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The geography of references in elite articles: Which countries contribute to the archives of knowledge?

ABSTRACT: This study asks the question on which national "shoulders" the world's top-level research stands. Traditionally, the number of citations to national papers has been the evaluative measures of national scientific standings. We raise a different question: instead of analyzing the citations to a countries' articles (the forward view), we examine references to prior publications from specific countries cited in the most elite publications (the backward-citing-view). "Elite publications" are operationalized as the top-1% most-highly cited articles. Using the articles published from 2004 to 2013, we examine the research referenced in these works. Our results confirm the well-known fact that China has emerged to become a major player in science. However, China still belongs to the low contributors when countries are ranked as contributors to the cited references in top-1% articles. Using this perspective, the results do not support a decreasing trend for the USA; in fact, the USA exceeds expectations (compared to its publication share) in terms of references in the top-1% articles. Switzerland, Sweden, and the Netherlands also appear at the top of the list. However, the results for Germany are lower than statistically expected.

SUBMITTER: Bornmann L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5868817 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The geography of references in elite articles: Which countries contribute to the archives of knowledge?

Bornmann Lutz L Wagner Caroline C Leydesdorff Loet L

PloS one 20180326 3

This study asks the question on which national "shoulders" the world's top-level research stands. Traditionally, the number of citations to national papers has been the evaluative measures of national scientific standings. We raise a different question: instead of analyzing the citations to a countries' articles (the forward view), we examine references to prior publications from specific countries cited in the most elite publications (the backward-citing-view). "Elite publications" are operatio ...[more]

PMID: 29579088

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Project description:BackgroundMalaria remains a problem for many countries classified as malaria free through cases imported from endemic regions. Imported cases to non-endemic countries often result in delays in diagnosis, are expensive to treat, and can sometimes cause secondary local transmission. The movement of malaria in endemic countries has also contributed to the spread of drug resistance and threatens long-term eradication goals. Here we focused on quantifying the international movements of malaria to improve our understanding of these phenomena and facilitate the design of mitigation strategies.MethodsIn this meta-analysis, we studied the database of publicly available nationally reported statistics on imported malaria in the past 10 years, covering more than 50 000 individual cases. We obtained data from 40 non-endemic countries and recorded the geographical variations.FindingsInfection movements were strongly skewed towards a small number of high-traffic routes between 2005 and 2015, with the west Africa region accounting for 56% (13 947/24 941) of all imported cases to non-endemic countries with a reported travel destination, and France and the UK receiving the highest number of cases, with more than 4000 reported cases per year on average. Countries strongly linked by movements of imported cases are grouped by historical, language, and travel ties. There is strong spatial clustering of plasmodium species types.InterpretationThe architecture of the air network, historical ties, demographics of travellers, and malaria endemicity contribute to highly heterogeneous patterns of numbers, routes, and species compositions of parasites transported. With global malaria eradication on the international agenda, malaria control altering local transmission, and the threat of drug resistance, understanding these patterns and their drivers is increasing in importance.FundingBill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health, UK Medical Research Council, UK Department for International Development, Wellcome Trust.

Dataset Information

The geography of references in elite articles: Which countries contribute to the archives of knowledge?

Publications

The geography of references in elite articles: Which countries contribute to the archives of knowledge?

Similar Datasets

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