The Ortega Hypothesis: Citation analysis suggests that only a few scientists contribute to scientific progress

Global research and scientific publications on PND between 1969 and 2022: A bibliometric analysis

Objectives

We hope to offer a comprehensive understanding of the advancements and patterns in research on PND. Methods: We performed a thorough search on the Web of Science Core Collection to locate relevant studies published from 1969 to 2022 and utilized four distinct tools, namely VOSviewer (J Data Inf Sci, 2017, 2, 1; J Am Soc Inf Sci, 1973, 24, 265; Amer Doc, 1963, 14, 10 and Scientometrics, 2010, 82, 581), CiteSpace (Scientometrics, 2010, 84, 523), Scimago Graphica, and R-bibliometrix which allowed us to examine various aspects. Results: We included a total of 6787 articles and reviews for analysis which described PND research, the sources, and the subfields; highlighted the significant developments in this field; identified three main directions in PND.Conclusion: This study highlights the rapid growth of research on PND in recent years and provided an overview of previous studies in the field of PND, thereby establishing the overall landscape of PND research and identifying potential avenues for future investigations.

Methods

We performed a thorough search on the Web of Science Core Collection to locate relevant studies published from 1969 to 2022. To perform bibliometric analysis and network visualization, we utilized four distinct tools, namely VOSviewer (J Data Inf Sci, 2017, 2, 1; J Am Soc Inf Sci, 1973, 24, 265; Amer Doc, 1963, 14, 10 and Scientometrics, 2010, 82, 581), CiteSpace (Scientometrics, 2010, 84, 523), Scimago Graphica, and R-bibliometrix. These tools allowed us to examine various aspects, including the yearly publication output, the contribution of different countries or regions, the involvement of active journals, co-citation analysis, publication status, keywords, and terms, as well as scientific categories. We hope to offer a comprehensive understanding of the advancements and patterns in research on PND. The insights gained from this study can assist researchers and clinicians in enhancing the management and implementation of their work in this field.

Results

In this study, we included a total of 6787 articles and reviews for analysis. First, publication trends and contribution by country analysis described PND research. Second, a historical analysis described PND research, the sources, and the subfields. Third, an analysis of keywords highlighted the significant developments in this field. Fourth, an analysis of research themes identified three main directions in PND.

Conclusion

In summary, the research volume exhibits exponential growth over time. Furthermore, the majority of contributions originate from Western countries and China. The interdisciplinary nature of the field is evident, with its roots in biology and medicine and further branching into psychology and social sciences. POCD, delirium-predominant associated clinical management were major research themes about PND.

The impact of library and information science knowledge from the perspective of external citations

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the characteristics of knowledge diffusion in library and information science (LIS) to reveal the impact of knowledge in LIS on other disciplines and the disciplinary status of LIS.

Design/methodology/approach

Taking the 573 highly cited papers (HCP) of LIS during the years 2000–2019 in Web of Science and 85,638 papers citing them from non-LIS disciplines as the analysis object, this paper analysed the disciplines to which the citing papers belonged regarding the Biglan model, and the topics and their characteristics of the citing disciplines using latent Dirichlet allocation topic clustering.

Findings

The results showed that the knowledge in LIS was exported to multiple disciplines and topics. (1) Citations from other disciplines were overall increasing, and the main citing disciplines, mainly from applied science disciplines, were medicine, computer science, management, economics, education, sociology, psychology, journalism and communication, earth science, engineering, biology, political science, chemistry and agronomy. However, those disciplines had fewer citations to LIS during for the years from 2000 to 2004, with rapid growth in the next three time periods. (2) The citing papers had various topics and showed an increasing trend in quantity. Moreover, topics of different disciplines from 2000 to 2019 had various characteristics.

Originality/value

From the perspective of discipline and topic, this study analyses papers citing the HCP of LIS from non-LIS disciplines, revealing the impact of knowledge in LIS on other disciplines.

Dynamics of the social construction of knowledge: an empirical study of Zhihu in China

This study examined how the knowledge market promotes knowledge construction on question-and-answer (Q&A) websites. Data were collected from Zhihu, one of the largest Q&A sites in China. Hierarchical linear modeling was employed to estimate the dynamics of information accumulation, that is, the provision of informative content as factual construction. By employing information accumulation as the objective measure of knowledge construction, we determined that online knowledge construction was facilitated by a competitive marketplace of ideas. In addition, participation, temporal, and discourse features affected the dynamics of information accumulation. In specific, active users contributed significantly less to information accumulation than did ordinary users. Information accumulation shows a naturally decaying process represented as a function of answer order. The time interval between answers at the two preceding time points reduced the informativeness of answers at the subsequent time point. Answers with a higher readability score reduced the informativeness of subsequent answers. The results indicate that knowledge construction on Q&A sites unfolds as a process of mass collaboration among users.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1140/epjds/s13688-022-00346-6.

