Institutional change and scientific research: A preliminary bibliometric analysis of institutional influences on Turkey’s recent social science publications

50 years of Iranian clinical, biomedical, and public health research: a bibliometric analysis of the Web of Science Core Collection (1965-2014)

Background

A substantial growth has been reported in Iran's number of clinical, biomedical, and public health research publications over the last 30 years. It is of interest to investigate whether this quantitative growth has also led to a larger number of papers with a high citation impact; to explore where the capacity for performing research lies; and which fields/institutions are lagging behind.

Methods

This was a bibliometric study. Web of Science Core Collection and its different tools were used for retrieving and analysing the publications. Information about the journals was found on Journal Citation Reports^®. Different types of collaborations across the highly-cited papers was investigated based on the affiliations, the characteristics of the language of the authors' names, and the authors' study and work backgrounds.

Results

Iran's number of clinical, biomedical, and public health research publications has substantially increased since 2000, a surge was seen in 2007, and the figure reached a peak in 2011. 11% of the publications were in Pharmacology Pharmacy; and the majority originated in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Six of the 10 journals that had published the most were Iranian journals. H-index of publications had also increased over time (almost doubled between 2000 and 2010). 30.9% of the most-cited publications had only relied on Iranian resources (including 48 publications); had been published in journals with impact factors ranging between 0.4 and 8.3; and the majority were original basic sciences research.

Conclusions

In Iran, a great capacity for research lies in clinical, biomedical, and public health fields which can be strengthened with further investment. It is important to use this capacity in a way that would align with the national population health needs. It is also essential to consider the limitations of only relying on bibliometric tools for assessing health research activities. Finally, the Iranian science policy-makers are encouraged to (i) support the researchers and institutions that have proved research capacity; (ii) direct further resources towards research areas and/or institutions that are lagging behind; (iii) facilitate further international collaboration with the academics and/or institutions that have shown the capacity for conducting successful research projects with Iran.

Does Monetary Support Increase the Number of Scientific Papers? An Interrupted Time Series Analysis

Purpose

One of the main indicators of scientific production is the number of papers published in scholarly journals. Turkey ranks 18th place in the world based on the number of scholarly publications. The objective of this paper is to find out if the monetary support program initiated in 1993 by the Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Council (TÜBİTAK) to incentivize researchers and increase the number, impact, and quality of international publications has been effective in doing so.

Design/methodology/approach

We analyzed some 390,000 publications with Turkish affiliations listed in the Web of Science (WoS) database between 1976 and 2015 along with about 157,000 supported ones between 1997 and 2015. We used the interrupted time series (ITS) analysis technique (also known as “quasi-experimental time series analysis” or “intervention analysis”) to test if TÜBİTAK’s support program helped increase the number of publications. We defined ARIMA (1,1,0) model for ITS data and observed the impact of TÜBİTAK’s support program in 1994, 1997, and 2003 (after one, four and 10 years of its start, respectively). The majority of publications (93%) were full papers (articles), which were used as the experimental group while other types of contributions functioned as the control group. We also carried out a multiple regression analysis.

Findings

TÜBİTAK’s support program has had negligible effect on the increase of the number of papers with Turkish affiliations. Yet, the number of other types of contributions continued to increase even though they were not well supported, suggesting that TÜBİTAK’s support program is probably not the main factor causing the increase in the number of papers with Turkish affiliations.

Research limitations

Interrupted time series analysis shows if the “intervention” has had any significant effect on the dependent variable but it does not explain what caused the increase in the number of papers if it was not the intervention. Moreover, except the “intervention”, other “event(s)” that might affect the time series data (e.g., increase in the number of research personnel over the years) should not occur during the period of analysis, a prerequisite that is beyond the control of the researcher.

Practical implications

TÜBİTAK’s “cash-for-publication” program did not seem to have direct impact on the increase of the number of papers published by Turkish authors, suggesting that small amounts of payments are not much of an incentive for authors to publish more. It might perhaps be a better strategy to concentrate limited resources on a few high impact projects rather than to disperse them to thousands of authors as “micropayments.”

Originality/value

Based on 25 years’ worth of payments data, this is perhaps one of the first large-scale studies showing that “cash-for-publication” policies or “piece rates” paid to researchers tend to have little or no effect on the increase of researchers’ productivity. The main finding of this paper has some implications for countries wherein publication subsidies are used as an incentive to increase the number and quality of papers published in international journals. They should be prepared to consider reviewing their existing support programs (based usually on bibliometric measures such as journal impact factors) and revising their reward policies.