Mike Dalgety
IRLS 589, Spring 2003
May 7, 2003
Annals of the
Association of American Geographers
Note to Dr. Coleman: I give permission for my final project to be made available through the LIS Learning Showcase web server.
PART I
Introduction: The
Journal
The Annals of the Association of American Geographers is recognized as the Association of American Geographers’ premier journal for major research articles and in-depth book reviews for all fields of geography. Although the periodical is a print publication, information regarding the Annals may also be found online at the official website of the Association of American Geographers (www.aag.org). There is general information pertaining to the journal and submission procedures at the Association’s website, but no parts of actual journal issues. Full text of each journal issue from each of the first 87 volumes (1911-97) is freely available at www.jstor.org. Abstracts are available for more recent issues via a multitude of databases, including some articles in full text.
According to a statement found on the Association’s website, the journal aims to “publish original, timely, and innovative articles that advance knowledge in all facets of the discipline. Five section editors are responsible for articles in each of four major areas: Environmental Sciences, Methods, Models, and Geographic Information Science.”
The Annals is published for the Association of American Geographers by Blackwell Publishers, with offices at 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK. Nine editors (Basil Gomez, Michael Goodchild, Roger Kasperson, Audrey Kobayashi, John Paul Jones, III, Peter O. Muller, Dennis Fitzsimons, Amy Jo Woodruff, and Megan Nortrup) are listed on the journal’s staff, while a total of 47 individuals comprise the editorial board.
The Annals was first published in 1911. It has experienced no major changes in title. The journal has been published quarterly in March, June, September, and December since its 13th volume in 1923. The first 12 volumes (1911-22) were published annually.
University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA, has printed versions of volumes 51-65 and 75 (1961-75 and 1985). The University also has volumes 66-77 (1976-87) available on microfiche from Johnson Associates. None of the issues listed as being available are currently checked out. Periodicals such as the Annals may only be checked out by faculty and staff at the University of the Pacific.
Ordering information for back issues and issues available on microfilm is contained within the publication information of the Annals.
The Annals of the Association of American Geographers publishes editorials, articles, forum pieces, book reviews, presidential addresses, commentary pieces, memorials, and map supplements. The period of 1993 through 1997 was selected in order to determine the frequency of each document type, the most cited authors, the mean and median number of references per document type for a single issue (Vol. 87, No. 4), the impact factor, and the immediacy index. Each issue of the journal for the period 1993-97 was examined to determine the frequency of each document type and the most cited authors. The December 1997 issue (Vol. 87, No. 4) was utilized to calculate the mean and median number of references per document type for a single issue of the journal. Finally, the impact factor and immediacy index were located for 1997 using the ISI Journal Citation Reports.
Based on the 1993-97 time period and the single issue selected (Vol. 87, No. 4), the following results were observed:
1993: 28 articles, 55 book reviews, 1 presidential address, 9 commentaries, 1 memorial
1994: 1 editorial, 24 articles, 6 forum pieces, 76 book reviews, 1 presidential address, 8 commentaries, 3 memorials
1995: 25 articles, 77 book reviews, 1 presidential address, 4 commentaries, 4 memorials, 1 map supplement
1996: 1 editorial, 28 articles, 74 book reviews, 1 presidential address, 1 memorial
1997: 1 editorial, 24 articles, 7 forum pieces, 67 book reviews, 1 presidential address, 4 commentaries, 1 memorial
John Paul Jones, III, Andrew Sluyter, Lakshman Yapa, John C. Hudson, Wilbur Zelinsky, David H. Kaplan, Karl S. Zimmerer, and Denis Cosgrove were the most cited authors in the Annals from 1993-97. Cosgrove published four documents in the journal, including one research article. Each of the other most cited authors published three documents. Two of Kaplan’s three documents were research articles. Sluyter, Yapa, Zelinsky, and Zimmerer had one research article each. Hudson and Jones did not publish a research article.
Mean and Median Number of References Per Document Type (Vol. 87, No. 4)
In examining the December 1997 issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Vol. 87, No. 4), the following represent the mean and median number of references per document type in the issue:
Presidential Addresses: Mean = 21, Median = 21. There was only one presidential address in the issue.
Articles: Mean = 96.6, Median = 106. There were five research articles in the issue.
