Gender and research publishing in India: Uniformly high inequality?

Women’s access to academic careers has been historically limited by discrimination and cultural constraints. Comprehensive information about gender inequality within disciplines is needed to understand the problem and target remedial action. India is the fifth largest research producer but has a low international index of gender inequality and so is an important case. This study assesses gender inequalities in Indian journal article publishing in 2017 for 186 research fields. It also seeks overall gender differences in interests across academia by comparing the terms used in 27,710 articles with an Indian male or female first author. The data show that there are at least 1.5 male first authors per female first author in each of 26 broad fields and 2.8 male first authors per female first author overall. Compared to the USA, India has a much lower share of female first authors but smaller variations in gender differences between broad fields. Dentistry, Economics and Maths are all more female in India, but Veterinary is much less female than in the USA. There is a tendency for males to research thing-oriented topics and for females to research helping people and some life science topics. More initiatives to promote gender equality in science are needed to address the overall imbalance, but care should be taken to avoid creating the larger between-field gender differences found in the USA.     

从医学院校论文产出状况分析高校科技期刊的功能与定位

通过中国知网收集国内20所医学院校相关信息,调查分析2006—2010年各院校发表科技论文的情况,各院校主办科技期刊的状况,拥有两院院士、长江学者情况以及国家级重点学科建设情况,比较各院校论文发表比例,分析各院校主办科技期刊及其与拥有两院院士、长江学者数量以及国家级重点学科建设的相关性。结果表明:重点学科论文在校内科技期刊发表的比例平均仅占25.45%,有10所院校重点学科论文80%以上发表在校外期刊,而有8所院校的学报刊发表本校重点学科论文不足10%,仅有3所院校超过30%;各院校拥有两院院士、长江学者数量与重点学科建设具有相关性(r_s=0.706, r_s=0.679,均P＜0.01),重点学科建设则与科技期刊的创办密切相关(r_s=0.614, P＜0.01)。认为高校科技期刊特别是高校学报的功能与定位需要改革,高校科技期刊社与专家学者应共同努力提高高校科技期刊的影响力。     

Gender differences in research areas,methods and topics: Can people and thing orientations explain the results?

Although the gender gap in academia has narrowed, females are underrepresented within some fields in the USA. Prior research suggests that the imbalances between science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields may be partly due to greater male interest in things and greater female interest in people, or to off-putting masculine cultures in some disciplines. To seek more detailed insights across all subjects, this article compares practising US male and female researchers between and within 285 narrow Scopus fields inside 26 broad fields from their first-authored articles published in 2017. The comparison is based on publishing fields and the words used in article titles, abstracts, and keywords. The results cannot be fully explained by the people/thing dimensions. Exceptions include greater female interest in veterinary science and cell biology and greater male interest in abstraction, patients, and power/control fields, such as politics and law. These may be due to other factors, such as the ability of a career to provide status or social impact or the availability of alternative careers. As a possible side effect of the partial people/thing relationship, females are more likely to use exploratory and qualitative methods and males are more likely to use quantitative methods. The results suggest that the necessary steps of eliminating explicit and implicit gender bias in academia are insufficient and might be complemented by measures to make fields more attractive to minority genders.     

Academic Publishing in India: Sites of Reform and Resistance

Concentrates on the academic publishing sector within India, promoting three sites of resistance to historical (colonial) publishing processes identified as deficiencies for India’s growing academic publishing market. For a framework, the research draws on postcolonial theory, particularly the body of work assessing the means by which large academic publishers tightly control access to scientific output in many developing countries. It argues that although the historical constraints to academic publishing in India are diminishing, careful socioeconomic planning, recognising the development of a unique digital culture in India, are pivotal for a revitalised, local academic publishing program to grow and succeed.     

