Pero Šipka

Output in WoS vs. representation in JCR of SEE nations: Does mother Thomson cherish all her children equally

Within the 2005-2010 campaign aimed at extending the coverage of quality regional journals, Thomson Reuters started indexing a large number of journals published among else in SouthEast Europe (SEE). In this study we looked at the range and effects of this expansion. The number of national journals indexed in JCR was related to the national performance in WoS calculated in two ways: as it is and as corrected for the contribution of national journals. The study included 14 countries. All data were downloaded from WoS. The period from 2007 to 2010 was covered. It was found that, as a result of the campaign, coverage of various SEE countries became highly uneven. It was also found that the increment in coverage poorly corresponds with the potentials of various national research communities, as measured by the Relative Citation Index (RCI). Corrected performance, calculated by omitting national journals from each country’s output, did influence the publication and citation rate of SEE countries, but not to the degree of changing country rankings on the two measures. However, it produced substantial changes in ranking on RCI, suggesting that overrepresentation has serious practical consequences on the bibliometric status of countries from the region. Decline in RCI rankings was observed among those overrepresented countries that published journals of lower internationality and Impact Factor. The results generally suggest that overrepresentation in WoS/JCR is not in the long-term interest of both awarded countries and Thomson Reuters itself.

Maps of science based on keywords of articles’ antecedences, presences, and consequences: Application of the CEON/CEES model of multi-perspective description of articles

A model of multi-perspective article description (MPAD) was explored and preliminarily tested. The model assumes that journal articles should be described for bibliographic purposes from three different perspectives, i.e. by using keywords extracted from: (1) article titles and abstracts, (2) titles of their cited references, and (3) titles and abstracts of articles citing them in the future. In order to explore the relationships among keyword types and to test the model preliminarily, a method labeled as Multistage Indexing of Subject Headings (MISH) based on the Keyphrase Extraction Algorithm (KEA) was employed to provide all three types of keywords for all articles from the sample. The articles were sampled from SCIndeks: The Serbian citation index. Three separate maps of (local, peripheral) science were constructed, each based on a different type of keywords. The Partitioning Around Medoid method (PAM) for cluster analyses, followed by multidimensional scaling for visual representations of extracted clusters, was employed. Results suggest that the three types of keywords generate relatively similar maps, encouraging keywords aggregation for practical purposes. Some differences among the maps are not fully consistent with the predictions derived from the model. They reveal some methodological deficiencies of the study and indicate the most promising directions for further research.

Structure of personality psychology based on cocitation analysis of prominent authors

Traditional Author Cocitation Analysis was applied in order to map the personality psychology as a research field. A group of 25 authors were selected from the Haggbloom (1999, 2002) lists of the most cited and prominent psychologists, judged to be the main contributors to the field. All of their cocitations identified in the three year volumes of SSCI were downloaded to be analyzed by cluster analysis and MDS. The analysis resulted in four clusters comprising (1) theorists of individual differences amalgamated with authors of biological orientation with R. Cattell positioned centrally, (2) behaviorists joined by socio-cognitive theorists led by M.E.P. Seligman and A. Bandura, and (3) the group of psychoanalytic (dynamic) theorists with A. Adler in the middle. In fourth cluster G. Allport, H. Murray, K. Lewin, W. Mischel, and D. Buss were found mixed together to make a rather heterogeneous group. In two-axes representation one of the dimensions was understood as reflecting methodological and the other one content-specific differences among the authors, although this interpretation is not univocal. The same procedure was repeated on citations given to the same authors in SocioFakt - the Serbian Citation Index for Social Sciences, revealing a reduced picture of the domain. At this portrait, some important authors are missing as a result of their low citation rate, suggesting that in the Serbian personality psychology entire research fields don’t exist. .