Google Scholar and Web of Science: Examining gender differences in citation coverage across five scientific disciplines     

Jens Peter Andersen  Mathias Wullum Nielsen 《Journal of Informetrics》2018,12(3):950-959

Many studies demonstrate differences in the coverage of citing publications in Google Scholar (GS) and Web of Science (WoS). Here, we examine to what extent citation data from the two databases reflect the scholarly impact of women and men differently. Our conjecture is that WoS carries an indirect gender bias in its selection criteria for citation sources that GS avoids due to criteria that are more inclusive. Using a sample of 1250 U.S. researchers in Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Cardiology and Chemistry, we examine gender differences in the average citation coverage of the two databases. We also calculate database-specific h-indices for all authors in the sample. In repeated simulations of hiring scenarios, we use these indices to examine whether women's appointment rates increase if hiring decisions rely on data from GS in lieu of WoS. We find no systematic gender differences in the citation coverage of the two databases. Further, our results indicate marginal to non-existing effects of database selection on women's success-rates in the simulations. In line with the existing literature, we find the citation coverage in WoS to be largest in Cardiology and Chemistry and smallest in Political Science and Sociology. The concordance between author-based h-indices measured by GS and WoS is largest for Chemistry followed by Cardiology, Political Science, Sociology and Economics.  相似文献   

Investigating the quality of interactions and public engagement around scientific papers on Twitter     

Fereshteh Didegah  Niels Mejlgaard  Mads P. Sørensen 《Journal of Informetrics》2018,12(3):960-971

This study explores science communication on Twitter by investigating a sample of tweets referring to academic papers in five different scientific fields. The specifications of science communicators on Twitter, the characteristics of those who initiate actions (by tweeting), the extent and quality of reactions (retweeting), individual and group interactions, and the distribution of tweets across types of engagement in the process of science communication (i.e., dissemination, consultation, and evaluation) were explored. A broad array of actors is involved in the communication of science on Twitter, with individual citizens and individual researchers playing an important role. In principle, this is promising for creating direct interaction, which can be difficult through more traditional mass media. The vast majority of communication activities regarding academic papers is undigested dissemination with almost no sign of debate, contestation, or collective reflection. Another general finding of this study is that bot accounts play a major role in the science communication landscape on Twitter.  相似文献   

Four pitfalls in normalizing citation indicators: An investigation of ESI’s selection of highly cited papers     

Zhigang Hu  Wencan Tian  Shenmeng Xu  Chunbo Zhang  Xianwen Wang 《Journal of Informetrics》2018,12(4):1133-1145

InCites Essential Science Indicators is becoming increasingly used to identify top-performing research and evaluate the impact of institutes. Unfortunately, our study shows that ESI indicators, as well as other normalized citation indicators, have the following flaws. First, the publication month and the online-to-print delay affect a paper’s probability of becoming a Highly Cited Paper (HCP). Papers published in the earlier months of the year are more likely to accumulate enough citation counts to rank at the top 1% compared with those published in later months of the year. Papers with longer online-to-print delays have an apparent advantage for being selected as HCPs. Research field normalizations lead to the third pitfall. Different research fields have different citation thresholds for HCPs, making research field classification important for a journal. In addition, the uniform thresholds for both articles and reviews in ESI affect the reliability of HCP selection because, on average, reviews tend to have higher citation rates than articles. ESI’s selection of HCPs provides an intuitive feel for the problems of normalized citation impact indicators, such as those provided in InCites and SciVal.  相似文献   

Impact Factors and the Central Limit Theorem: Why citation averages are scale dependent     

Manolis Antonoyiannakis 《Journal of Informetrics》2018,12(4):1072-1088

Citation averages, and Impact Factors (IFs) in particular, are sensitive to sample size. Here, we apply the Central Limit Theorem to IFs to understand their scale-dependent behavior. For a journal of n randomly selected papers from a population of all papers, we expect from the Theorem that its IF fluctuates around the population average μ, and spans a range of values proportional to $\sigma /\sqrt{n}$, where σ² is the variance of the population's citation distribution. The $1/\sqrt{n}$ dependence has profound implications for IF rankings: The larger a journal, the narrower the range around μ where its IF lies. IF rankings therefore allocate an unfair advantage to smaller journals in the high IF ranks, and to larger journals in the low IF ranks. As a result, we expect a scale-dependent stratification of journals in IF rankings, whereby small journals occupy the top, middle, and bottom ranks; mid-sized journals occupy the middle ranks; and very large journals have IFs that asymptotically approach μ. We obtain qualitative and quantitative confirmation of these predictions by analyzing (i) the complete set of 166,498 IF & journal-size data pairs in the 1997–2016 Journal Citation Reports of Clarivate Analytics, (ii) the top-cited portion of 276,000 physics papers published in 2014–2015, and (iii) the citation distributions of an arbitrarily sampled list of physics journals. We conclude that the Central Limit Theorem is a good predictor of the IF range of actual journals, while sustained deviations from its predictions are a mark of true, non-random, citation impact. IF rankings are thus misleading unless one compares like-sized journals or adjusts for these effects. We propose the Φ index, a rescaled IF that accounts for size effects, and which can be readily generalized to account also for different citation practices across research fields. Our methodology applies to other citation averages that are used to compare research fields, university departments or countries in various types of rankings.  相似文献   

Dimensions: A competitor to Scopus and the Web of Science?     

