Dirk Tunger

Science indicators revisited – Science Citation Index versus SCOPUS: A bibliometric comparison of both citation databases

Although the evaluation of knowledge in the form of a quantitation of scientific output is not uncontroversial, it is a widely practised form of science evaluation. For more than 30 years, the Science Citation Index (SCI) has been alone in fulfilling this purpose. But since 2005 Scopus is a direct competitor to the SCI-databases. Comparing the two databases should help to answer questions that could have repercussions for the future generation of bibliometric analyses. The results of the comparison will allow us to more reliably rate Scopus, as a new data source, against the established SCI. In future, people who generate bibliometric analyses must be able to justify why they chose to use one database and not the other. It will not be enough to simply claim that SCI is the established source.

Reasons for and developments in international scientific collaboration: does an Asia---Pacific research area exist from a bibliometric point of view?

This paper describes the different forms of and tries to give reasons for international scientific collaboration in general. It focuses on eleven countries in the Asia–Pacific region by evaluating their national research output with the help of bibliometric indicators in particular. Over two million journal articles published by these countries between 1998 and 2007 in ISI-listed periodicals are analyzed. Discipline-specific publication and citation profiles reveal national strengths and weaknesses in the different research domains. The exponential increase in publication output by China over the last few years is astonishing, but in terms of visibility, i.e. citation rates, China cannot keep up with leading science nations, remaining below the world average. A discipline-specific analysis shows that Chinese authors took an active part in more than a quarter of all articles and reviews published in the field of materials science in 2007, while their contribution to medical research is very low. Co-publication networks among the eleven countries are generated to observe the development of cooperation bonds in the region. Applying Salton’s measure of international collaboration strength, an above-average strengthening of scientific collaboration in the Asia–Pacific region can be observed.

Bibliometric analysis - A new business area for information professionals in libraries? Support for scientific research by perception and trend analysis

SummarySupplying library users with literature by a seamless linking of media is the goal of (scientific) libraries. By the digitization of primary and secondary data and the convergence of products and providers, libraries have already come very close to achieving this ideal. A digital library is the realization of this goal. However, many librarians are in danger of running out of imagination. What will come after the digital library? Will information professionals still be needed? What services can libraries offer? Bibliometric analysis is an example of new business areas in libraries. This paper will discuss what shape this service could take in practice, who needs it and what target groups exist in the scientific environment. Concrete examples of bibliometric analysis from the Central Library of Research Centre Jülich will round off the overview.

Creation of journal-based publication profiles of scientific institutions — A methodology for the interdisciplinary comparison of scientific research based on the J-factor

A form of normalisation is presented for the evaluation of citation data on multidisciplinary research. This method is based on the existing classification according to the publishing journals and not on the classification of output according to ISI subject categories. A publication profile is created for each institution to be investigated. This profile accounts for the weight of publications in a journal, represented by the number of publications as a proportion of the total output of the institution. In accordance with this weight, the citation rate of each journal is compared to a qualified relative indicator. The final result is a relative citation rate J, which is the relative perception of the performance of an institution accounting for its publication and citation habits and makes a transdisciplinary comparison possible.

Die entwicklung der betriebswirtschaftlichen corporate governance-forschung im deutschsprachigen raum – eine state of the art-analyse auf der basis bibliometrischer daten

