{"title":"Rank analysis of most cited publications, a new approach for research assessments","authors":"Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro , Ricardo Brito","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101503","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101503","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Citation metrics are the best tools for research assessments. However, current metrics may be misleading in research systems that pursue simultaneously different goals, such as to push the boundaries of knowledge or incremental innovations, because their publications have different citation distributions. We estimate the contribution to the progress of knowledge by studying only a limited number of the most cited papers, which are dominated by publications pursuing this progress. To field-normalize the metrics, we substitute the number of citations by the rank position of papers from one country in the global list of papers. Using synthetic series of lognormally distributed numbers, simulating citations, we developed the <em>Rk-</em>index, which is calculated from the global ranks of the 10 highest numbers in each series, and demonstrate its equivalence to the number of papers in top percentiles, P<sub>top 0.1 %</sub> and P<sub>top 0.01 %</sub>. In real cases, the <em>Rk-</em>index is simple and easy to calculate, and evaluates the contribution to the progress of knowledge better than less stringent metrics. Although further research is needed, rank analysis of the most cited papers is a promising approach for research evaluation. It is also demonstrated that, for this purpose, domestic and collaborative papers should be studied independently.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157724000166/pdfft?md5=39c50d1041454d10d6b0530e48b2fe1c&pid=1-s2.0-S1751157724000166-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139662025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assessing the stability of collaboration networks: A structural cohesion analysis perspective","authors":"Dayong Zhang , Hao Men , Zhaoxin Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101490","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In collaboration networks, a stable structure can lead to trust and enhance group members’ ties, in turn reducing conflicts and promoting communication and cooperation. Therefore, network stability assessment, especially for collaboration networks, is essential for facilitating the achievement of group goals. However, most previous studies have considered only a fundamental understanding of network stability from the perspective of network connectivity or interpersonal relationships. Few studies have been conducted to reveal the influence of endogenous structural cohesion on network stability. In fact, greater structural cohesion indicates greater adaptability in uncertain environments. Thus, we propose evaluating the stability of collaboration networks from a structural cohesion perspective. Our study focuses on two dimensions of structural cohesion: core member identification and structural robustness measurements. Considering the unique structure of collaboration networks, a new algorithm, named the improved K-shell decomposition algorithm, is proposed to identify the core member set embedded in the innermost layer of a network. Compared with traditional identification algorithms, our algorithm can achieve a better trade-off between computational accuracy and computational complexity. Experimental results obtained on real-world networks verify the performance of our algorithm. In addition, it was found that the stability of collaboration networks can be effectively improved through targeted prevention efforts at the core members identified by our algorithm.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157724000038/pdfft?md5=10df3868fe122aadb2793b254dde7e62&pid=1-s2.0-S1751157724000038-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139654036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Entropy, heterogeneity, and their impact on technology progress","authors":"Wonchang Hur","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101506","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101506","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study seeks to determine whether the entropy of patent assignees and the heterogeneity of patented technology within a technology domain positively contribute to the domain's influence on others. This question is motivated by the diversity-performance debates that have been explored across diverse disciplines. Three entropy indices are considered: Shannon, Herfindahl, and Lorenz indices. In addition, the semantic heterogeneity index is developed by employing a pre-trained deep neural network for word embedding. This study investigates about 2 million patents from 1976 to 2021 in the eight Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) sections that constitute the entire patent landscape. The major findings are two folds. First, the semantic heterogeneity of knowledge created within a technology domain has a positive impact on its influence on others. Second, a negative impact can be exerted on a domain's influence, as the entropy of inventing entities increases. This suggests that a technology domain tends to be more influential when inventions are concentrated among a few prolific entities rather than being distributed across small entities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139658375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Textual features of peer review predict top-cited papers: An interpretable machine learning perspective","authors":"Zhuanlan Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101501","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101501","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Peer review is crucial in improving the quality and reliability of scientific research. However, the mechanisms through which peer review practices ensure papers become top-cited papers (TCPs) after publication are not well understood. In this study, by collecting a data set containing 13, 066 papers published between 2016 and 2020 from <em>Nature communications</em> with open