The individual characteristics, organizational characteristics and research productivity of early career LIS researchers in China’s mainland: A crisp set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA)

There existed discrimination, including gender discrimination, first degree discrimination, etc., when assessing the future research productivity of PhD graduates in recruitment in China’s mainland. Were PhD students who did not possess certain conditions (e.g. first degree receiving from a non-key university) unable to achieve high research productivity after graduation? Previous studies focused on the “net effects” of individual and organizational characteristics on research productivity by using quantitative methods (e.g. regression analysis). However, researchers’ research productivity might be due to the interactions of multiple factors rather than a single factor. This study aimed to analyze the effects of the combined conditions (interactions) of individual and organizational characteristics on the research productivity of early career library and information science (LIS) researchers under the context of employment discrimination in the academic job market of China’s mainland. Early career LIS researchers who graduated from China’s mainland universities/institutions between 2011 and 2015 were selected as the sample ( n = 62). csQCA was employed to analyze the data. The results revealed that the effects of a single condition did not directly contribute to the occurrence of high research productivity. There were two combinations of conditions that could contribute to the high research productivity of early career LIS researchers. The first combination that contributed to the high research productivity of an early career LIS researcher was receiving his or her bachelor’s degree from a key university, publishing higher than the median number of articles indexed by Web of Science core collections (WOS) during their PhD and working in a key university after PhD graduation. The second combination was being male, publishing more than the median number of articles indexed by the WOS and the local core journals index during their PhD, and working at a key university after PhD graduation.

See further upon the giants: Quantifying intellectual lineage in science

Newton’s centuries-old wisdom of standing on the shoulders of giants raises a crucial yet underexplored question: Out of all the prior works cited by a discovery, which one is its giant? Here, we develop a novel, discipline-independent method to identify the giant for any individual paper, allowing us to systematically examine the role and characteristics of giants in science. We find that across disciplines, about 95% of papers stand on the shoulders of giants, yet the weight of scientific progress rests on relatively few shoulders. Defining a new measure of giant index, we find that, while papers with high citations are more likely to be giants, for papers with the same citations, their giant index sharply predicts a paper’s future impact and prize-winning probabilities. Giants tend to originate from both small and large teams, being either highly disruptive or highly developmental. And papers that did not have a giant but later became a giant tend to be home-run papers that are highly disruptive to science. Given the crucial importance of citation-based measures in science, the developed concept of giants may offer a useful new dimension in assessing scientific impact that goes beyond sheer citation counts.

Peer Review

https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00186

The impacts of learning analytics and A/B testing research: a case study in differential scientometrics

BACKGROUND

In recent years, research on online learning platforms has exploded in quantity. More and more researchers are using these platforms to conduct A/B tests on the impact of different designs, and multiple scientific communities have emerged around studying the big data becoming available from these platforms. However, it is not yet fully understood how each type of research influences future scientific discourse within the broader field. To address this gap, this paper presents the first scientometric study on how researchers build on the contributions of these two types of online learning platform research (particularly in STEM education). We selected a pair of papers (one using A/B testing, the other conducting learning analytics (LA), on platform data of an online STEM education platform), published in the same year, by the same research group, at the same conference. We then analyzed each of the papers that cited these two papers, coding from the paper text (with inter-rater reliability checks) the reason for each citation made.

RESULTS

After statistically comparing the frequency of each category of citation between papers, we found that the A/B test paper was self-cited more and that citing papers built on its work directly more frequently, whereas the LA paper was more often cited without discussion.

CONCLUSIONS

Hence, the A/B test paper appeared to have had a larger impact on future work than the learning analytics (LA) paper, even though the LA paper had a higher count of total citations with a lower degree of self-citation. This paper also established a novel method for understanding how different types of research make different contributions in learning analytics, and the broader online learning research space of STEM education.

