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Bibliometric quantification is frequently used as metrics for the evaluation of the scientific performance of researchers and institutions. The researchers' merit is usually assessed by the analysis of quantitative parameters such as the number of publications, the impact factor of journals, the total number of citations, or the h-index, although the limitations in translating these indicators into the impact of the outcome of scientific production are a matter of harsh criticism. To assess, based on factual evidences, the validity of traditional bibliometric analyses to conclude on the impact of papers to advance the state of the art, we carried out an innovative methodology on selected publications (test set). This methodology is based on identifying those citations of the test set papers that truly embed the methods, concepts, or hypotheses to build new knowledge and formulate conclusions. The results show that the percentage of citations that reflect the real impact of the papers of the test set has an average value of 12.4% of total citations and is not related to the impact factor of the journal where the test set papers were published. In conclusion, our analysis demonstrates factually, using experimental data, the total failure of using quantitative bulk citation analyses to conclude on the scientific impact of publications. Only a careful analysis of how the work described in papers was embedded on the subsequent work and/or conclusions of others can tell about the real contribution of a published work to the development of new knowledge and advancement of science., (© 2020 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.)

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.

This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of indexed scientific papers on concrete segmental bridges. Two hundred forty-two papers published from 1900 through 2013 were extracted from the Web of Science. The analysis examines author information, journal and year of publication, WoS category, funding agency, topics, keywords, and content. This study shows that the main references on concrete segmental bridges were published in United States journals on concrete structures; more than half were by authors in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the changes in the media of communication in medieval Russia. Based on quantitative data of surviving manuscripts and administrative documents, it argues that the introduction of paper in the fourteenth century had limited impact on secularization of knowledge and education. In the long run, however, it stimulated rapid production and dissemination of manuscripts and encouraged a new type of literacy that cherished thoughtful reading and reflection on content. Paper was mostly used in North-East territories, whereas in Novgorod parchment remained the dominant writing material up to the end of the fifteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study utilizes bibliometrics to explore papers and patents in the field of fuel cell to examine the scientific and technical development in the area. The research data were retrieved from the WOS database and USPTO patent data from the period between 1991 and 2010, which consists of 20,758 papers and 8,112 patents. The authors analyzed numbers of papers and patents to examine the trends in the papers and patents in different countries, organizations and individuals. The results indicate upward growth in both papers and patents in fuel cell, with a higher growth rate for papers. The study shows that major paper and patent output are concentrated in a small number of countries. An imbalance exists between the number of papers published and the patents granted in organizations. The organizations that published papers and patents vary in type and category. Very few individual researchers are able to produce high numbers of both papers and patents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The process of assessing individual authors should rely upon a proper aggregation of reliable and valid papers’ quality metrics. Citations are merely one possible way to measure appreciation of publications. In this study we propose some new, SJR- and SNIP-based indicators, which not only take into account the broadly conceived popularity of a paper (manifested by the number of citations), but also other factors like its potential, or the quality of papers that cite a given publication. We explore the relation and correlation between different metrics and study how they affect the values of a real-valued generalized h-index calculated for 11 prominent scientometricians. We note that the h-index is a very unstable impact function, highly sensitive for applying input elements’ scaling. Our analysis is not only of theoretical significance: data scaling is often performed to normalize citations across disciplines. Uncontrolled application of this operation may lead to unfair and biased (toward some groups) decisions. This puts the validity of authors assessment and ranking using the h-index into question. Obviously, a good impact function to be used in practice should not be as much sensitive to changing input data as the analyzed one. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]