Commentaries: Mean = 23.5, Median = 24. There were four commentaries in the issue.
Memorials: There were no references cited in the issue’s lone memorial.
Book Reviews: Mean = 0.9, Median = 0. Though there were 15 book reviews in the issue, 10 contained no cited references.
The impact factor for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers for 1997, the final year of the time period of the analysis, was 1.379. The immediacy index of the journal for the same time period was 0.320. Impact factor and immediacy index were located via the ISI Journal Citation Reports.
Impact factor, the measurement of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year, helps to evaluate a journal’s relative importance, especially when compared to others in the same field. With an impact factor of 1.379 for 1997, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers ranked seventh among geography-related journals based on impact factor in the ISI Journal Citation Reports. Immediacy index, the measurement of how quickly the average article in a journal is cited, discloses how often articles published in a journal are cited within the same year. With an immediacy index of 0.320 for 1997, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers ranked fourth among geography-related journals based on immediacy index in the ISI Journal Citation Reports. Based on the impact factor and immediacy index measures for the Annals for 1997, and the comparison of those values versus the values of other geography-related journals, it can be concluded that the Annals of the Association of American Geographers was one of the more productive journals in the field during the time period in question.
PART II
Michael F. Goodchild is the Chair of the Department of Geography at UC Santa Barbara and Editor for Methods, Models, and Geographic Information Sciences for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. He has served as a member of the editorial staff for the Annals since 2000. Goodchild’s research interests include urban and economic geography, geographic information systems, and spatial analysis. His website may be located at http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~good.
An active researcher in the field of geographic information science, much can be learned about Goodchild’s researching endeavors and citation style by examining his citation identity, citation set, and citation image. Citation identity is defined by White as, “the set of all authors whom an author cites,” (White, 2001, p. 87). An author’s citation set is the number of publications citing the author. Finally, an author’s citation image is the number of authors co-cited with the author.
All three citation analysis tools may be accessed via ISI Dialog. For Goodchild, the subject of this particular bibliometric profile, the following list generated by Dialog comprises his citation identity (authors cited by Goodchild):
RANK No. Items Term
-------- ----- ----
1 17 GOODCHILD MF
2 8 BURROUGH PA
3 7 MARK DM
4 6 FISHER PF
5 4 HEUVELINK GBM
6 3 ABLER RF
7 3 BATTY M
8 3 HUNTER GJ
9 3 MACEACHREN AM
10 3 MALING DH
11 3 MANDELBROT BB
12 3 USGS
13 2 ANGEL S
14 2 ANSELIN L
15 2 ARMSTRONG MP
16 2 BROWN SR
17 2 CHURCH RL
18 2 CLARKE KC
19 2 CLIFF AD
20 2 COUCLELIS H
21 2 CULLING WEH
22 2 DUTTON G
23 2 EGENHOFER MJ
24 2 EHLSCHLAEGER CR
25 2 FRANK AU
26 2 GATRELL AC
27 2 GETIS A
28 2 GILBERT LE
29 2 GOODCHILD M
30 2 KLINKENBERG B
31 2 MANDELBROT B
32 2 NRC
33 2 NYERGES TL
34 2 PEUQUET DJ
35 2 ROY A
36 2 SAMET H
37 2 THEOBALD DM
38 2 TOBLER WR
39 2 VEREGIN H
40 1 268 others
As is common, Goodchild cited himself most frequently. Aside from self-citation, Goodchild’s citation identity does not rely heavily on either unicitations (authors cited only once) or substantial recitations (authors cited at least twice).
Goodchild cited Peter A. Burrough most frequently with eight citations. Thirty-eight other authors were cited between two and seven times, and a total of 268 authors were cited just once. Based on White’s analysis, Goodchild’s citation identity could be described as adhering to literature-review style. Whereas White describes scientific-paper style authors as reciting heavily within a core group and bibliographic-essay style authors as relying heavily on scattered unicitations, Goodchild seems to do both at once (White, 2001).
The number generated by Dialog when I entered the command to determine Goodchild’s citation set (?S CA=GOODCHILD MF) was 520. A large number, Goodchild’s citation set forms the set of all publications in ISI-covered journals (articles, notes, letters, etc.) that include Goodchild as a cited author (except for items that cite him differently, such as with a different name). Such a substantial citation set demonstrates the significant and active researching role Goodchild has played in the field of geographic information science.