Quantitative modelling frontiers: a literature review on the evolution in financial and risk modelling after the financial crisis (2008-2019)

This study provides a holistic and quantitative overview of over 800 mathematical methods (e.g., financial and risk models, statistical tests, statistics and advanced algorithms) taken out of sampled scientific literature on quantitative modelling, particularly, from financial and risk modelling by applying a bibliometric approach from 2008 to 2019 and a citation network analysis. This is done to elaborate on the influence in the field after the Financial Crisis 2008. We present a content analysis of journals, main topics, applied data sets and frontiers within quantitative modelling and highlight details about quantitative features such as implemented models, algorithms and aggregated model-family combinations. Moreover, we describe explications and ties to empirical stylised facts (e.g., asymmetry or nonlinearity). Finally, we discuss insights such as our main finding, namely, the non-existence of a "single-best"-approach as well as the future prospects.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43546-022-00359-3.

Systematic review of manufacturing strategy studies focusing on congruence aspect

Purpose

This study provides a systematic review of the literature within the manufacturing strategy (MS) domain focusing on the congruence aspect of different strategic functions to determine the state-of-the-art research progression and the trend of publications.

Design/methodology/approach

We have adopted a five-stage review methodology consisting - 1) Article Identification; 2) Inclusion/Exclusion; 3) Review of the Articles; 4) Literature Analysis; 5) Future research directions. 121 articles focusing on congruence aspects and specific to the MS domain are identified and reviewed. Bibliometric analysis comprising keyword co-occurrence using a VOSviewer© software, and citation analysis is performed. Further, content analysis is carried out to categorize articles based on the type of research methodology, type of tool/method used, and aspects considered for congruence study.

Findings

Based on the research gaps identified in the existing literature on the congruence aspect within the MS domain, this study offers future research directions. Majorly, the work found is an empirical survey. Literature scants to develop a framework that helps to quantify the congruence between two strategic functions.

Research limitations/implications

This study facilitates researchers and practitioners to understand the congruence between different strategic aspects studied in the literature and the level of fit between them. Further, the identified research directions can encourage researchers and practitioners to conceive novel approaches to conduct future works on congruence theme.

Originality/value

The unicity of the current review lies in its theme, i.e. congruence aspect within MS. To the best of author's knowledge, no comparable study is observed to review the congruence aspect in any other domain.

Global citation inequality is on the rise

Citations are important building blocks for status and success in science. We used a linked dataset of more than 4 million authors and 26 million scientific papers to quantify trends in cumulative citation inequality and concentration at the author level. Our analysis, which spans 15 y and 118 scientific disciplines, suggests that a small stratum of elite scientists accrues increasing citation shares and that citation inequality is on the rise across the natural sciences, medical sciences, and agricultural sciences. The rise in citation concentration has coincided with a general inclination toward more collaboration. While increasing collaboration and full-count publication rates go hand in hand for the top 1% most cited, ordinary scientists are engaging in more and larger collaborations over time, but publishing slightly less. Moreover, fractionalized publication rates are generally on the decline, but the top 1% most cited have seen larger increases in coauthored papers and smaller relative decreases in fractional-count publication rates than scientists in the lower percentiles of the citation distribution. Taken together, these trends have enabled the top 1% to extend its share of fractional- and full-count publications and citations. Further analysis shows that top-cited scientists increasingly reside in high-ranking universities in western Europe and Australasia, while the United States has seen a slight decline in elite concentration. Our findings align with recent evidence suggesting intensified international competition and widening author-level disparities in science.

Citation Metrics in Psychological Science

We present norms for faculty citation counts based on 811 faculty members at 30 PhD-granting psychology departments in the United States across the range of the National Research Council rankings. The metrics were highly skewed, with most scientists having a low to moderate number of citations of their work and a few scientists having extremely high numbers. However, the median per-year citation count was 149, showing widespread scientific contributions across scholars. Some individuals in lower ranked departments are more highly cited than the average scholar in higher ranked departments, with enormous variation in citation counts in both the low- and high-ranking departments. Citation counts overall have risen in recent years, and the citations of early-career scholars are increasing at a faster rate than their senior colleagues did at the same point in their careers. We found that citation counts at the beginning of scientists' careers substantially predict lifetime citation success. Young scholars' citation counts are associated with obtaining positions at higher ranked universities. Finally, we found no significant differences for subfields of psychology. In sum, although a few highly productive scientists have a very large influence, trends reveal that contributions to psychological science are growing over time, widespread, and not limited to a few stars and elite departments.

