Independent publications from Serbia in the Science Citation Index Expanded: a bibliometric analysis

Exploring high scientific productivity in international co-authorship of a small developing country based on collaboration patterns

The number of published scientific paper grows rapidly each year, totaling more than 2.9 million annually. New methodologies and systems have been developed to analyze scientific production and performance indicators from large quantities of data available from the scientific databases, such as Web of Science or Scopus. In this paper, we analyzed the international scientific production and co-authorship patterns for the most productive authors from Serbia based on the obtained Web of Science dataset in the period 2006-2013. We performed bibliometric and scientometric analyses together with statistical and collaboration network analysis, to reveal the causes of extraordinary publishing performance of some authors. For such authors, we found significant inequality in distribution of papers over journals and countries of co-authors, using Gini coefficient and Lorenz curves. Most of the papers belong to multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and the field of applied sciences. We have discovered three specific collaboration patterns that lead to high productivity in international collaboration. First pattern corresponds to mega-authorship papers with hundreds of co-authors gathered in specific research groups. The other two collaboration patterns were found in mathematics and multidisciplinary science, mainly application of graph theory and computational methods in physical chemistry. The former pattern results in a star-shaped collaboration network with mostly individual collaborators. The latter pattern includes multiple actors with high betweenness centrality measure and identified brokerage roles. The results are compared with the later period 2014-2023, where high scientific production has been observed in some other fields, such as biology and food science and technology.

Reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS) of computer science papers from Eastern Europe

Purpose

The current article presents the results of a case study dealing with the historical roots of Eastern European researchers in computer science.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on an analysis of cited references stemming from a collection of around 80,000 computer science papers by Eastern European researchers published from 1989 to 2014. By using a method called “reference publication year spectroscopy” (RPYS) for historical analyses based on bibliometric data, we analyze around 800,000 references cited in those papers. The study identifies the peak years, including most frequently cited publications (from 1952, 1965 and 1975), and focuses on these outstanding works for the field. The research shows how these influential papers were cited in Eastern Europe and in general, and on which scientific fields they have the most impact.

Findings

A noteworthy publication that seems to have a tremendous effect on Eastern European computer science is Zadeh's “Fuzzy sets” article which appeared in Information and Control in 1965. The study demonstrates that computer scientists from Eastern Europe are more conservative in their citation behaviour and tend to refer to older and more established research than their counterparts from the West.

Originality/value

Which are the historical roots of researchers working in a particular field or on a specific topic? Are there certain publications – landmark papers – which are important for their research? We guess that these are questions bothering researchers in many fields.

Evaluation of citations: a proposition to supplement the corresponding rule book in Serbia

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to describe a proposition for the evaluation of citations of scientific papers, which could serve as a supplement to the existing Rule Book of the Ministry of the Republic of Serbia, which is used in the procedure of electing candidates for particular academic and research titles. The evaluation and quantitative presentation of the results and evaluation of citations were carried out on data taken from the database of the Current Research Information System of the University of Novi Sad (CRIS UNS), which is harmonized with the Rule Book of the Ministry with respect to the evaluation of published scientific results of researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

There are different criteria to evaluate the quality of scientific papers based on their citations. The pertinent parameters can be the total number of citations, the number of citations in a defined time period and by assigning the appropriate weighting values to the citations. This work proposes a procedure of assigning the citation weighting values based on the evaluation of the scientific results in which the citation appeared according to the Rule Book in the Republic of Serbia. Based on this, the authors introduced the impact factor of researchers as the ratio of the number of points of the evaluated citations and the number of points of the evaluated papers of the researcher.

Findings

Results showed that the research information system CRIS UNS can be extended to the evaluation of citations for a single researcher, groups of researchers and institutions.

Practical implications

The proposed solution enables the evaluation of citations in the process of election and promotion of academic staff. In this way, there is a means for measuring the scientific influence of a researcher in the relevant scientific area.

Social implications

The evaluation of citations may be included in the national strategies of scientific development, funding and evaluation of research projects; for promotions of academic staff at the universities and other academic institutions; and ranking of researchers and research organizations.

Originality/value

The main idea presented in the paper is the definition of a rule book (or several rule books) for the evaluation of citations. Based on the evaluation of citations, the authors proposed the term “the impact factor of researcher”.

Research performance of AACSB accredited institutions in Taiwan: before versus after accreditation

Introduction

More and more universities are receiving accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which is an international association for promoting quality teaching and learning at business schools. To be accredited, the schools are required to meet a number of standards ensuring that certain levels of teaching quality and students’ learning are met. However, there are a variety of points of view espoused in the literature regarding the relationship between research and teaching, some studies have demonstrated that research and teaching these are complementary elements of learning, but others disagree with these findings.

Case description

Unlike past such studies, we focus on analyzing the research performance of accredited schools during the period prior to and after receiving accreditation. The objective is to answer the question as to whether performance has been improved by comparing the same school’s performance before and after accreditation. In this study, four AACSB accredited universities in Taiwan are analyzed, including one teaching oriented and three research oriented universities. Research performance is evaluated by comparing seven citation statistics, the number of papers published, number of citations, average number of citations per paper, average citations per year, h-index (annual), h-index, and g-index.

Discussion and evaluation

The analysis results show that business schools demonstrated enhanced research performance after AACSB accreditation, but in most accredited schools the proportion of faculty members not actively doing research is larger than active ones.

Conclusion

This study shows that the AACSB accreditation has a positive impact on research performance. The findings can be used as a reference for current non-accredited schools whose research goals are to improve their research productivity and quality.

Computer science in Eastern Europe 1989-2014: a bibliometric study

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to study the development of research in computer science in 15 Eastern European countries following the breaching of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Design/methodology/approach

– The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of 82,121 computer science publications indexed in the Web of Science database and investigated publication, citation, and collaboration patterns of the individual countries.

Findings

– Poland has been the most productive country, followed by Russia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, and Slovenia. Publication rates have increased substantially over the period, but this has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the quality of the publications. Hungary and Slovenia are the most influential countries in terms of citations per paper. Artificial Intelligence is the most frequently occurring computer science subject category, with Interdisciplinary Applications the category with the greatest impact. USA, Germany, UK, France, and Canada are the most frequently collaborating western nations, and papers published in collaboration with US authors accrue the most citations.

Originality/value

– This is the first ever bibliometric study of the whole post-communist Eastern European computer science research as indexed in the Web of Science.