Measuring Academic Research. How to Undertake a Bibliometric Study

172 Pages·2010·3.12 MB·English

by  Ana Andres (Auth.)

Measuring Academic Research
Measuring Academic
Research
How to undertake a bibliometric
study
A A
NA NDRÉS
Chandos Publishing
Oxford •Cambridge (cid:127)New Delhi
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First published in 2009
ISBN:
978 1 84334 528 2
© A.Andrés,2009
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To Ana, José Luis, Gema and Sergi
List of figures and tables
Figures
1.1 Exponential function 6
1.2 Growth of scientific literature in bipolar disorder 7
1.3 Logistic curve 8
2.1 Temporal evolution of scientific productivity about HIV
research in Medline 15
2.2 Illustration of the number of authors contributing to
the publications 18
4.1 Bradford zones 32
4.2 Example of Bradford zones where k = 3 33
4.3 Bradford’s S-shape 33
5.1 Collaboration index trend in obesity surgery field from
1998 to 2007 43
5.2 Collaboration pattern in psychological research on tourism 44
5.3 Collaboration pattern in stem cell research in
Neurosciences (WoS) 45
5.4 Distribution of collaborations with respect to number
of authors in differential item functioning area 46
5.5 Research networks of authors in reproductive biology 50
5.6 Research networks of institutions in reproductive biology 52
5.7 Research network of countries in reproductive biology 53
6.1 Citation history of the most frequently cited articles
in tsunami research 59
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Measuring Academic Research
Tables
1.1 Applications of bibliometric sub-areas 4
2.1 Publications in Medline about HIV 14
2.2 Temporal evolution of productivity in magnetic resonance
production in Spain from 2001 to 2007 16
2.3 Temporal evolution of publications in the Journal of
Economic Psychology 17
2.4 Institutions providing at least 1% of the articles published
in the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling 19
2.5 Countries providing at least 2% of the articles published
in the Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling 20
2.6 ISI subject categories with most of the publications 21
3.1 Author’s credit for publications 25
3.2 Example of documents count considering all authors
in a determinate field 26
3.3 Lotka’s law 27
3.4 Pairs of data exclusion 29
4.1 Dispersion of scientific literature in automatic
indexing area 35
4.2 Bradford zones in automatic indexing area 36
4.3 Most productive journals in neuroscience research
from 2004 to 2008 (WoS) 38
4.4 Variables involved in Lotka’s, Bradford’s and Zipf’s laws 39
5.1 Scientific productivity in obesity surgery field from
1998 to 2007 42
5.2 Co-authorship index interpretation 47
6.1 Age distribution of citations in childhood epilepsy area
from 2003 to 2008 (WoS) 58
6.2 Citation rank of the papers published by S.P. Harter 64–5
6.3 Levels of analysis for the successive h-indices 68
6.4 g-index calculation for S.P. Harter 70–1
xii
List of figures and tables
6.5 h-indices for the most productive authors in
bibliometrics field 72
6.6 g-indices for the most productive authors in
bibliometrics field 73
6.7 Relative increase of g with respect to h for the most
productive authors in bibliometrics field 73
7.1 Citations received and items published in CA:
A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (2007 JCR) 86
7.2 Citations received and items published in Behavioral and
Brain Sciences (2007 JCR) 87
7.3 Citations received and items published in CA: A Cancer
Journal for Clinicians from 2002 to 2006 (2007 JCR) 90
7.4 Citations received and items published in Behavioral
and Brain Sciences from 2002 to 2006 (2007 JCR) 90
7.5 Two- and five-year impact factors of ten journals
belonging to the subject category Medicine, General and
Internal from the Science Citation Index (2007 JCR) 91
7.6 Two- and five-year impact factors of ten journals belonging
to the subject category Information Science and Library
Science from the Social Sciences Citation Index (2007 JCR) 92
7.7 Citations received and items published in Obesity Research
(2007 JCR) 93
7.8 Citations received and items published in Obesity
(2007 JCR) 93
7.9 Combined impact factor for Obesity Research and
Obesity (2007 JCR) 94
7.10 Five-year combined impact factor for Obesity Research
and Obesity (2007 JCR) 95
7.11 Publication Efficiency Index (PEI) in obesity surgery
(2007 WoS) 97
7.12 h-rank of the top 20 impact factor journals from the
Science Citation Index (2003 JCR) 100
7.13 Self-citations analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology
(2007 JCR) 104
xiii
Measuring Academic Research
7.14 Citations received in 2007 by the journals Science
and Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 107
7.15 Citations received by the journal Experimental Brain
Research in 2007 107
7.16 Eigenfactor metrics of ten journals from the Science
Citation Index (2007 JCR) 113
7.17 Ranking of the journals that more commonly cite
the journal Health Education Research (2005 WoS) 116
7.18 Ranking of the most cited journals in the childhood
epilepsy area (2003–9) 117
7.19 Bradford’s zones based on the references obtained in
the childhood epilepsy field 118
7.20 Journals that are closely related to the Journal of
Molecular Graphics and Modelling 119
8.1 Comparison of h-, A- and R-indices 139
xiv
About the author
Ana Andrés achieved her baccalaureate degree in Psychology in 2004
and her MS in Methodology for the Behavioural Sciences in 2006.
Currently, she is an assistant lecturer at the Department of Methodology
for the Behavioural Sciences at the Psychology Faculty of the University
of Barcelona.
Her experience in teaching has been focused on psychometrics,
specifically on the process of building, adaptation and validation of
questionnaires. Her investigations centre on the application of
methodological procedures to the Health Sciences and in this regard she has
applied bibliometrics to scientific productivity in the field of obesity. She is
also developing a questionnaire to assess processes of change for weight loss
in overweight and obese people. A specific issue of interest in this research
line is the adaptation of questionnaires that may be useful in the treatment
of those who are overweight and obese as measures related to binge eating
disorder.
The application of both bibliometric and psychometric procedures in
the field of obesity is the topic of her doctoral thesis.
The author may be contacted via the publishers.
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Introduction
This book aims to illustrate the main analyses applied in bibliometric
studies. The objective of bibliometrics is basically to assess scientific
literature in a given field, hence its broad applicability to all manner of
disciplines. Consequently, readers can choose an analysis from the
present book according to the characteristics of their own research field.
The step-by-step explanations about how to carry out a bibliometric
study, together with the many examples of the different indices and
analyses that can be performed, provide a comprehensive guide to the
main methods used in bibliometrics.
The book begins by defining bibliometricsand then considers the steps
which must be taken before carrying out a bibliometric study. The
following chapters focus on the specific analyses used to study the
productivity of authors and journals. For example, we will see that it is
possible to study collaborations between researchers, while the
widespread use of citation analysis to evaluate scientific output will be
considered with respect to both researchers and journals separately. The
main limitations of the analyses shown will be discussed in order to give
an overview of their uses and consequences in bibliometric research.
Furthermore, it will be argued that a critical attitude should be adopted
when choosing the most appropriate analysis for a bibliometric study.
In sum, the book offers a guide to the many analyses that could be
included in a bibliometric analysis, and describes how to calculate and
interpret them. Readers should take into consideration those tools which
could be of interest for their bibliometric study, and seek to apply and
interpret them as accurately as possible.
Bibliometrics: a science of science
The study of scientific literature has a long history dating back to the
early decades of the past century. However, despite the amount of
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