A comparative study of cross-domain research output and citations: Research impact cubes and binary citation frequencies

Across the various scientific domains, significant differences occur with respect to research publishing formats, frequencies and citing practices, the nature and organisation of research and the number and impact of a given domain's academic journals. Consequently, differences occur in the citations and h-indices of the researchers. This paper attempts to identify cross-domain differences using quantitative and qualitative measures. The study focuses on the relationships among citations, most-cited papers and h-indices across domains and for research group sizes. The analysis is based on the research output of approximately 10,000 researchers in Slovenia, of which we focus on 6536 researchers working in 284 research group programmes in 2008–2012.As comparative measures of cross-domain research output, we propose the research impact cube (RIC) representation and the analysis of most-cited papers, highest impact factors and citation distribution graphs (Lorenz curves). The analysis of Lotka's model resulted in the proposal of a binary citation frequencies (BCF) distribution model that describes well publishing frequencies. The results may be used as a model to measure, compare and evaluate fields of science on the global, national and research community level to streamline research policies and evaluate progress over a definite time period.     

How scholars implement trust in their reading,citing and publishing activities: Geographical differences

In an increasingly digital environment, many factors influence how academic researchers decide what to read, what to cite, where to publish their work, and how they assign trust when making these decisions. This study focuses on how this differs according to the geographical location of the researcher, specifically in terms of the country's level of development. Data were collected by a questionnaire survey of 3650 authors who had published articles in international journals. The human development index (HDI) was used to compare authors' scholarly behavior. The findings show that researchers from less developed countries such as India and China (medium HDI) compared to those in developed countries, such as the USA and UK (very high HDI) are more reliant on external factors and those criteria that are related to authority, brand and reputation, such as authors' names, affiliation, country and journal name. Even when deciding where to publish, the publisher of the journal is more important for developing countries than it is for researchers from the US and UK. Scholars from high HDI countries also differ in these aspects: a) they are less discriminatory than authors from developing countries in their citation practices; b) for them the fact that a source is peer reviewed is the most important factor when deciding where to publish; c) they are more negative towards the use of repositories and social media for publishing and more skeptical about their potential for increasing usage or reaching a wider audience.     

高校学报本校科研人员发文情况探究--基于104个高校人文社会科学学报发文情况的量化分析

对104个高校人文社会科学学报的数据采集,探索现阶段高校学报的本校科研人员发文情况,并分析其对高校学报影响力的影响。研究表明：高校学报的本校科研人员发文比率在20%—60%之间;985或211高校、具有社科博士点高校学报更倾向于刊发本校作者的论文;从区域上来看,华东、华北、东北的高校学报更倾向于刊发本校作者的论文;CSSCI 和非 CSSCI 高校学报在本校科研人员发文占比上差异不显著;高校学报的本校科研人员发文占比并未显著影响学报的影响力。     

Comparative rank assessment of journal articles

To take into account the impact of the different bibliometric features of scientific fields and different size of both the publication set evaluated and the set used as reference standard, two new impact indicators are introduced. The Percentage Rank Position (PRP) indicator relates the ordinal rank position of the article assessed to the total number of papers in the publishing journal. The publications in the publishing journal are ranked by the decreasing citation frequency. The Relative Elite Rate (RER) indicator relates the number of citations obtained by the article assessed to the mean citation rate of the papers in the elite set of the publishing journal. The indices can be preferably calculated from the data of the publications in the elite set of journal papers of individuals, teams, institutes or countries. The number of papers in the elite set is calculated by the equation: P(π_v) = (10 log P) ? 10, where P is the total number of papers. The mean of the PRP and RER indicators of the journal papers assessed may be applied for comparing the eminence of publication sets across fields.     

Linguistic differences between well‐established and predatory journals: a keyword analysis of two journals in political science

Predatory publishing has become a much‐discussed and highly visible phenomenon over the past few years. One widespread, but hardly tested, assumption is the idea that articles published in predatory journals deviate substantially from those published in traditional journals. In this paper, we address this assumption by utilizing corpus linguistic tools. We compare the ‘academic‐like’ nature of articles from two different journals in political science, one top‐ranking and one alleged predatory. Our findings indicate that there is significant linguistic variation between the two corpora along the dimensions that we test. The articles display notable differences in the types and usage of keywords in the two journals. We conclude that articles published in so‐called predatory journals do not conform to linguistic norms used in higher‐quality journals. These findings may demonstrate a lack of quality control in predatory journals but may also indicate a lack of awareness and use of such linguistic norms by their authors. We also suggest that there is a need for the education of authors in science writing as this may enable them to publish in higher‐ranked and quality‐assured outlets.     