White defines citation image as, “the set of all authors with whom one has been cocited,” (White, 2001, p. 88). As mentioned by White, an author will always be the top-ranked figure in his or her image set. Such is the case with Goodchild. The remainder of Goodchild’s citation image list is much too lengthy to include in this forum. Burrough once again was the next-highest on the list after self-citation was taken into account. Burrough was co-cited with Goodchild on 155 occasions. Following Burrough, there was significant drop-off to D.M. Mark’s 70 co-cites with Goodchild. A total of 36 authors were co-cited with Goodchild at least 20 times.
Though Burrough was the top figure on both Goodchild’s citation identity and citation image lists (following self-citation), such an occurrence is not always the case. According to White, identity and image lists commonly contain duplicate names and works, but generally have different frequencies in the rankings (White, 2001). The fact that Burrough is most commonly cited by Goodchild (citation identity) and most commonly co-cited with Goodchild (citation image) indicates that the pair is engaged in relatively related research.
What is interesting about the frequency with which Burrough has been cited by Goodchild and co-cited with Goodchild is the fact that Burrough is an international scholar. The Director of the Utrecht Centre for Environment and Landscape Dynamics (UCEL) at Utrecht University in Belgium, Burrough is engaged in research similar to Goodchild, such as the development of mathematical and computer tools for modeling dynamic spatial processes in natural and human-affected landscapes. After this examination, it is clear how the pair shares a common research interest. However, it would be interesting to further explore this connection between two scholars separated by thousands of miles.
Though ISI Dialog creates a basic picture of an author’s citation identity, citation set, and citation image, there are a number of limitations to ISI coverage. For example, ISI databases draw citations only from a set of several thousand carefully selected journals, the coverage for certain databases is limited to a short time frame, and the entry of author names can be complicated if a single author is listed with multiple names. If authors publish items in journals outside the set contained by ISI databases, those references will not be a readily retrievable part of that author’s citation identity. The coverage of certain databases, such as the coverage of information science literature, dates back to a limited time frame. Thus, reference lists from items by authors published earlier are not included in resulting citation identities. In terms of the entry of author names, many difficulties may be countered via the use of detailed search terms. For example, a search pertaining to Goodchild could be entered as AU=GOODCHILD MF OR AU=GOODCHILD M. In addition, names may be disambiguated further by the use of corporate sources (White, 2001).
Taking the limitations of ISI coverage into consideration, an author’s citation identity, citation set, and citation image, as determined via ISI Dialog, paints a general sketch of an author’s citation style and research tendencies. One must keep in mind, however, that such a general sketch does not constitute a definitive portrayal.
REFERENCES
(PART II)
White, H. D. (2001). Authors as citers over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52 (2), 87-108.
PART III
ISI citation indexes listed a number of keywords for each of the five research articles published in the December 1997 issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Vol. 87, No. 4). Following are the five article titles, the authors, and the keywords provided for each of the articles:
“Environmental Degradation in Heilongjiang: Policy Reform and Agrarian Dynamics in China’s New Hybrid Economy,” Joshua S.S. Muldavin, pp. 579-613. Keywords: China, Heilongjiang, environment, agriculture, peasants, rural reforms, political ecology, market socialism.
“Historical Land-Cover Changes and Hydrogeomorphic Adjustment in a Small Georgia Watershed,” Francis J. Magilligan and Melissa L. Stamp, pp. 614-635. Keywords: hydrogeomorphic, modeling, land-use changes, revegetation, watershed.
“Contradictory Modernities: Conceptions of Nature in the Art of Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter,” Matthew Gandy, pp. 636-659. Keywords: nature, landscape, aesthetics, modernity, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter.
“The Place of Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting an American Scene,” Richard H. Schein, pp. 660-680. Keywords: American cultural landscape, interpretation, social life.
“The Digital Individual and the Private Realm,” Michael R. Curry, pp. 681-699. Keywords: geographic information systems, geodemographics, privacy, surveillance, law, technological change.
