Are highly cited papers more international?

Several bibliometric studies have shown that international or multicountry papers are generally more cited than domestic or single country papers. Does this also hold for the most cited papers? In this study, the citation impact of domestic versus international papers is analyzed by comparing the share of international papers among the hundred most cited papers in four research specialities, from three universities, four cities and two countries. It is concluded that international papers are not well represented among high impact papers in research specialities, but dominate highly cited papers from small countries, and from cities and institutions within them. The share of international papers among highly cited papers is considerably higher during 2001–2008 compared to earlier years for institutions, cities and countries, but somewhat less for two of the research fields and slightly higher for the other two. Above all, domestic papers from the USA comprise about half of the highly cited papers in the research specialities.     

The utility of scientific papers

This article investigates the function of scientific papers in the production of scientific knowledge. For this production, the citations made of these papers in the scientific literature can be considered as economic utilities. The work of the scientist is described as the production of citations by means of citations. The number of citations received by a given paper can be used to measure the paper's formal utility. The formal utility of scientific papers is studied empirically. It is concluded that the references contained in a scientific paper are a major determinant of its future utility.     

The frequencies of multinational papers in various sciences

Multinational papers are defined here as ones written by authors who reside in different countries during the course of research. For each of 16 fields of science, I scanned the first 200 papers in 2005 in four major journals publishing original research papers. Those journals produced 40% of all the citations among those journals with Impact Factors greater than 1.0. The frequencies of multinational papers ranged from 13% in surgery to 55% in astronomy. Although one can list a dozen factors which might contribute toward multinational papers, I lack the data to test most of those. There are only minor correlations with team sizes and Impact Factors, inadequate to explain the range. There is a larger, but not convincing, dependence upon the fractions of single-author papers and its cause, if real, is unclear. However, the most prominent factor seems to be the nature of the objects studied; if they are usually local (e.g. in one hospital or in one laboratory), the papers tend to be domestic but if most of the objects are available simultaneously to scientists in many countries (e.g. the sky in astronomy or the oceans and the Earth’s atmosphere in geosciences or widespread diseases in the area of infectious diseases or plants and animals widely distributed in biology), the papers are often international. Auxiliary results for 2005 are an average of 5.5 ± 0.3 authors per paper and 6.6 ± 1.0% one-author papers.     

抗菌纸的研究进展

阐述了抗菌纸生产的必要性,并就生产抗菌纸所用有机和无机两大类抗菌剂进行了介绍,希能促进抗菌纸的研发,更好的满足人民生活的需要.     

Mathematical methods in psychiatric papers

A comparative study was carried out to determine the trend in the use of statistical methods in the papers published in the leading Russian, American and British psychiatric journals of the 1980–90-ies. Within 10 years the quota of papers with statistics increased considerably in the American and British journals (from 58.6% to 67.6%), especially in theArchives of General Psychiatry (88%). Qualitative changes were notable as well, tending towards the use of non-ordinary innovative methods. As regards the Russian psychiatric papers the use of statistical methods was a rare occurrence (21.8% in 1980s), that never changed within 10 years. In memory of Professor V.Nalimov, the first Russian scientometrist who initiated this investigation.     

Natural selection of academic papers

Academic papers, like genes, code for ideas or technological innovations that structure and transform the scientific organism and consequently the society at large. Genes are subject to the process of natural selection which ensures that only the fittest survive and contribute to the phenotype of the organism. The process of selection of academic papers, however, is far from natural. Commercial for-profit publishing houses have taken control over the evaluation and access to scientific information with serious consequences for the dissemination and advancement of knowledge. Academic authors and librarians are reacting by developing an alternative publishing system based on free-access journals and self-archiving in institutional repositories and global disciplinary libraries. Despite the emergence of such trends, the journal monopoly, rather than the scientific community, is still in control of selecting papers and setting academic standards. Here we propose a dynamical and transparent peer review process, which we believe will accelerate the transition to a fully open and free-for-all science that will allow the natural selection of the fittest ideas.     

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.     

Announcements and calls for papers

Announcements and calls for papers     

The future of single-authored papers

The fractions of single-authored papers in four science fields (astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology) were determined at five-year intervals during 1975–2005. In each case the distribution is best fitted with an exponential function that never reaches zero, implying that single-authored papers will continue to be published in the foreseeable future. This is contrary to the prediction that they would become extinct.     

Are uncited papers necessarily all nonimpact papers? A quantitative analysis

Scientometrics - 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...     