Publishing in Predatory Open Access Journals: A Case of Iran

Scholarly publishing scams and predatory journals are emerging threats to academic integrity. During the last few years, the number of bogus journals has dramatically increased, defraud authors by promising fast review and prompt publishing. The current research investigates the contribution of Iranian researchers in predatory open-access journals in 2014. In this research, a total of 21,817 articles published by 265 journals from Beall’s list of predatory standalone journals were investigated. Although Beall’s weblog was taken offline on January 15, 2017, data was collected between January and March 2016 when his weblog was accessible. Results of the study revealed that Iranian researchers have contributed to 1449 papers from 265 journals, ranked this country as having the second largest contributor after India. Surprisingly, institutions with the highest share of publication in predatory journals are among the most reputable and well-known universities of the country. Un-vetted papers published in predatory journals can hurt individuals’ reputation and be a base for future low-quality research in Iran and other world countries. To avoid being victimized by questionable journals, researchers should be more familiar with scholarly publishing literacy skills to recognize and avoid publishing scams.     

SCI-E收录中国期刊现状分析

中国作者对发表SCI论文有巨大的需求,但目前SCIE收录的中国期刊数量较少,且总体水平未达到世界平均水平。将SCI-E收录的中国期刊根据语种和论文作者的国籍进行分类后发现:甲类期刊(以中文刊载的论文大于50%)和乙类期刊(发表论文的作者至少50%来自中国,且至少50%的论文以英文形式发表)学术水平未达到国际平均水平,2001—2011年期间变化不大;但乙类期刊是SCI-E收录的中国期刊中的绝大多数。丙类期刊(其刊载的论文至少50%是以英文发表的,且至少50%的论文第一作者为非中国作者)引用指数(JCS)逐年上升,上升幅度明显,2011年超过国际平均水平。说明通过改变语种不能提高期刊的国际影响力。在这3类期刊中,丙类年刊均载文量最低,为117.27篇/刊,2007后呈逐年下降趋势,2011年甚至降至91.07篇/刊。中国被SCI-E收录的期刊数量少,与国内发表SCI论文的巨大需求,以及中国期刊走上国际舞台,发挥更大的学术影响力的需求差距甚远,的确有必要创办更多的英文科技期刊;但是在此过程中,有必要慎重评价SCI-E收录期刊的学术影响力和作用。     

中文医学学术期刊发表英文文章的实践与思考

中文医学学术期刊发表英文文章的现象较为普遍.通过对发表在<吉林大学学报(医学版)>上的112篇英文文章的发表时间、栏目、作者分布及被引用情况和其他3种较权威医学学术期刊发表的英文文章的数量及被引用情况进行分析,发现中文期刊发表的英文文章虽然具有较高的学术价值,但被国内期刊引用率明显低于同期发表的中文文章,SCI-E检索显示被引频次为0,认为中文医学学术期刊发表英文文章并没有起到扩大传播范围、促进期刊国际化的作用,而且浪费宝贵的信息资源.建议中文医学学术期刊不宜刊发英文文章,在国内应首选英文版期刊发表英文文章.     

National vs. international journals: views of medical professionals in Croatia

Scholarly journals, especially in non‐English‐speaking countries, may perform very different functions depending on whether they are published for national or international audiences. Four hundred and sixty‐six academic physicians and non‐academic general practitioners in Croatia were surveyed on their knowledge about two Croatian medical journals: Lije?ni?ki vjesnik (published in Croatian) and Croatian Medical Journal (published in English). The physicians were also surveyed about the importance of all national and international journals published in Croatia, and the types of articles they thought should be published in these journals. More respondents rated national (n = 329, 72.6%) than international journals (n = 275, 63.5%, P < 0.001, Wilcoxon test) as very important for the medical profession. On the other hand, publishing in international journals was more often rated as important than publishing in national journals (n = 184, 42.5% vs. n = 125, 27.8%; P < 0.001, Wilcoxon test). Guidelines for clinical practice were rated as the most important publication item in national journals, and original scientific articles in international journals.     