Though there was a lack of clearly repeated subject keywords, general subjects such as environment, agriculture, nature, landscape, and social issues seemed to be similar and consistently found within a number of the articles. These subjects appear best to fit a discipline such as geographic information science since they do not directly apply to the use or application of a tool to some problem or area of study. They are more general disciplinary concepts.
Jones provided an underlying definition for a geographic information system as, “a system of hardware and software that allows for the input, management, analysis, and presentation of geographic information,” (Jones, 2002, p. 169). Of the five listed articles, Curry’s triggered keywords such as geographic information systems, geodemographics, and technological change. Thus, Curry’s article, “The Digital Individual and the Private Realm,” may be most suited of the five to be classified as relating to a geographic information system. The keywords present for the remaining articles appear to relate more closely to the general discipline of geographic information science.
REFERENCES
(PART III)
Jones, F. W. (2002). An introduction to geographic information systems. In C. F. Thomas (Ed.), Libraries, the Internet, and Scholarship: Tools and Trends Converging (pp. 169-189). New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc.
PART IV
Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed an increased prevalence of electronic communication, and in particular, of the Internet. Digital libraries, vast databases, and a multitude of other networked computerized resources have extended and, in some cases, replaced traditional print media. This emerging trend of the web serving as an online global library has necessitated the study of communicational patterns resulting in the new media. Where current bibliometric methods prove to be useful in gaining a general understanding of patterns of scholarly communication in the printed world, so too may webometrics hold the potential for general bibliometric analysis on the web.
Boudourides, Sigrist, and Alevizos (1999) defined bibliometrics as, “the quantitative study of patterns in written communication as in books, journals and other printed material.” The field of bibliometrics was initiated in the 1960s by the pioneering work of Derek de Solla Price, Maurice Goldsmith, and Eugene Garfield. Boudourides et al. (1999) described the common source of data for such analysis to be the Science Citation Index (SCI) and the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), both of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
Koehler distinguished between four groups of bibliometricians: “(1) those that focus on citation analysis for individuals, institutions, countries, disciplines, and sometimes a single work; (2) those that focus on co-citation analysis to map individuals, countries, idea migration, or schools of thought; (3) those that focus on productivity and impact analysis of individuals, institutions, and countries; and (4) those concerned with the book, the article, the patent, and other ‘knowledge products,’” (Koehler, 2001, p. 120).
Koehler (2001) undertook a bibliometric study consistent with the fourth group of bibliometricians, analyzing a journal (the Journal of the American Society for Information Science), issues of the journal, and articles published in the journal. Koehler’s stated goal was, “to document changes in authorship, citation patterns, funding and funding sources, and related bibliometric phenomena,” (Koehler, 2001, p. 120). By employing such a bibliometric study, Koehler was successful in gaining an understanding of some patterns of scholarly communication in the discipline of information science. For example, Koehler found that research leading to articles published in JASIS has not historically been funded by outside agencies, the number of co-authored articles and the number of co-authors per article have been increasing across the history of the Journal, the Journal has increased the number of issues per volume over the years in order to increase article flow, and the Journal has become more global in character. Based on the findings of Koehler’s study, it is evident that the employment of bibliometric methods can help one to gain an understanding of patterns of scholarly communication in a chosen field.
Koehler’s study examined just one group of his classification of bibliometricians. There are, naturally, examples of bibliometric studies consistent with other groups of bibliometricians. White (2001) focused on citation and co-citation analysis in order to gain insight into authors’ citing styles and, thus, spark additional revelations concerning patterns of scholarly communication. Additionally, as part of the first assignment for this course, we were asked to examine productivity and impact values for an individual journal in the discipline of geographic information science.
Boudourides, Sigrist, and Alevizos (1999) stated that citation analysis (citation patterns or citation behavior) allows individuals, “to derive maps of the structure of scientific specialties or disciplines and helps construct typologies of different varieties of references and citations by content analysis.” There is no question that such bibliometric inquiry into citation style can aid in the understanding of patterns of scholarly communication by examining the process of continued scholarly pursuits.