The Landscape of Risk Communication Research: A Scientometric Analysis

Risk communication is a significant research domain with practical importance in supporting societal risk governance and informed private decision making. In this article, a high-level analysis of the risk communication research domain is performed using scientometrics methods and visualization tools. Output trends and geographical patterns are identified, and patterns in scientific categories determined. A journal distribution analysis provides insights into dominant journals and the domain's intellectual base. Thematic clusters and temporal evolution of focus topics are obtained using a terms analysis, and a co-citation analysis provides insights into the evolution of research fronts and key documents. The results indicate that the research volume grows exponentially, with by far most contributions originating from Western countries. The domain is highly interdisciplinary, rooted in psychology and social sciences, and branching mainly into medicine and environmental sciences. Narrative themes focus on risk communication in medical and societal risk governance contexts. The domain originated from public health and environmental concerns, with subsequent research fronts addressing risk communication concepts and models. Applied research fronts are associated with environmental hazards, public health, medical risks, nuclear power, and emergency response to various natural hazards. Based on the results, various avenues for future research are described.

Slip and Fall Incidents at Work: A Visual Analytics Analysis of the Research Domain

Slip and fall incidents at work remain an important class of injury and fatality causing mechanisms. An extensive body of safety research has accumulated on this topic. This article presents an analysis of this research domain. Two bibliometric visualization tools are applied: VOSviewer and HistCite. Samples of 618 slip and fall related articles are obtained from the Web of Science database. Networks of institutions, authors, terms, and chronological citation relationships are established. Collaboration and research activities of the slip and fall research community show that most contributors are from the United States, with the (now closed) Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety the most influential research organization. The results of a term clustering analysis show that the slip and fall research can be grouped into three sub-domains: epidemiology, gait/biomechanics, and tribology. Of these, early research focused mainly on tribology, whereas research on gait/biomechanics and epidemiological studies are relatively more recent. Psychological aspects of slip and fall incident occurrence represent a relatively under-investigated research topic, in which future contributions may provide new insights and safety improvements. Better linking of this research domain with other principles and methods in safety science, such as safety management and resilience, may also present valuable future development paths.

Early coauthorship with top scientists predicts success in academic careers

We examined the long-term impact of coauthorship with established, highly-cited scientists on the careers of junior researchers in four scientific disciplines. Here, using matched pair analysis, we find that junior researchers who coauthor work with top scientists enjoy a persistent competitive advantage throughout the rest of their careers, compared to peers with similar early career profiles but without top coauthors. Such early coauthorship predicts a higher probability of repeatedly coauthoring work with top-cited scientists, and, ultimately, a higher probability of becoming one. Junior researchers affiliated with less prestigious institutions show the most benefits from coauthorship with a top scientist. As a consequence, we argue that such institutions may hold vast amounts of untapped potential, which may be realised by improving access to top scientists.

By examining publication records of scientists from four disciplines, the authors show that coauthoring a paper with a top-cited scientist early in one's career predicts lasting increases in career success, especially for researchers affiliated with less prestigious institutions.

The Flow Network of Chinese Scientists and Its Driving Mechanisms Based on the Spatial Development Path of CAS and CAE Academicians

Scientists are a core element of regional technological innovation and economic growth. Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) are outstanding representatives of Chinese scientists. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the characteristics of Chinese scientists’ space migration, depict the structural topology of their flow network and to analyze the driving mechanisms behind the characteristics of their space migration. We mainly used spatial statistics, complex network analysis, and a modified location quotient. Our main conclusions are as follows: (1) The spatial distribution of Chinese scientists at different development stages tends to converge. The Chinese scientists’ birthplaces are highly concentrated in the eastern coastal areas and the Yangtze River basin. Education locations are highly consistent, with clusters of global high-level educational resources at home and abroad, and their workplaces are mainly distributed in economically developed cities. (2) In terms of network characteristics, the spatial heterogeneity of the growth of Chinese scientists is obvious. Only a few cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, have higher degrees of node centrality, strength centrality, and betweenness centrality, so their networks’ hierarchical structures are pyramid-shaped and their core-periphery structures are prominent. By identifying the roles of the cities as network nodes, we found that only Beijing plays accomplished and stable roles, whereas other cities play a single role. (3) Regarding driving mechanisms, Chinese scientists’ spatial migration has been influenced by national policy, regional economic level, education level, and individual traits at national, regional, and personal scales. Therefore, the combined effects of various forces have driven the evolution of the flow network of Chinese scientists.