Characterizing in-text citations in scientific articles: A large-scale analysis

We report characteristics of in-text citations in over five million full text articles from two large databases – the PubMed Central Open Access subset and Elsevier journals – as functions of time, textual progression, and scientific field. The purpose of this study is to understand the characteristics of in-text citations in a detailed way prior to pursuing other studies focused on answering more substantive research questions. As such, we have analyzed in-text citations in several ways and report many findings here. Perhaps most significantly, we find that there are large field-level differences that are reflected in position within the text, citation interval (or reference age), and citation counts of references. In general, the fields of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Life and Earth Sciences, and Physical Sciences and Engineering have similar reference distributions, although they vary in their specifics. The two remaining fields, Mathematics and Computer Science and Social Science and Humanities, have different reference distributions from the other three fields and between themselves. We also show that in all fields the numbers of sentences, references, and in-text mentions per article have increased over time, and that there are field-level and temporal differences in the numbers of in-text mentions per reference. A final finding is that references mentioned only once tend to be much more highly cited than those mentioned multiple times.     

Slavica Publishers: Fifty Years of Service to the Slavic Field

ABSTRACT

Slavica Publishers has played an important role in the fields of Slavic languages and literatures and Slavic area studies for 50 years. This article provides a brief history of the publishing house, focusing on key book and journal publications; the transition in 1997 from closely held privately owned corporation to not-for-profit status as a unit of Indiana University; evolution from predominately self-produced authors’ CRC to professionally typeset and edited volumes; and plans to keep Slavica relevant in the future. It is implicit that Slavica might serve as a model for other struggling small academic presses in this time of rapid change and chaos in scholarly publishing.     

学术期刊多媒体栏目出版实践

介绍期刊多媒体出版的模式,对其难点和优势进行分析,同时对栏目设计、实施条件、平台支撑等进行总结。以《Science China Information Sciences》的MOOP栏目为例,对多媒体栏目设计、制作、评审等进行详细介绍,并通过阅读量和SCI引用情况,说明多媒体出版在扩大宣传、增加文章可信度,以及提高期刊影响力等方面相比于传统出版有较大优势。     

纳米出版及其应用研究进展

[目的/意义]随着学术期刊文献的大量增长,在传统科学文献出版模式下,科研人员需要花费大量时间从文献中查找、获取和解读所需信息。为了促进科学信息的传播与交流,面向科学文献内容的细粒度语义出版成为一种新趋势。本文介绍语义出版中的一种代表性出版模式“纳米出版（nanopublication）”,并剖析纳米出版在不同学科领域中应用的可能性及应用特点。[方法/过程]首先对纳米出版模型进行了介绍,然后通过文献调研对纳米出版的应用现状进行了述评,最后以实例说明纳米出版在不同学科领域中的应用特点。[结果/结论]研究结果表明：①纳米出版目前主要应用于生物医学领域,在计算机和人文科学有少量应用,在其他领域几乎没有什么应用;②纳米出版可以扩展到其他学科领域进行应用,但是需要根据学科特征构建符合学科领域特点的纳米出版物。     

The case of scientometricians with the “absolute relative” impact indicator

The effect of two different calculation methods for obtaining relative impact indicators is modelled. Science policy considerations make it clear that evaluating the sets of publications, the “ratio of the sums” method should be preferred over the “mean of the ratios” method. Accordingly, determining the relative total impact against the mean relative impact of the publications of teams or institutes may be preferred. The special problem caused by relating the number of citations of an individual article to the Garfield (Impact) Factor (or mean citedness) of the publishing journal (or a set of journals selected as standard) lower than zero is demonstrated by examples. The possible effects of the different share of publications in different fields on the value of the “new crown” index are also modelled. The assessment methods using several appropriately weighted indicators which result in a composite index are recommended. The acronym “BMV” is suggested to term the relative impact indicators (e.g. RCR, CPP/JCS_m, CPP/FCS_m and RW) in scientometrics.     

众包出版对高校学术期刊出版模式的启示

以互联网为前提的众包模式,已应用于文化创意产业、图书馆、翻译以及地理信息采集等领域.本文基于众包模式的优势以及学术期刊众包评审案例,分析网络环境中出版流程碎片化、出版平台便捷化众包出版模式的可行性.认为高校学术期刊的众包出版需要有相应的机制与流程确保其工作效率和质量.在多媒体融合背景下,高校学术期刊众包出版模式可以为高校学术期刊提高社会效益和社会影响力,提供一个新的发展路径和出版模式.