The emergence of China in international academic management research: A nuanced analysis following the new f²-methodology

In a few decades, China has made a huge rise in science, exemplified with an impressive expansion of academic publications. The management field has traditionally been dominated by the US universities and Anglo-Saxon researchers. The objective of the present study is to analyze through the application of a new bibliometric methodology whether the progress of Chinese universities in academic management research is in line with China’s overall progress in science. The classic analysis of volume productivity and citation count is complemented with the recent f²-methodology. It is based on a more fine-grained classification of publications into categories of citations, focusing on the 10%-percentile and the h-core. The methodology is applied here at a country level and at the level of the university, for all publications and for those of the last 5 years. The results confirm the rise of academic publications by Chinese management scholars, but the analysis of publication outlets and the international collaborations nuance this progress. The US dominance in academic management research is maintained; despite a decline in relative terms, the US publication volume and the higher citations remain in absolute terms. This application of the f²-methodology with weighted factors in function of impact brings nuances to first level bibliometric analyses based on volume productivity or on total citations. This nuanced analysis results in fairer assessments and more equitable rankings. The application of the compound F²-index illustrates the dynamics in bibliometrics.

Research on Covid-19: a disruptive phenomenon for bibliometrics

The Covid-19 pandemic has been the highest disruptive event in the world recent history. Worldwide academic research on this topic has led to an explosion of scientific literature, never seen before. Bibliometrics provide methods to illustrate this exceptional phenomenon in academic publications. The objective of this paper is to analyze the Covid-19 research from a bibliometric perspective and to study the impact of the publication explosion on bibliometric indicators. The present study shows how an exceptional phenomenon has a disruptive impact on bibliometric indicators, such as the h-index and the Journal Impact Factor. The higher the specialization, the higher the possible impact of a disruptive phenomenon. In applied sciences, more important than the research or the discipline, the specific theme of the research is crucial for citations of articles and for their impact. The salience of the topic, the magnitude of the problem at study and the urgency to find solutions are drivers for citations. The study of the Covid-19 research illustrates the relativity of indicators and the need for context. The present study also confirms the plead for responsible metrics of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).