White (2001), in a citation analysis of his own, explored the tendency of authors to recite themselves and others in multiple works over time. By determining citation identity and citation image figures for eight authors via ISI Dialog, White was able to distinguish authors based on differing citing styles including “scientific-paper style,” “bibliographic-essay style,” and “literature-review style.” The determination of such citing styles, however, proved to be just the tip of the iceberg. White further examined relationships between citers and citees and presented incredibly detailed analysis of patterns of scholarly communication based upon such thorough citation exploration.
Naturally, there are certain limitations to the usefulness of bibliometric methods. White (2001) pointed out that ISI is limited to citations from a set of several thousand carefully selected journals. Authors who publish items in journals outside the set of selected journals will not have their references readily retrievable as part of their citation identity. Certain ISI databases, such as for coverage of information science literature, is also limited to restricted time frames. Thus, reference lists from articles by authors published earlier are not incorporated in such citation identities. Differing forms of name usage may also impact one’s efforts to retrieve accurate citation identity and citation image figures. This obstacle may usually be countered by the utilization of more detailed search terms, but stands as a limitation nonetheless. Even with limitations of ISI coverage and other bibliometric methods in general, bibliometric methods continue to stand as a useful tool by which patterns of scholarly communication in a chosen discipline may be studied.
Meanwhile, it is apparent that the expansion of electronic publishing is bound to continue. Fjallbrant (1997) stated that traditional publication costs have risen sharply within the last decade, whereas computing and communication costs have decreased. Thus, there are a number of alternatives for electronic publication. Authors may pursue electronic publishing via some form of transportable memory such as an optical disk (CD-ROM) or make full text (with or without graphics and audio) available online. Scholars presently have access to global networks from their workstations and personal computers. Current networks continue to increase in speed and capacity. The trend is unquestionable. What, though, is the potential of webometrics for analysis on the web?
Boudourides, Sigrist, and Alevizos (1999) refer to webometrics as “bibliometrics on the web.” Webometrics consequently refers to the quantitative studies of electronic communication realized by the highly linked web.
Boudourides, Sigrist, and Alevizos (1999) described the use of traditional bibliometric or informetric (not limited to media or scientific communication) methods, “as a starting point for analysis on the web as generally conceivable for any kind of statistical aspects (language, word, phrase frequencies), characteristics of authors, their productivity and the degree of their collaboration, as well as citation analysis for the distribution over authors, institutions, and for the measure of growth of a subject or a database, and concomitant growth of new concepts, definition and measurement of information and types and characteristics of retrieval performance measures.” Thus, in order to analyze the web, the tools and techniques developed for the analysis of intellect structure in traditional forms would be first employed to make the transition to a network-based environment.
Such a use of traditional tools and techniques applied to the new digital environment is not unexpected and provides certain promise. After all, even though the network-based environment presents certain challenges not encountered traditionally, digital libraries still do serve the main functions of traditional libraries, namely providing collections of materials and services such as searching, browsing, etc. Thus, traditional bibliometric methods applied to the emerging digital environment (webometrics) present certain potential for web analysis.
Fjallbrant (1997) explored a number of the problems associated with electronic publishing, problems that may as well be associated with future webometric methodologies. Fjallbrant touched on standardization, user resistance to change, network access, copyright issues, and the risk for plagiarism. Each of the pitfalls presented holds the potential to impede the process of webometric methodology. For example, the lack of a standard format for electronic publication could create great difficulties in one’s efforts to accurately conduct a webometric citation analysis such as the traditional citation analysis conducted by White (2001).
Despite the pitfalls present in current bibliometric methods and bibliometric methods applied to the web (webometrics), current bibliometric methods have proven to be useful in gaining an understanding of patterns of scholarly communication in a chosen discipline and applied webometric methods hold the current and future potential to do so.
REFERENCES
(PART IV)
Boudourides, M. A., Sigrist, B., & Alevizos, P. D. (1999). Webometrics and the Self-Organization of the European Information Society [On-line]. Available: http://hyperion.math.upatras.gr/webometrics.
Fjallbrant, N. (1997). Scholarly Communication: Historical Development and New Possibilities [On-line]. Available: http://educate.lib.chalmers.se/IATUL/proceedcontents/fullpaper/nfpaper.html.
Koehler, W. (2001). Information science as “Little Science”: The implications of a bibliometric analysis of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Scientometrics, 51 (1), 117-132.
White, H. D. (2001). Authors as citers over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52 (2), 87-108.