peer review reports, we aim to examine how textual features embedded within the peer review reports of papers that reflect the reviewers’ emotions may predict the papers to be TCPs. We compiled a list of 15 textual features and classified them into three categories: peer review features, linguistic features, and sentiment features. We then chose the XGBoost machine learning model with the best performance in predicting TCPs, and utilized the explainable artificial intelligence techniques SHAP to interpret the role of feature importance on the prediction results. The distribution of feature importance ranking results demonstrates that sentiment features play a crucial role in determining papers’ potential to be highly cited. This conclusion still holds, even when the ranking of the feature importance changes in the subgroup analysis of dividing the samples into four disciplines (biological sciences, health sciences, physical sciences, and earth and environmental sciences), as well as two groups based on whether reviewers’ identities were revealed. This research emphasizes the textual features retrieved from peer review reports that play role in improving manuscript quality can predict the post-publication research impact.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139556966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alessandro Avenali , Cinzia Daraio , Simone Di Leo , Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz
{"title":"Heterogeneity of national accounting systems, world-class universities and financial resources: What are the links?","authors":"Alessandro Avenali , Cinzia Daraio , Simone Di Leo , Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101502","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates the relationship between university financial resources, applied accounting systems, and the place of a university in the Shanghai Ranking. We find a strong relationship between the financial resources under the control of a world-class university and the position of that university in the highest tier of the global ranking. We propose a model (available online) to predict a university's tier in the ranking through the financial resources it employs. A critical condition for making a university a world-class university could be to provide it with a sufficiently high level of financial resources, and its efficiency could play an important leverage role. In view of the results, policymakers are challenged with a drastic choice: to increase international competition among universities, it is necessary to concentrate a huge amount of resources on a few universities that are already in the ranking. In contrast, the policy of the proportional distribution of resources does not affect international competition and may be inefficient. Furthermore, financial data are not easy to gather homogeneously for universities across countries, due to the existence of different national accounting systems. Finally, we discuss several critical issues associated with the measurement of specific accounting data of universities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157724000154/pdfft?md5=42c3132e05a5cfcca0ac2049e278fa26&pid=1-s2.0-S1751157724000154-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139503503","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Validity and bias of indicators of international collaboration: A theoretical analysis with an empirical study of Ukraine-Russia-United States and China-United States","authors":"Lawrence Smolinsky , Seungwon Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101488","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We examine three indicators that give a relative measure of collaborations between countries and introduce a fourth indicator. Of the three established indicators, the Asymmetric Observed to Expected Ratio (AOER-indicator) and the symmetric Observed to Expected Ratio (OER-indicator) have received criticism for some specific theoretical situations. The AOER fails as both a meaningful statistic and an indicator. The OER is a meaningful statistic but fails as an indicator. The Relative Intensity of Collaboration (RIC-indicator) is relatively recent measure that is a meaningful standard statistic and passes Rousseau's criterion for an indicator. The new indicator is the Odds Ratio of Collaboration (ORC-indicator). It is a symmetric and meaningful standard statistic that passes Rousseau's criterion for an indicator. We give interpretations for all four indicators to give a systematic comparison that recommends the RIC and ORC. We then compare them in analyzing some specific dynamic developments over a 20-year period: The Ukraine-Russia-United States relationship and the China-United States relationship. We believe the analysis illustrates the value of the RIC, the inadequacies of the AOER, and is interesting analysis of its own accord.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157724000014/pdfft?md5=8614819ffa8bfa67186cf5d23b440dd5&pid=1-s2.0-S1751157724000014-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139487081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dubious cross-national affiliations obscure the assessment of international research collaboration","authors":"Chung-Huei Kuan , Dar-Zen Chen , Mu-Hsuan Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101496","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101496","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Assessing international research collaboration through cross-national papers is a common practice but may be compromised by dubious affiliations lacking clear evidence of substantial collaboration. In this study, we analyze cross-national papers indexed in SCIE, SSCI, and A&HCI databases, published between 2012 and 2021, and affiliated respectively with pairs of four nations: the US, China, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Our findings reveal that at least 27 % of them exhibit dubious affiliations, with the proportion potentially rising above 60 % in SCIE papers between the United Kingdom and Australia. This underscores the need to address the potential impact of these papers. We also find that academic practice, cultural proximity, and geopolitical tension have affected the prevalence of different types of dubious affiliations across disciplinary categories and nation pairs. Moreover, papers with dubious affiliations are more prevalent in collaborations among Western nations compared to those involving China. A particular type of dubious affiliations, known as Solo Show, is especially pronounced between the US and China, highlighting the distinctive nature of their pattern of collaboration.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139487887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti , Marek Gagolewski , Grzegorz Siudem , Barbara Żogała-Siudem
