the principles of their functioning, impact on editorial policy, publication ethics, and entire scientific progress. One of the promising trends is to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of EBMs to the scholarly output of parent journals. This paper represents the results of the study on publication activity of editorial board members of the Russian Library and Information Science journals. To detect a share of papers by EBMs in the journal’s scholarly output, we studied a share of EBMs papers in parent journals and other sources. Generally, we detected the active participation of EBMs in increasing scholarly output of parent journals. We also studied the publication activity of foreign members of EBMs in Russian journals that turned out to bedramatically low. Formal involvement of foreign researchers to enhance the level of journal’s internationalization may explain this situation. It is shown, that the fact of publication fails to significantly impact on journal’s ranking positions. The scientific quality of EBMs papers has proved to be of higher value: in case of high quality of EBMs papers, the number of readers and citations start to increase. On the other hand, uncited papers by EBMs have the lowest or even negative effect on the journal’s rank. The findings can be of interest to editors-in-chief and founders of academic journals.

A Discrimination Index Based on Jain's Fairness Index to Differentiate Researchers with Identical H-index Values

Abstract Purpose This paper proposes a discrimination index method based on the Jain's fairness index to distinguish researchers with the same H-index. Design/methodology/approach A validity test is used to measure the correlation of D-offset with the parameters, i.e. H-index, the number of cited papers, the total number of citations, the number of indexed papers, and the number of uncited papers. The correlation test is based on the Saphiro-Wilk method and Pearson's product-moment correlation. Findings The result from the discrimination index calculation is a two-digit decimal value called the discrimination-offset (D-offset), with a range of D-offset from 0.00 to 0.99. The result of the correlation value between the D-offset and the number of uncited papers is 0.35, D-offset with the number of indexed papers is 0.24, and the number of cited papers is 0.27. The test provides the result that it is very unlikely that there exists no relationship between the parameters. Practical implications For this reason, D-offset is proposed as an additional parameter for H-index to differentiate researchers with the same H-index. The H-index for researchers can be written with the format of “H-index: D-offset”. Originality/value D-offset is worthy to be considered as a complement value to add the H-index value. If the D-offset is added in the H-index value, the H-index will have more discrimination power to differentiate the rank of the researchers who have the same H-index.

Are uncited papers necessarily all nonimpact papers? A quantitative analysis

In traditional research, the application of quantitative measurement on the value and influence of uncited papers is not feasible owing to the lack of data. The rapid advancement of social media has offered a new path for the dissemination of scientific papers and gain influence. In this thesis, the uncited papers published during 2006–2014 with a 5-year window on PLOS ONE journals from the Web of Science core collection was selected. A measurement model was built for the influence of uncited papers on social media dimension based on its Discussed, Saved, and Viewed data to explore the dynamic evolution track of the influence and determine the patterns of interaction. We found that uncited papers have a universal and significant influence on social media platforms. Besides, the evolution pattern of influence of the uncited papers can be illustrated by the layer-to-layer aggregation model of “document properties → three indicators → influence” Overall, the findings of this thesis are referential to the quantitative measurement of the influence of uncited papers.

An Empirical Examination of Citation in Life Science

The paper is an exploratory research that examines on the general perception that certain research papers or genre of papers, such as open-access papers, co-authored papers, etc., tend to be cited more than others. It examined the citation of 3866 papers in the field of life science published by 67 faculty members from four departments of three universities available in SCOPUS database. Analyses have been categorized into four areas viz. access type and its citation; paper type and its citation; authorship type and its citation; collaboration type and its citation. The first finding is that paidaccess articles (23.06 citation per paper (CPP)) do far better than open-access articles (13.62 CPP) in terms of citation received. Second, among the types of paper review papers (54.07 CPP) receive highest number of citations. Third, multi-authored papers receive more citation than single authored papers. Among the multi-authored papers three and four authorship are most common. It is observed that with the increase in the number of authors the number of citations also increases. Lastly, internationally collaborated papers receive more citation than domestic or national collaborated papers. Tandemly, it is also observed that 542 (14.02 per cent) papers have not received any citation. Some of these uncited papers are published more than three decades; some of them as recent as published in the year 2018.The findings here have implications on understanding the citation culture of different genres of research papers. It is not important research papers that receive more citation but there are other factors such as number of authors, type of paper, type of collaboration, etc., that determine citation.

Lignans: Quantitative Analysis of the Research Literature.