Understanding High Achievement: The Case for Eminence

The development of the field of sport expertise over the past 20 years has been remarkable, and our understanding of the varying factors affecting athlete development and motor skill acquisition has expanded considerably. Recently, there has been a push toward more sophisticated research designs to continue the advancement of our understanding of sport expertise. Even in a population of performers at the highest levels of performance and competition (e.g., participants in professional sports or those who compete at Olympic Games), there are those with obvious superiority compared to others in the cohort, such as those who win “most valuable player” awards or who are elected to the Hall of Fame. This paper builds a case that athletes who reach this level of achievement possess a more advanced level of skill than those at the elite or expert stage and we refer to this stage of development as “eminence.” This paper explores the notion of eminence and provides converging forms of evidence for the division between expertise and eminence. Moreover, it explores the implications of this division for the further examination of skill acquisition across the lifespan.

Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?

We examine how the premature death of eminent life scientists alters the vitality of their fields. While the flow of articles by collaborators into affected fields decreases after the death of a star scientist, the flow of articles by non-collaborators increases markedly. This surge in contributions from outsiders draws upon a different scientific corpus and is disproportionately likely to be highly cited. While outsiders appear reluctant to challenge leadership within a field when the star is alive, the loss of a luminary provides an opportunity for fields to evolve in new directions that advance the frontier of knowledge within them.

Human Factor in Food Label Design to Support Consumer Healthcare and Safety: A Systematic Literature Review

Labels play a strategic role in communication, representing the interface between consumers and the food system. Consumers’ ability to correctly understand product label information was essential for health and safety, making a sustainable choice, as also demonstrated by the Federal Regulations of USA, which define several guidelines to increase the readability of labels. Human Factor studies the interface design in order to assure users’ safety, comfort, and productiveness. So, it could be applied in label design to enhance consumers’ safeguard and healthcare. The aim of this study is to analyze the fields of application of the Human Factor in label design to evaluate the current methods of utilization in the food industry. A two-step literature review was applied, using bibliometric and content analysis. From bibliometric analysis, 6 clusters of themes and the predominance of medical terms arose. The absence of terms related to the food domain is surprising. So, a content analysis on lead papers’ sample related to the Food Industry was carried out to identify evidence about the human factor in food label design. From content analysis, 2 groups of works’ results, focused on the possibility to consider the human factor in: i) pharmaceutical label design, ii) food label design, respectively. The studies in food label design primarily focused on label readability related to content positioning and not on its understandability. The practical implications of the study include the construction of a new concept of label in terms of contents and communication channels.

The impact of Chinese library and information science on outside disciplines: A citation analysis

This paper uses citation analysis to measure the intellectual impact of Chinese library and information science on outside disciplines. It analyses 469 journals in disciplines outside the library and information science field containing citations to 20 Chinese library and information science journals from 1996 to 2015. It shows that Chinese library and information science mainly receives citations from related disciplines, such as business and management, communication, and computer science, and that the majority of library and information science articles are rarely cited. The library and information science subjects of bibliometrics, information technology and knowledge management are most likely to be cited.

Birth of prominent scientists

This paper analyzes the influence key scientists have in the development of a science and technology system. In particular, this work appraises the influence that star scientists have on the productivity and impact of young faculty, as well as on the likelihood that these young researchers become a leading personality in science. Our analysis confirms previous results that eminent scientist have a prime role in the development of a scientific system, especially within the context of an emerging economy like Mexico. In particular, in terms of productivity and visibility, this work shows that between 1984 and 2001 the elite group of physicists in Mexico (approximate 10% of all scientists working in physics and its related fields) published 42% of all publications, received 50% of all citations and bred 18% to 26% of new entrants. In addition our work shows that scientists that enter the system by the hand of a highly productive researcher increased their productivity on average by 28% and the ones that did it by the hand of a highly visible scientist received on average 141% more citations, vis-à-vis scholars that did not published their first manuscripts with an eminent scientist. Furthermore, scholars that enter the system by the hand of a highly productive researcher were on average 2.5 more likely to also become a star.

The preferences of Chinese LIS journal articles in citing works outside the discipline

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how Chinese library and information science (LIS) journal articles cite works from outside the discipline (WOD) to identify the impact of knowledge import from outside the discipline on LIS development.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper explores the Chinese LIS’ preferences in citing WOD by employing bibliometrics and machine learning techniques.