{"title":"Gini-stable Lorenz curves and their relation to the generalised Pareto distribution","authors":"Lucio Bertoli-Barsotti , Marek Gagolewski , Grzegorz Siudem , Barbara Żogała-Siudem","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101499","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101499","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We introduce an iterative discrete information production process where we can extend ordered normalised vectors by new elements based on a simple affine transformation, while preserving the predefined level of inequality, G, as measured by the Gini index.</p><p>Then, we derive the family of empirical Lorenz curves of the corresponding vectors and prove that it is stochastically ordered with respect to both the sample size and G which plays the role of the uncertainty parameter. We prove that asymptotically, we obtain all, and only, Lorenz curves generated by a new, intuitive parametrisation of the finite-mean Pickands' Generalised Pareto Distribution (GPD) that unifies three other families, namely: the Pareto Type II, exponential, and scaled beta distributions. The family is not only totally ordered with respect to the parameter G, but also, thanks to our derivations, has a nice underlying interpretation. Our result may thus shed a new light on the genesis of this family of distributions.</p><p>Our model fits bibliometric, informetric, socioeconomic, and environmental data reasonably well. It is quite user-friendly for it only depends on the sample size and its Gini index.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157724000129/pdfft?md5=dc3ea80602e26180d550c3dbba8478fc&pid=1-s2.0-S1751157724000129-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139470044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Data labeling through the centralities of co-reference networks improves the classification accuracy of scientific papers","authors":"Zheng Xie, Yiqin Lv, Yiping Song, Qi Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101498","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101498","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>Labeled data are fed to learning models of classification tasks to help them learn to classify </span>unlabeled data. Massive papers are hinged by citations to a few influential papers, much smaller than the total size, which, if labeled, would cause the spread of label information to the most of the papers. We utilized the co-reference relationship between papers since the references cited by a paper dataset usually cannot be contained by the dataset. We stated the problem of optimal paper labeling as the problem of picking a given fraction of nodes from a co-reference network to maximize the number of their neighbors, which is a submodular maximization problem with a cardinality constraint, NP-hard for general networks. We approximately solved it by picking nodes according to the ranks of specific network centralities. We further proved that labeling papers according to the rank of degree, the lowest-complexity centrality, can give a near-optimal solution with specific constraints on the maximum degree of co-reference network and labeling proportion. Experimental results show that our method brings a significant improvement in the accuracy of classification.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139470000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Authorship regulations in performance-based funding systems and publication behaviour – A case study of German medical faculties","authors":"Valeria Aman , Peter van den Besselaar","doi":"10.1016/j.joi.2024.101500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2024.101500","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article investigates whether German medical faculties with different authorship regulations show different publication patterns. In 2004, the German Research Foundation (DFG) suggested a formula consisting of third-party funding, the cumulated JIF of publications and a fractional counting of publications to counteract the increasing inflation of author counts in medical publications. Whereas the third-party funding and the JIF are generally used in research evaluation without variation, the authorship regulation differs among medical faculties. We therefore compare medical faculties using the DFG model - to credit first and last authors with a higher share than middle authors - with those faculties that apply whole counting. We answer the question whether the faculties with the different counting methods also show different authorship and publication behaviour, i.e., authorship and collaboration patterns, the choice of journals (JIF level) and the citation impact (share of highly-cited papers). Findings indicate a clear trend of increasing co-author numbers and of middle-author papers, irrespective of authorship regulation. Publications with DFG model have only a slightly lower average author count and lower shares of middle-author papers than whole-counted publications. Our findings suggest that the DFG regulation has not resulted in a reduction of the number of authors, which was a major aim. Moreover, the results show that the use of whole counting goes together with higher productivity and higher impact, which may be a good reason to select that model.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48662,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Informetrics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2024-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139436071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}