Tracking the follow-up of work in progress papers

Academic conferences offer numerous submission tracks to support the inclusion of a variety of researchers and topics. Work in progress papers are one such submission type where authors present preliminary results in a poster session. They have recently gained popularity in the area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as a relatively easier pathway to attending the conference due to their higher acceptance rate as compared to the main tracks. However, it is not clear if these work in progress papers are further extended or transitioned into more complete and thorough full papers or are simply one-off pieces of research. In order to answer this we explore self-citation patterns of four work in progress editions in two popular HCI conferences (CHI2010, CHI2011, HRI2010 and HRI2011). Our results show that almost 50% of the work in progress papers do not have any self-citations and approximately only half of the self-citations can be considered as true extensions of the original work in progress paper. Specific conferences dominate as the preferred venue where extensions of these work in progress papers are published. Furthermore, the rate of self-citations peaks in the immediate year after publication and gradually tails off. By tracing author publication records, we also delve into possible reasons of work in progress papers not being cited in follow up publications. In conclusion, we speculate on the main trends observed and what they may mean looking ahead for the work in progress track of premier HCI conferences.     

Cases versus papers in design education

It is necessary that engineering students become knowledgeable about design, engineering practice and application of engineering sciences. Two, of many, ways this can be done is by using engineering cases and published papers. The relative merits of cases and papers, even if based on the same set of facts, are discussed in terms of educational merit and professional advancement.     

Highly cited retracted papers

Scientometrics - We examine the number of citations in 10 highly cited retracted papers, and compare their current pre- and post-citation values. We offer some possible explanations for the...     

Textual and nontextual characteristics of scientific papers: Neglected science indicators

The citation rates of scientific papers, long used by numerous sociologists of science to measure the influence of individual scientists and the diffusion of knowledge, are shown to be partly affected by the various structural characteristics of these papers. Based on an analysis of 221 scientific papers in three cocitation clusters, between 15 and 35 percent of the variation in citation rates is found to be a function of those papers' textual and nontextual characteristics. The citation rates of papers in the Burkitts-Lymphoma and Heavy Quark Potential clusters are shown to be heavily dependent on abstract characteristics such as readability and number of uncommon words. The citation rates of DNA cluster papers are observed to be significantly affected by both the number of references and figures found in teh body of those papers. Of particular note is the fact that while the readability of abstracts is shown to decrease the citation rates of Burkitts-Lymphoma papers, the opposite is true of Heavy Quark Potential papers.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. MoravcsikAn earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1988 Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, GA (USA).     

Selected papers from CEM 2006 [Editorial]

The Sixth International Conference on Computation in Electromagnetics, CEM 2006, was held in Aachen, Germany from April 3-6 2006. The conference committee carefully reviewed all the papers presented and invited authors to submit extended papers for consideration in this Special Issue of IET SMT. These papers have now been through the normal IET review process and are published here. The papers published reflect the diversity and complexity of CEM. Some cover the mathematical foundations of the subject and others are oriented to the important applications area. The issue reflects the high level of interest shown in both the modelling of electrical machines at the conference and the use of finite element methods. There is also interest in optimisation and in techniques for speeding up solvers     

To include or not: the role of review papers in citation-based analysis

Citation information helps researchers observe the evolution of the knowledge. In scientific publications, a review paper discusses a professional field and thus tends to have more citations than general papers do. This study investigated whether specific characteristics of review papers induce different results in citation-based analysis. From the Scopus database, we collected scientific publications in a specific research field, e-tourism, to examine the role of review papers in citation-based analysis. The dataset includes 1421 publications covering the period from the 1988–2015. Empirical statistics show that review papers’ specific citation patterns influence citation analysis. First, in the main path analysis, the result expresses review papers’ integrative role in linking papers from diverse perspectives toward a clear mainstream topic. Second, in a well-defined research context, review papers introduce bias in citation-based clustering analysis because the specific high citation pattern in review papers obfuscates the grouping process. When using citation information in analysis, scholars must consider the purpose of the study and treat review papers distinctly to avoid bias when using certain analysis methods and datasets.     

Detection method of emerging leading papers using time transition

To survive worldwide competitions of research and development in the current rapid increase of information, decision-makers and researchers need to be supported to find promising research fields and papers. But finding those fields from an available data in too much heavy flood of information becomes difficult. We aim to develop a methodology supporting to find emerging leading papers with a bibliometric approach. The analyses in this work are about four academic domains using our time transition analysis. In the time transition analysis, after citation networks are constructed, centralities of each paper are calculated and their changes are tracked. Then, the centralities are plotted, and the features of the leading papers are extracted. Based on the features, we proposed ways to detect the leading papers by focusing on in-degree centrality and its transition. This work will contribute to finding the leading paper, and it is useful for decision-makers and researchers to decide the worthy research topic to invest their resources.     

Identifying 'seed' papers in sciences

Scientometrics - A concise quantitative method is established for identifying ‘seed’ papers in sciences. The method is set up following h-type metrics based on co-citation network...     

Are American astrophysics papers accepted more quickly than others?

It has been shown that papers in stem cell research submitted from institutions in the USA are accepted faster than those submitted from elsewhere and that the cause might at least partly be some bias in the refereeing process. We investigate whether there is a similar difference in time scale for papers in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology and look briefly at some of the possible causes. We find a publication time lag of 3.8 days (out of a median time of 105 days) while in the stem cell case it is 24 days out of a median of 83 days. One of many possible causes is a difference in how useful the papers are to the community, and we will assess this in a second paper making use of citation analysis.