Mike Thelwall 《Journal of Informetrics》2018,12(2):430-435

Dimensions is a partly free scholarly database launched by Digital Science in January 2018. Dimensions includes journal articles and citation counts, making it a potential new source of impact data. This article explores the value of Dimensions from an impact assessment perspective with an examination of Food Science research 2008–2018 and a random sample of 10,000 Scopus articles from 2012. The results include high correlations between citation counts from Scopus and Dimensions (0.96 by narrow field in 2012) as well as similar average counts. Almost all Scopus articles with DOIs were found in Dimensions (97% in 2012). Thus, the scholarly database component of Dimensions seems to be a plausible alternative to Scopus and the Web of Science for general citation analyses and for citation data in support of some types of research evaluations.  相似文献   

Technological research in the EU is less efficient than the world average. EU research policy risks Europeans’ future     

Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro  Ricardo Brito 《Journal of Informetrics》2018,12(3):718-731

We have studied the efficiency of research in the EU by a percentile-based citation approach that analyzes the distribution of country papers among the world papers. Going up in the citation scale, the frequency of papers from efficient countries increases while the frequency from inefficient countries decreases. In the percentile-based approach, this trend, which is uniform at any citation level, is measured by the e_p index that equals the P_{top 1%}/P_{top 10%} ratio. By using the e_p index we demonstrate that EU research on fast-evolving technological topics is less efficient than the world average and that the EU is far from being able to compete with the most advanced countries. The e_p index also shows that the USA is well ahead of the EU in both fast- and slow-evolving technologies, which suggests that the advantage of the USA over the EU in innovation is due to low research efficiency in the EU. In accord with some previous studies, our results show that the European Commission’s ongoing claims about the excellence of EU research are based on a wrong diagnosis. The EU must focus its research policy on the improvement of its inefficient research. Otherwise, the future of Europeans is at risk.  相似文献   

高校文科专业文献学教学的反思     

余全介 《重庆第二师范学院学报》2011,24(4):158-161

针对文献学课程作为选修课常常受到文献检索等课程的挤压,作为必修课又受到教学对象主、客观两方面因素的制约的情况,提出文献学对于文史哲等专业的治学研究有指导作用,对于学生知识体系的建构和完善有着非同一般的意义,应该成为文科专业的基础课。改进文献学的教学现状,教师必须注意文献学观念的转变,注意与国学教育相融合,提升自己的学术含量,提高自己的文化品格,实现教学策略的调整。  相似文献   

Elementary school children’s understanding of science: The implementation of an extracurricular science intervention     

《Contemporary educational psychology》2017

The promotion of students’ achievement and competence in the so-called STEM disciplines is one cornerstone of current educational research and practice. In particular, as early as elementary school, the fostering of an adequate understanding of science is a normative goal of science education. It facilitates students’ science learning and enables them to understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge. Based on the relevance of the promotion of young children’s understanding of science, a corresponding science intervention was recently developed and successfully evaluated in a first study under highly controlled conditions. The goal of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of this intervention when implemented in practice. One hundred seventeen third- and fourth-grade students and 10 trained course instructors participated in this study. We applied a randomized block design with waitlist control groups and repeated measures. The results revealed that children assigned to the intervention compared with children assigned to the waitlist control group showed better inquiry-related methodological competencies (a better understanding of the scientific inquiry cycle and experimentation strategies) and a higher need for cognition. The findings point to the successful implementation of the intervention and are compared with the results of the first study.  相似文献   

浅谈语文教学中的创新教育     

陈亲泽 《中国教育研究与创新》2007,4(2):42-43

语文教学中要培养学生的创新精神，就要充分挖掘学生的想象力，培养学生大胆设想、大胆尝试的能力。这些能力的培养就对老师的课堂教学提出了更高的要求，要大胆抛弃传统的教学模式，大胆创新。  相似文献   

引导学生正确认识宗教问题     

李玉珠 《福建师大福清分校学报》2003,(3):51-53,96

文章主要阐述在历文教学中要有针对性地解决学生提出的宗教问题，引导学生正确地看待宗教在社会主义社会的存在，认识宗教与迷信、邪教的区别，认识宗教与科学的关系。  相似文献