ZusammenfassungCorporate Governance hat in der betriebswirtschaftlichen Forschung in den letzten beiden Dekaden kontinuierlich an Bedeutung gewonnen. Ungeachtet dessen wird die Corporate Governance-Forschung nach wie vor als weitestgehend unsystematischer, in viele Einzelthemen zerfallener Strang der betriebswirtschaftlichen Literatur wahrgenommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert empirisch die Entwicklung der betriebswirtschaftlichen Corporate Governance-Forschung im deutschsprachigen Raum. Als Datenbasis für eine Zitations-, Kozitations- und Clusteranalyse dienen 267 Corporate Governance-Beiträge mit mehr als 10.000 Zitationen. Die erhobenen Daten werden in sechs Cluster zur Darstellung der thematischen Schwerpunkte der betriebswirtschaftlichen Corporate Governance-Forschung unterteilt und als Kozitationsnetzwerk visuell dargestellt. Zudem wird die historische Entwicklung der betriebswirtschaftlichen Corporate Governance-Forschung herausgearbeitet, indem die 267 herangezogenen Corporate Governance-Beiträge den sechs Clustern unter Berucksichtigung des Publikationszeitpunktes zugeordnet werden.AbstractCorporate Governance; Forschungslandschaft; Netzwerkanalyse; Zitationsanalyse. Corporate governance is perceived as an unsystematic and defibred strand of the literature within the research in business administration. However, corporate governance became an important field of research in German-speaking countries over the last two decades. This article empirically analyzes topic-specific and historic development of research on corporate governance in German-speaking countries. The used citation, co-citation, and cluster analysis makes a draft on 267 articles on corporate governance with more than 10,000 citations as empirical database. On the basis of these citations, we identify six clusters by using network analysis. These six clusters highlight the thematic emphases of research on corporate governance. Additionally, we characterize the historic development of the research on corporate governance by assigning each of the 267 articles on corporate governance to the six clusters by considering the publication date.

The bibliometric community as reflected by its own methodology

The field of bibliometrics is currently enjoying a growth in popularity. At least, this is the impression we get if we estimate the number of bibliometrics-related publications, conference papers and studies that appear in the form of grey literature. For a more accurate picture, we must examine the bibliometric community more closely. One way of doing this is to carry out a bibliometric analysis.

Bibliometric analysis of corporate governance research in German-speaking countries: applying bibliometrics to business research using a custom-made database

The objective of the present study on corporate governance research in German-speaking countries is to portray the networks in this field, identify the central sources and actors, and establish the relations between individual subdisciplines. The present paper therefore uses bibliometric and network analysis to investigate business research literature in the leading journals in German-speaking countries. As none of the major citation databases could be used for the bibliometric analysis given the subject area under investigation, the first step was to create a bibliometric database for the planned evaluation. Using this as a basis, bibliometric evaluations were then carried out with a focus on co-citation analysis. This analysis was based on an evaluation of over 10,000 references in 267 source documents. This identified the key publications on business research in German-speaking countries that have a particularly strong influence on the subject of corporate governance. The various key areas were clustered according to similarity and visualized in a network.

Survey on opinions and usage patterns for the ResearchGate platform

Based on a survey, the following study investigates opinions and also usage patterns relating to the ResearchGate social networking site for scientists and researchers. The survey consisted of 19 questions and was conducted online with 695 scientists from the disciplines of physics, biology, medicine, and neuroscience. Amongst other issues, the research questions concerned how much time and effort the interviewees expended on ResearchGate, what added value they perceived in using the site, the extent to which social aspects influence use, how participants planned to use the platform in future, and what role ResearchGate’s own metric, the RG score, played for the scientists. In addition, we discuss which of the factors of age, sex, origin, and scientific discipline have a decisive influence on the responses of the interviewees and which are of no statistical significance The results clearly show that the origin of the participants is frequently decisive, but that the remaining factors also have a considerable influence on the responses for more than 25% of the questions.

Do neutrons publish? a neutron publication survey 2005 - 2015

Publication in scientific journals is the main product of scientific research. The amount of papers published, their placement in high impact journals, and their citations are used as a measure of the productivity of individual scientists, institutes or fields of science. To give a profound basis on the publication record and the quality of the publication efforts in neutron scattering, a survey has been done following the approach to use bibliographic databases. Questions to be addressed by this survey are: Is the productivity of research with neutrons changing over the years? Which is the geographic distribution in this field of research? Which ones are leading facilities? Is the quality of publications changing? The main results found are presented.