Quantifying the impact and relevance of scientific research.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Sutherland WJ
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3217965 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Quantifying and comparing the scientific output of researchers has become critical for governments, funding agencies and universities. Comparison by reputation and direct assessment of contributions to the field is no longer possible, as the number of scientists increases and traditional definitions about scientific fields become blurred. The h-index is often used for comparing scientists, but has several well-documented shortcomings. In this paper, we introduce a new index for measuring and comparing the publication records of scientists: the pagerank-index (symbolised as π). The index uses a version of pagerank algorithm and the citation networks of papers in its computation, and is fundamentally different from the existing variants of h-index because it considers not only the number of citations but also the actual impact of each citation. We adapt two approaches to demonstrate the utility of the new index. Firstly, we use a simulation model of a community of authors, whereby we create various 'groups' of authors which are different from each other in inherent publication habits, to show that the pagerank-index is fairer than the existing indices in three distinct scenarios: (i) when authors try to 'massage' their index by publishing papers in low-quality outlets primarily to self-cite other papers (ii) when authors collaborate in large groups in order to obtain more authorships (iii) when authors spend most of their time in producing genuine but low quality publications that would massage their index. Secondly, we undertake two real world case studies: (i) the evolving author community of quantum game theory, as defined by Google Scholar (ii) a snapshot of the high energy physics (HEP) theory research community in arXiv. In both case studies, we find that the list of top authors vary very significantly when h-index and pagerank-index are used for comparison. We show that in both cases, authors who have collaborated in large groups and/or published less impactful papers tend to be comparatively favoured by the h-index, whereas the pagerank-index highlights authors who have made a relatively small number of definitive contributions, or written papers which served to highlight the link between diverse disciplines, or typically worked in smaller groups. Thus, we argue that the pagerank-index is an inherently fairer and more nuanced metric to quantify the publication records of scientists compared to existing measures.
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Project description:The "h index" proposed by Hirsch [Hirsch JE (2005) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:16569-16573] is a good indicator of the impact of a scientist's research and has the advantage of being objective. When evaluating departments, institutions, or laboratories, the importance of the h index can be further enhanced when it is properly calibrated for the size of the group. Particularly acute is the issue of federally funded facilities whose number of actively publishing scientists frequently dwarfs that of academic departments. Recently, Molinari and Molinari [Molinari JF, Molinari A (2008) Scientometrics, in press] developed a methodology that shows that the h index has a universal growth rate for large numbers of papers, allowing for meaningful comparisons between institutions. An additional challenge when comparing large institutions is that fields have distinct internal cultures, with different typical rates of publication and citation; biology is more highly cited than physics, for example. For this reason, the present study has focused on the physical sciences, engineering, and technology and has excluded biomedical research. Comparisons between individual disciplines are reported here to provide a framework. Generally, it was found that the universal growth rate of Molinari and Molinari holds well across the categories considered, testifying to the robustness of both their growth law and our results. The goal here is to set the highest standard of comparison for federal investment in science. Comparisons are made of the nation's preeminent private and public institutions. We find that many among the national science facilities compare favorably in research impact with the nation's leading universities.
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Project description:When seeking to inform and improve prevention efforts and policy, it is important to be able to robustly synthesize all available evidence. But evidence sources are often large and heterogeneous, so understanding what works, for whom, and in what contexts can only be achieved through a systematic and comprehensive synthesis of evidence. Many barriers impede comprehensive evidence synthesis, which leads to uncertainty about the generalizability of intervention effectiveness, including inaccurate titles/abstracts/keywords terminology (hampering literature search efforts), ambiguous reporting of study methods (resulting in inaccurate assessments of study rigor), and poorly reported participant characteristics, outcomes, and key variables (obstructing the calculation of an overall effect or the examination of effect modifiers). To address these issues and improve the reach of primary studies through their inclusion in evidence syntheses, we provide a set of practical guidelines to help prevention scientists prepare synthesis-ready research. We use a recent mindfulness trial as an empirical example to ground the discussion and demonstrate ways to ensure the following: (1) primary studies are discoverable; (2) the types of data needed for synthesis are present; and (3) these data are readily synthesizable. We highlight several tools and practices that can aid authors in these efforts, such as using a data-driven approach for crafting titles, abstracts, and keywords or by creating a repository for each project to host all study-related data files. We also provide step-by-step guidance and software suggestions for standardizing data design and public archiving to facilitate synthesis-ready research.
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Project description:Disruptive advancements in science and technology often rely on new ideas and findings, which in turn brings us to focus on the value of novelty in scholarly activities. Using Web of Science publication data from European regions for the period between 2008 and 2017, this study examines, first, the impact of scientific collaboration on novelty of research. Here, five levels of collaboration are considered for each article-country, three levels of regions, and institutions, and novelty is measured with keywords information. Second, we investigate both the effect and moderating effect of research funding on novelty. Our findings show that there is a negative and significant relationship between scientific collaboration and novelty. Furthermore, funded papers show lower novelty than the unfunded, but funding does have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between collaboration and novelty. This study contributes by linking diverse levels of collaboration and funding sources to article's novelty and thus extending the scope of bibliometric research of publications.
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Project description:OBJECTIVES: The paper reviews recent studies that evaluate the impact of free access (open access) on the behavior of scientists as authors, readers, and citers in developed and developing nations. It also examines the extent to which the biomedical literature is used by the general public. METHOD: The paper is a critical review of the literature, with systematic description of key studies. RESULTS: Researchers report that their access to the scientific literature is generally good and improving. For authors, the access status of a journal is not an important consideration when deciding where to publish. There is clear evidence that free access increases the number of article downloads, although its impact on article citations is not clear. Recent studies indicate that large citation advantages are simply artifacts of the failure to adequately control for confounding variables. The effect of free access on the general public's use of the primary medical literature has not been thoroughly evaluated. CONCLUSIONS: Recent studies provide little evidence to support the idea that there is a crisis in access to the scholarly literature. Further research is needed to investigate whether free access is making a difference in non-research contexts and to better understand the dissemination of scientific literature through peer-to-peer networks and other informal mechanisms.
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