The current study provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the lignan literature. Data for the current study were extracted from the electronic Web of Science Core Collection database via the search string TOPIC = (“lignan*”) and processed by the VOSviewer software. The search yielded 10,742 publications. The ratio of original articles to reviews was 14.6:1. Over 80% of the analyzed papers have been published since the year 2000 and nearly 50% since the year 2010. Many of the publications were focused on pharmacology, chemistry, and plant sciences. The United States and Asian countries, such as China, Japan, South Korea, and India, were the most productive producers of lignan publications. Among the 5 most productive institutions was the University of Helsinki in Finland, the country that ranked 9th. Nineteen journals collectively published 3,607 lignan publications and were considered as core journals. Their impact factor did not correlate with the proportion of uncited papers. Highly cited publications usually mentioned phytoestrogen, isoflavone, daidzein, enterodiol, enterolactone, equol, genistein, and isoflavonoid. Cancer (e.g., breast cancer), cardiovascular disease, and antioxidation were the major themes. Clinical trials were estimated to contribute to 0.2–1.1% of the analyzed body of literature, so more of them should be conducted in the future to substantiate the beneficial effects and optimal dose of lignan intake in humans. Moreover, researchers can refer to these findings for future research directions and collaborations.

On the influence of uncited publications on a researcher’s h-index

A researcher’s output comprises cited and uncited papers. Nevertheless, the conventional h-index considers only the cited papers; and, in particular, awards a score to the so-called high-impact papers. Consequently, the h-index fails to assess the overall performance of a researcher. The purpose of this paper is to propose an author-level metric, called an apparent h-index, that augments the h-index with the number of cited/uncited papers of a researcher. The apparent h-index (hA-index) is defined as the product of the h-index and the fraction of cited papers of a researcher. Thus, the more the uncited papers of a researcher, the less the fraction of the cited papers; and, hence, the low the hA-index. In consequence, as opposed to the h-index, the hA-index can increase or decrease depending on the future performance output of a researcher. If a researcher has all his/her publications cited, the hA-index equals the h-index; and the researcher “saves” his/her h-index. However, if at least one of the publications of a researcher is uncited, the hA-index becomes lower than the h-index. This means that the hA-index takes uncited papers into consideration by way of penalization. Case studies for Physicists and Petroleum Engineers have been presented; and the results show that a researcher with a higher h-index, but with a lot of uncited papers may have a lower apparent h-index than a researcher with a lower h-index but very few uncited papers. The proposed hA-index will ensure that researchers are wary of what they “throw” in the literature.

A new database of the references on international clinical practice guidelines: a facility for the evaluation of clinical research

Although there are now several bibliographic databases of research publications, such as Google Scholar, Pubmed, Scopus, and the Web of Science (WoS), and some also include counts of citations, there is at present no similarly comprehensive database of the rapidly growing number of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), with their references, which sometimes number in the hundreds. CPGs have been shown to be useful for the evaluation of clinical (as opposed to basic) biomedical research, which often suffers from relatively low counts of citations in the serial literature. The objectives were to introduce a new citation database, clinical impact®, and demonstrate how it can be used to evaluate research impact of clinical research publications by exploring the characteristics of CPG citations of two sets of papers, as well as show temporal variation of clinical impact® and the WoS. The paper includes the methodology used to retain the data and also the rationale adopted to achieve data quality. The analysis showed that although CPGs tend preferentially to cite papers from their own country, this is not always the case. It also showed that cited papers tend to have a more clinical research level than uncited papers. An analysis of diachronous citations in both clinical impact® and the WoS showed that although the WoS citations showed a decreasing trend after a peak at 2–3 years after publication, this was less clear for CPG citations and a longer timescale would be needed to evaluate their impact on these documents.

“SEISMIC TECHNOLOGIES” IN THE CONTEXT OF RUSSIAN JOURNALS ON EARTH SCIENCES: AN EXTENSIVE 10-YEAR BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

The paper presents a ten-year bibliometric study of “Seismic Technologies” journal published by Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Geology and Geophysics. In the study we used both generally accepted bibliometric methods including citation analysis, detection of a share of uncited papers, distribution of citations per years, analysis of the level of internationalization of the journal, as well as rather new approaches for analysis of publication activity and geographic distribution of editorial board members. The obtained findings related to “Seismic Technologies” were compared with relevant indices of the most ranked Russian journals on Earth sciences to reveal the journal’s position among other Russian serials and to detect its possibilities to be selected in international citation databases.

Most Cited versus Uncited Papers. What Do They Tell Us?

Most Cited versus Uncited Papers. What Do They Tell Us?

