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Currently, a broad set of bibliometric indices for evaluation of journal quality, the level of its internationalization, and interactions between serials are available. However, some cases require one to obtain more precise methods to assess journals, e.g., when estimating new journals, selecting them into international citation databases, increasing their rank, broadening their readership, or optimizing editorial policy. To cope with new challenges, new approaches have been introduced including altmetrics and various analyses of editorial board composition and impact. Analyzing altmetrics and studying geographic diversity on editorial boards, comparing these data with that of journal authors, and evaluating research efficiency of editorial board members enables one to use new approaches to assess the rank of serials. This paper considers current research reports on altmetrics, geographic diversity, and publication activity of editorial board members of top journals on Earth Sciences published in the Russian Federation and recognized as international serials. It was found that such altmetrics as abstract views, full text views, and a number of viewed papers are now available as additional metrics to evaluate journal quality. Furthermore, provided that the data on altmetrics are complete, they can be considered as a specific predictor for future citations and other citation-based indices. Editorial board analyses demonstrate a correlation of bibliometric indices of editorial board members with that of a journal. As for geographic diversity, only half of the analyzed journals demonstrate a strong correlation between the number of foreign members on editorial boards and geographic representativeness of a journal, mainly due to the local nature of geosciences and trade secret mode in much of mining research. Generally, the obtained findings highlighted the efficiency of new approaches to evaluate journal quality both in the case of the absence of citation-based journal metrics and as an additional tool to traditional indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of bibliometric analysis of eight typical Science Citation Index (SCI)-indexed journals in natural medicines by use of Web of Science (WoS), this study aims to find some strategies useful for improving the international impact of academic journals. We suggest that it is important to: attract foreign and internationally collaborated contributions; select reviewers and authors in citing journals of high IF; establish multidirectional collaboration with institutions that frequently publish/cite literatures and those with priority disciplines; dynamically and intensively track and analyze the terms of hot publications; and redesign the website and adopt advance digital publication. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Librarians at a large, federally funded, multidisciplinary research organization sought to assess the value provided by the library's collections. One method for capturing this value includes determining how well their library's collections meet researcher needs, as expressed by the materials those researchers choose to cite in the production of new scholarly communications. A cited reference analysis was performed on the publications originating from the institution to provide the necessary data for the assessment, as well as to aid in the creation of a core list of journals which will inform future collection development efforts. This paper fills a gap in the library and information science literature by addressing the citation behaviors of researchers at a large multidisciplinary government research facility, a setting that has not been examined previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was conducted to examine the scholarly impact of health and medical journals in Africa. A descriptive informetric research approach was used to analyze 134 health and medical journals hosted in the African Journal Online (AJOL) database. Harzing's Publish or Perish (PoP) software was used to extract publication and citation indicators of the journals. These indicators include number of citations, number of paper publications, cites per year, cites per paper, and the h-index of the journals. The performance of the journals was equally examined in other major databases like Thomson Reuters and Scopus. Findings reveal that only 20 African countries contributed health and medical journals to the AJOL database, with Nigeria and South Africa producing nearly 70% of the journals. A ranked list of 29 journals was developed, withSouth African Medical JournalandAfrican Health Sciencesranking highest in the list, respectively. Only 14 of the journals were found in Thompson Reuters, while Scopus indexes only 38.8% of the journals. These findings challenge the criteria Thompson Reuters and Scopus use in the selection of journals for their databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patents with non-patent literature (NPL) references indicate how the link between science and technology interact. Using topic modeling, this paper investigated the thematic relationship between patents and their cited articles in the field of Nanotechnology. For this purpose, patents in the field of nanotechnology (IPC Class: B82) were obtained from the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 1985 to 2019. Then, NPL references listed in "Other References" section of the patents was extracted and abstract of the NPL references was retrieved from Scopus database. R software, topic modeling, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm were used to analyze the data. Results showed that most of the subclasses in Nanotechnology use few NPL references and are more dependent on patents. In total, NPL references account for only 36% of patent citations. The topics of the NPL references in this field (nanotechnology) belonged to six categories: Physics, Electricity, Chemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Medicine, and Nanotechnology. Consequently, it seems that nanotechnology patents are more technology-driven, and a medium to low relationship exists between science and nanotechnology. The topic modeling of NPL references uncovered that nanotechnology patents have been more influenced by non-nano scientific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There are several ways for the international scientific community to recognize the quality of a scholarly journal. Although controversial, the most widely used and reliable methodology to identify the importance of a journal is through the citation it receives. This paper identifies the performance of scholarly journals published by Malaysian publishers in the Web of Science and reports the number of citations to Malaysian journals in terms of the cited and the citing journals. A search using the Thomson-Reuters citation database (Web of Science) was performed to identify highly cited Malaysian journals from 2006 to 2010. We identified 212 cited journals that received 9675 cited-papers, and a total of 9427 articles contributing to the 3184 journals citing Malaysian journals. More than fifty percent of all the articles that cited Malaysian journals were published in journals ranked in the first or second quartile by the Journal Citation Report. Further analysis was done on the top 50 cited and citing journal titles. A steady growth of citations with a total increase of 56.9% was evident between the five year period examined. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper is intended to assist professors, administrators, librarians and other members of university level committees that must consider research expectations and research quality in academic fields that they lack. While this is not a problem for field experts, it is a difficulty when people are asked to make decisions in areas of study other than their own. This is commonly the case for senior university professors, librarians and administrators in regards to university wide decisions. The paper investigates this gap, through a study of 27 academic fields in 348 highly regarded universities. We find that there are almost always statistically significant differences in activity between academic fields, regardless of the metric one considers. However, it is possible to understand these differences by comparing the distribution of a known academic field to that of a field that one is not familiar with. Tables and information are provided to assist in the comparison of different fields of study on metrics such as: departmental publications and researcher level metrics of publications, citations, H-index, and total number of co-authors. The information can also be used to support decisions associated with promotion to senior posts such as endowed chairs and professorships. Information regarding specific universities and researchers are included in the data supplement. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The most reliable way to know the contribution of research to the world knowledgebase is through publication and citation data. The research papers and doctoral theses are the instruments through which results of the research are communicated to the outside world. Both these scholarly publications conclude with the list of references. The study of these references (citations) gives an idea about the development of any research topic or a researcher and also indicates the kind of literature referred by the researchers. In today's world of ever escalating cost of serials, citation analysis is also being used to determine which titles to purchase and which ones to discontinue. The present study aims to better understand and manage the library resources by examining the resources used (cited) by the doctoral students of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) during 1997–2006. It was found that electronic format was preferred to the printed format from 2001 through 2006. Journal articles are used (cited) the most, followed by books and other documents like proceedings and reports. With more and more availability of online resources, use of non-subscribed content was also on the rise from 1997 through 2006. This study also confirms the Bradford's law that a set of core journals in a subject field satisfy more than 50% of the total number of journal citations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The relations of altmetrics/usage of an article and its citations have been studied extensively by using several variable-oriented approaches, e.g., correlations analysis, regression analysis, and so on. Variable-oriented approaches are symmetrically designed to estimate the "net effects" of independent variables on outcomes. In contrast to variable-oriented approaches, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), a case-oriented approach based on set theory, models the concept of conjunctural causation, rather than a single net effect. QCA assumes asymmetry, equifinality, and causal complexity. In this study, based on four data sets from Scientific Reports, a Crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) was employed to identify combinations of altmetrics and Web of Science usage (WOSusage) that linked to early citations an article received. Our results revealed the existence of diverse combinations of altmetrics and WOSusage that linked to early citations. The four combinations with the highest raw coverage for each data set indicated that high Mendeley readers together with high WOSusage played a key role in early citations an article received. The other altmetrics, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and news, played roles in linking to early citations an article received but varied in different combinations for each data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study compares journal citations from dissertations granted at three universities (Penn State, Cornell, and Auburn) using a novel bibliometric approach: text mining. We first tested the validity of text mining as a method for collecting journal title mentions by comparing text mining results with human-tallied results on a set of dissertations. We then text mined a group of dissertations using a preexisting list of journal titles in order to count journal title mentions in combination with the number of dissertations citing each title. The combination of journal title mentions and number of citing dissertations created a ranking for comparison across institutions. Our study presents text mining as a reliable and less time-intensive option for certain types of bibliometric analyses and also shows the utility of a ranked score approach (CD rank) for making cross-institutional citation comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the ongoing transformation of scholarly publishing toward open access, libraries need data-based tools that enable them to make decisions that respond to the challenges posed by this shift. Tasks such as collection development, applications for funding, or consulting researchers on publication venues require a solid base of data, which is not always easily available to librarians. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Open Access Monitor Germany (OAM) aims to provide libraries, funders, and researchers with a freely available tool that presents data on publications and citations for analysis. The OAM records the publication output of German academic institutions in scientific journals. Through analyses of subscription fees and (open access) publication fees, it helps to monitor and support the transition of the publishing system toward an open access system. To this end, data from existing sources are collated within an expanded database, made available to users in an open interface, and disseminated by means of scientific publications. The OAM draws on sources such as Unpaywall, Dimensions, Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAPC. Unpaywall is used as a central data source for publication metadata including open access availability; this data is then matched with Crossref data for journal-level metadata and finally with Dimensions, Web of Science and Scopus data for affiliations and citation data. The connection to OpenAPC provides data on publication costs for each participating institution. The interface presents users with a wide range of filters that can be used to customize the underlying data in line with specific needs. Users can switch between Dimensions, Web of Science and Scopus affiliations and make use of different analysis types including publication analyses, cost analyses, and citation analyses. Results are presented as tables as well as charts and can be downloaded for further use. In the future, additional data sources including subscriptions to scientific journals and subscription payments will be integrated to allow the shift in payment flows in the changing publication market to be observed. The integration of data from the electronic resource management system LAS:eR has already been initiated and will soon be completed. Moreover, interfaces will be created to connect the Alma and FOLIO systems. Together with data on publication costs, this will provide participating institutions with easily accessible overview of their total costs, thus enabling them to calculate an integrated budget for subscriptions and publications. Institutions using the OAM are advised with regard to analyzing data and technically integrating the OAM into their own applications. Small and medium-sized publishers from German-speaking countries are supported in the negotiation of transformation contracts by means of data from the OAM. The OAM project team also conducts studies that address a number of scientific issues, for example the impact of open access on scientific networks and the role of open access in the field of monographs. The relationship between open access and the citation rates of published works is another possible research area that can be addressed with the help of the OAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, based on systematic review and meta-analysis, aimed to collect and analyze evidence on correlation between perception-based journal rankings and the most popular citation-based measure, Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factor (JIF). A search was conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. After the screening of titles, abstracts, and full text, 18 articles were selected as eligible for review and analysis. The included studies belonged to various subject areas in social sciences, science, and technology. The correlation coefficients found in most of the studies were statistically significant in a positive direction. The heterogeneity test was positive. Therefore, the random-effect method of meta-analysis was applied. The value of pooled correlation coefficient indicated a moderate positive relationship between two methods of assessing the quality of academic journals. The absence of a high correlation makes decision making based on a single ranking method dangerous. Therefore, a hybrid approach for journal assessment is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Numerous types of metrics are available to assist in the evaluation of scholarship. The focus for this column of In Lay Terms is bibliometrics, the quantitative analysis of publication data using article-, author-, and journal-level data. Citation analysis is the most commonly used bibliometric method. It includes analyzing the number of articles published by an author, the number of citations from those articles, and the ranking of the journals in which those articles were published. This column compares bibliometrics found in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar and considers the relationship of these metrics to the field of library and information science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: With growing institutional pressure from the Brazilian government to increase the impact of research that it funds, Brazilian researchers are increasingly interested in discovering factors that affect the citation of their articles. The aim of the present article was to assess the perceptions of Brazilian sustainability researchers to identify factors that influence the impacts of their research. A survey was conducted with researchers in the field of sustainability and 89 questionnaires were completed. All of those researchers have articles or research projects in the field of sustainability (mixing environmental, social and/or economical) recorded in the Scielo or Lattes Curriculum Brazilian databases. Results suggest four factors that may explain the impact of article citations: (1) “prestige of the author and the research network;” (2) “prestige of the means of publication and indexing;” (3) “accessibility and quality characteristics of the article;” and (4) “international nature of communication and scope of the study”. Surprisingly, such factors were not statistically significant in explaining the citations of the participating researchers. These results show the need to consider other factors that can explain the impact of research, discovering the missing links. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigates self-citation rates of 222 Chinese journals within seven groups including 76 journals of agronomy (34.2 percent), 57 of biology (25.7 percent), 28 of environmental science and technology (12.6 percent), 15 of forestry (6.8 percent), 24 of academic journals of agricultural university (10.8 percent), 9 of aquatic sciences (4.1 percent), and 13 of animal husbandry and veterinary medicine (5.9 percent). The average self-citation rates range from 2 percent to 67 percent in 2006, 1 percent to 68 percent in 2007 and 0 percent to 67 percent in 2008. There is a significant difference in self-citation rate between most groups of journals. The self-citation rate is positively and significantly correlated with the self-citation rate in 2006 for all 222 journals (N=222, R[sup 2]=0.194, P=0.004) (P<0.05). However, the self-citation rate is not significantly correlated with the journal's impact factor in 2007 (N=222, R[sup 2]=0.114, P=0.091) and 2008 (N=222, R[sup 2]=0.112, P=0.096) (P<0.05) for the 222 journals. The relationship between self-citation rate and journal impact factor is discussed. Serials Review 2011; 37:171-173. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]