Archives des mots-clés : research impact

Academic Impact of Articles by Practitioners in the Field of Library and Information Science

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Author : Yu-Wei Chang

This study measured the relative academic impact of articles by LIS practitioners by analyzing library and information science articles published between 2005 and 2014. The results revealed that, although practitioners were not the main knowledge contributors, the academic impact of articles by practitioners was not significantly lower than that of articles by academics.

No significant differences in academic impact were present between any two types of coauthored articles. Articles from academic–practitioner collaboration were cited earlier than articles from practitioner–practitioner and academic–academic collaborations.

This study suggests that LIS practitioners appear to benefit from collaborative scholarship with LIS researchers through more citations and higher impact.

URL : Academic Impact of Articles by Practitioners in the Field of Library and Information Science

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.82.1.59

Preprints as accelerator of scholarly communication: An empirical analysis in Mathematics

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Authors : Zhiqi Wang, Yue Chen, Wolfgang Glänzel

In this study we analyse the key driving factors of preprints in enhancing scholarly communication. To this end we use four groups of metrics, one referring to scholarly communication and based on bibliometric indicators (Web of Science and Scopus citations), while the others reflect usage (usage counts in Web of Science), capture (Mendeley readers) and social media attention (Tweets).

Hereby we measure two effects associated with preprint publishing: publication delay and impact. We define and use several indicators to assess the impact of journal articles with previous preprint versions in arXiv. In particular, the indicators measure several times characterizing the process of arXiv preprints publishing and the reviewing process of the journal versions, and the ageing patterns of citations to preprints.

In addition, we compare the observed patterns between preprints and non-OA articles without any previous preprint versions in arXiv. We could observe that the “early-view” and “open-access” effects of preprints contribute to a measurable citation and readership advantage of preprints.

Articles with preprint versions are more likely to be mentioned in social media and have shorter Altmetric attention delay. Usage and capture prove to have only moderate but stronger correlation with citations than Tweets. The different slopes of the regression lines between the different indicators reflect different order of magnitude of usage, capture and citation data.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.11940

Our Study is Published, But the Journey is Not Finished!

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Authors : Olivier Pourret, Katsuhiko Suzuki, Yoshio Takahashi

Each June, we receive e-mails from publishers welcoming the evolution of their journals’ journal impact factor (JIF). The JIF is a controversial metric (Callaway 2016), and it is worth asking, “What’s behind it?”

In this age of “publish or perish” (Harzing 2007), we take much time and effort to write our papers and get them published. But how much time and effort do we put into finding readers or ensuring that we are reaching the right audience? Are metrics, such as the JIF, good guides for how well we are doing at reaching our target audience?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2138/gselements.16.4.229

A typology of scientific breakthroughs

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Authors : Mignon Wuestman, Jarno Hoekman, Koen Frenken

Scientific breakthroughs are commonly understood as discoveries that transform the knowledge frontier and have a major impact on science, technology, and society. Prior literature studying breakthroughs generally treats them as a homogeneous group in attempts to identify supportive conditions for their occurrence.

In this paper, we argue that there are different types of scientific breakthroughs, which differ in their disciplinary occurrence and are associated with different considerations of use and citation impact patterns.

We develop a typology of scientific breakthroughs based on three binary dimensions of scientific discoveries and use this typology to analyze qualitatively the content of 335 scientific articles that report on breakthroughs.

For each dimension, we test associations with scientific disciplines, reported use considerations, and scientific impact. We find that most scientific breakthroughs are driven by a question and in line with literature, and that paradigm shifting discoveries are rare.

Regarding the scientific impact of breakthrough as measured by citations, we find that an article that answers an unanswered question receives more citations compared to articles that were not motivated by an unanswered question.

We conclude that earlier research in which breakthroughs were operationalized as highly cited scientific articles may thus be biased against the latter.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00079

A case study exploring associations between popular media attention of scientific research and scientific citations

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Authors : P. Sage Anderson, Aubrey R. Odom, Hunter M. Gray, Jordan B. Jones, William F. Christensen, Todd Hollingshead, Joseph G. Hadfield, Alyssa Evans-Pickett, Megan Frost, Christopher Wilson, Lance E. Davidson, Matthew K. Seeley

The association between mention of scientific research in popular media (e.g., the mainstream media or social media platforms) and scientific impact (e.g., citations) has yet to be fully explored.

The purpose of this study was to clarify this relationship, while accounting for some other factors that likely influence scientific impact (e.g., the reputations of the scientists conducting the research and academic journal in which the research was published).

To accomplish this purpose, approximately 800 peer-reviewed articles describing original research were evaluated for scientific impact, popular media attention, and reputations of the scientists/authors and publication venue.

A structural equation model was produced describing the relationship between non-scientific impact (popular media) and scientific impact (citations), while accounting for author/scientist and journal reputation.

The resulting model revealed a strong association between the amount of popular media attention given to a scientific research project and corresponding publication and the number of times that publication is cited in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

These results indicate that (1) peer-reviewed scientific publications receiving more attention in non-scientific media are more likely to be cited than scientific publications receiving less popular media attention, and (2) the non-scientific media is associated with the scientific agenda.

These results may inform scientists who increasingly use popular media to inform the general public and scientists concerning their scientific work. These results might also inform administrators of higher education and research funding mechanisms, who base decisions partly on scientific impact.

URL : A case study exploring associations between popular media attention of scientific research and scientific citations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234912

The Sci-hub Effect: Sci-hub downloads lead to more article citations

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Authors : Juan C. Correa, Henry Laverde-Rojas, Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos, Julian Tejada, Štepán Bahník

Citations are often used as a metric of the impact of scientific publications. Here, we examine how the number of downloads from Sci-hub as well as various characteristics of publications and their authors predicts future citations.

Using data from 12 leading journals in economics, consumer research, neuroscience, and multidisciplinary research, we found that articles downloaded from Sci-hub were cited 1.72 times more than papers not downloaded from Sci-hub and that the number of downloads from Sci-hub was a robust predictor of future citations.

Among other characteristics of publications, the number of figures in a manuscript consistently predicts its future citations. The results suggest that limited access to publications may limit some scientific research from achieving its full impact.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14979

The relationship between bioRxiv preprints, citations and altmetrics

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Authors : Nicholas Fraser, Fakhri Momeni, Philipp Mayr, Isabella Peters

A potential motivation for scientists to deposit their scientific work as preprints is to enhance its citation or social impact. In this study we assessed the citation and altmetric advantage of bioRxiv, a preprint server for the biological sciences.

We retrieved metadata of all bioRxiv preprints deposited between November 2013 and December 2017, and matched them to articles that were subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals.

Citation data from Scopus and altmetric data from Altmetric.com were used to compare citation and online sharing behavior of bioRxiv preprints, their related journal articles, and nondeposited articles published in the same journals. We found that bioRxiv-deposited journal articles had sizably higher citation and altmetric counts compared to nondeposited articles.

Regression analysis reveals that this advantage is not explained by multiple explanatory variables related to the articles’ publication venues and authorship. Further research will be required to establish whether such an effect is causal in nature.

bioRxiv preprints themselves are being directly cited in journal articles, regardless of whether the preprint has subsequently been published in a journal. bioRxiv preprints are also shared widely on Twitter and in blogs, but remain relatively scarce in mainstream media and Wikipedia articles, in comparison to peer-reviewed journal articles.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00043