A probe into causes of non-citation based on survey data

Empirical analysis results concerning the possible causes of non-citation may help increase the potential of researchers’ work to be cited. After complete literature retrieval from the Web of Science, Google Scholar and Scopus databases, we find that very few studies focus on the empirical analysis of causes of non-citation. In this article, we conduct a survey of the possible causes for citation or non-citation based on a questionnaire. We then perform a statistical analysis to identify the major causes of non-citation in combination with the analysis of the data collected through the survey. Most respondents to our questionnaire identified seven major points (‘research hotspots and novel topics of content’, ‘research topics similar to my work’, ‘high quality of content’, ‘reasonable self-citation’, ‘highlighted title’, ‘prestigious authors’, and ‘academic tastes and interests similar to mine’) that facilitate easy citation of one’s papers. They also pointed out that the vast difference between their current and former research directions is the primary reason for their previously uncited papers. They feel that texts that include notes, comments and letters to editors are rarely cited, and the same is true for papers that are too short or too lengthy. In comparison, it is easier for reviews, articles, or papers of intermediate length to be cited.

Quantity versus impact of software engineering papers: a quantitative study

According to the data from the Scopus publication database, as analyzed in several recent studies, more than 70,000 papers have been published in the area of Software Engineering (SE) since late 1960’s. According to our recent work, 43% of those papers have received no citations at all. Since citations are the most commonly used metric for measuring research (academic) impact, these figures raise questions (doubts) about the (non-existing) impact of such a large set of papers. It is a reality that typical academic reward systems encourage researchers to publish more papers and do not place a major emphasis on research impact. To shed light on the issue of volume (quantity) versus citation-based impact of SE research papers, we conduct and report in this paper a quantitative bibliometrics assessment in four aspects: (1) quantity versus impact of different paper types (e.g., conference versus journal papers), (2) ratios of uncited (non-impactful) papers, (3) quantity versus impact of papers originating from different countries, and (4) quantity versus impact of papers by each of the top-10 authors (in terms of number of papers). To achieve the above objective, we conducted a quantitative exploratory bibliometrics assessment, comprised of four research questions, to assess quantity versus impact of SE papers with respect to the aspects discussed above. We extracted the data through a systematic, automated and repeatable process from the Scopus paper database, which we also used in two previous papers. Our results show that the distribution of SE publications has a major inequality in terms of impact overall, and also when categorized in terms of the above four aspects. The situation in the SE literature is similar to the other areas of science as studied by previous bibliometrics studies. Also, among our results is the fact that journal articles and conference papers have been cited 12.6 and 3.6 times on average, confirming the expectation that journal articles have more impact, in general, than conference papers. Also, papers originated from English-speaking countries have in general more visibility and impact (and consequently citations) when compared to papers originated from non-English-speaking countries. Our results have implications for improvement of academic reward systems, which nowadays mainly encourage researchers to publish more papers and usually neglect research impact. Also, our results can help researchers in non-English-speaking countries to consider improvements to increase their research impact of their upcoming papers.

Uncitedness in Scientific Publications:A Case Study of Tribology Research

This study discusses the characteristics of uncitedness and compares with cited ones. Literature on tribology research was selected as the sample and Science Citation Index Expanded of WOS is used to retrieve the related bibliographic records. The studied parameters are: yearly share, document type and language, number of references, number of authors, share of single authored papers and average number of keywords. The results show that there is a significant difference in characteristics between cited and uncited papers.

Global Tribology Research Output (1998 - 2012): A Macro Level Scientometric Study

The aim of this study is to compare country output and citation impact as well as to assess the level of interdisciplinarity in the field of tribology research during the period 1998-2012, based on the SCOPUS database. Macro-level scientometric indicators such as growth rate, share of international collaborative papers, citation per paper, share of un-cited papers, and publication efficiency index were employed. Further, the Simpson Index of Diversity was used to measure the level of interdisciplinarity. The performance of top countries contributing more than 1000 papers during the study period was discussed. Contributions and share of continents and countries by income groups were examined. Further research contributions and citation impact of selected country groups were analyzed. This study reveals that high levels of interdisciplinarity exist in tribology research. Asia outperforms the other world regions and China contributes most of the papers (25%), while the United States receives most of the citations (22%).

Does author affiliation reputation affect uncitedness?

ABSTRACTThis study analyzes the relation between author affiliation reputation and uncitedness. We use 2015 U.S. News Best Global University Subject rankings as representative of affiliation reputation and collect uncited papers from 24 journals in six subjects from WoS. Preliminary correlation analysis results indicate that: (1) there is a significant correlation between affiliation reputation and uncitedness. (2) their relation is negatively and weakly correlated. And secondary data collection and correlation analysis proved that relation between affiliation reputation and uncitedness vary in different subjects. The findings of this study would attract scientists’ attention to avoid Matthew Effect and focus more on research papers rather than reputation when citing references.