Findings

Chinese LIS citations to WOD account for 29.69 percent of all citations, and they rise over time. Computer science, education and communication are the most frequently cited disciplines. Under the categorization of Biglan model, Chinese LIS prefers to cite WOD from soft science, applied science or nonlife science. In terms of community affiliation, the cited authors are mostly from the academic community, but rarely from the practice community. Mass media has always been a citation source that is hard to ignore. There is a strong interest of Chinese LIS in citing emerging topics.

Practical implications

This paper can be implemented in the reformulation of Chinese LIS knowledge system, the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration, the development of LIS library collection and faculty advancement. It may also be used as a reference to develop strategies for the global LIS.

Originality/value

This paper fills the research gap in analyzing citations to WOD from Chinese LIS articles and their impacts on LIS, and recommends that Chinese LIS should emphasize on knowledge both on technology and people as well as knowledge from the practice community, cooperate with partners from other fields, thus to produce knowledge meeting the demands from library and information practice as well as users.

Differences between requested and cited literature in a group of dairy research scientists

The citation habits of a group of scientists working in dairy research arc compared with the literature the group has requested. The analysed characteristics lead to the con clusion that the scientitsts able to choose their references from a large quantity of literature broadly scattered in sub jects and countries, select their citations according to their personal criteria.

Research Evaluation and the Generation of Big Science Policy

The quantitative evaluation of science, now in its second generation, has become a policy-oriented specialty. Second-generation bibliometrics, as represented by several new approaches, has transformed the analysis of publication and citation data into a sophisticated tool for comprehending the complexity of the scientific enterprise and for addressing practical issues on the national and world science policy agenda. By developing quantitative measures of research performance, second-generation bibliometrics has improved the scope and relevance of science output indicators and, to a lesser degree, indicators of the institutional structures that mediate science and society. These improved output measures are essential components of social impact of science (SIS) indicators, which represent in quantitative terms the conjunction of science indicators derived from second-generation bibliometrics and available social indicators.

A review of bibliometric and other science indicators and their role in research evaluation

Recent reductions in research budgets have led to the need for greater selectivity in resource allocation. Measures of past performance are still among the most promising means of deciding between competing interests. Bibliometry, the mea surement of scientific publications and of their impact on the scientific community, assessed by the citations they attract, provides a portfolio of indicators that can be combined to give a useful picture of recent research activity. In this state-of-the- art review the various methodologies that have been developed are outlined in terms of their strengths, weaknesses and par ticular applications. The present limitations of science indica tors in research evaluation are considered and some future directions for developments in techniques are suggested.

The false ‘Ortega Hypothesis’: a literature science case study

The well-known anti-elitist ‘Ortega Hypothesis’ published just over 30 years ago in Science was constructed and named by two science sociologists, and refuted by themselves on the basis of a quantitative author ‘citation analysis’ investigation carried out in the physics literature. Textual evidence presented here proves that the construction of this so-called ‘Ortega Hypothesis’ with its anti-elitist meaning was based on falsification of the quoted text and misinterpretation of the doctrine of the eminent elitist Spanish philosopher. This anti-elitist, and hence anti-Ortega, false hypothesis spread very widely in the scientific literature as the ‘Ortega Hypothesis’. The literatures of numerous disciplines have so far accepted this falsely constructed hypothesis: the fact of the falsity of the ‘Ortega Hypothesis’ has not even arisen in the debates about it and under its name. Analysis of the literature case of the false ‘Ortega Hypothesis’ has also thrown light on the current depressing state of referencing practice in the scientific literature. Scientific communications of doubtful and even false content have continued to appear and their world-wide dissemination has accelerated. For this reason, correction work in science is more important than ever.

Size, Accumulation and Performance for Research Grants: Examining the Role of Size for Centres of Excellence

The present paper examines the relation between size, accumulation and performance for research grants, where we examine the relation between grant size for Centres of Excellence (CoE) funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) and various ex post research performance measures, including impact and shares of highly cited articles. We examine both the relation between size and performance and also how performance for CoEs evolves over the course of grant periods. In terms of dynamics, it appears that performance over the grant period (i.e. 10 years) is falling for the largest CoEs, while it is increasing for those among the smallest half. Overall, multivariate econometric analysis finds evidence that performance is increasing in grant size and over time. In both cases, the relation appears to be non-linear, suggesting that there is a point at which performance peaks. The CoEs have also been very successful in securing additional funding, which can be viewed as a ‘cumulative effect’ of center grants. In terms of new personnel, the far majority of additional funding is spent on early career researchers, hence, this accumulation would appear to have a ‘generational’ dimension, allowing for scientific expertise to be passed on to an increasing number of younger researchers.