I
give permission for my final project to be made available through the LIS Learning
Showcase web server
Ron Bryant
This paper provides a basic bibliometric
study utilizing the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Science Citation
Index and the International Journal of Remote Sensing. One of the authors, AC De Vries, is then
used as a personal bibliometric profile.
A critical evaluation of bibliometric methods and the future potential
of webmetrics for analysis are then discussed.
Introduction
Bibliometrics provide measurements that are useful when studying scholarly communication. A major tool that is utilized in this process is citation analysis. Citation analysis provides an insight into the communication within a discipline of a field of study. This insight is made up of scientists, researchers, academic collaborators, and information professionals throughout the world. There are worldwide networks or groups that are known as “invisible colleges” which communicate via today’s modern, technical devices such as the Internet. These usually consist of small communities of researchers who communicate informally on a regular basis (Borgman, 2000).
In The Web of Scientometrics, Schubert (2002) shows the relationships of invisible colleges around the world. Although most of these communities are made up of scholars from familiar leaders such as the United States, England, Germany, Russia, France, and India, smaller countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Hungary are also competitive. Another aspect that helps these smaller or lesser-known scholarly countries within their fields of study is co-authorship or collaboration within Scientometrics.
The International Journal of Remote Sensing is the official journal of the Remote Sensing Society. The “journal is concerned with the science and technology of remote sensing and the applications of remotely sensed data in all major disciplines. Principle topics are: data collection, analysis, interpretation and display; surveying from space, air and water platforms; sensors; image processing; use of remotely sensed data;” etc. (Aims and Scope, Homepage: www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tf/0143116.1html). After reading several articles and abstracts, was deduced that the journal uses images and data that are taken at distance, whether earthbound or from Earth’s orbit. There are articles that range from forest fires in Korea to lakes under the polar ice caps.
The journal started publication in 1980 and is still being published under its original title. I was pleased to find that the University of Arizona library lists in holdings all years of publication under call# G70.4 .I56 at the main library. I do not imagine that the journal circulates, especially given its cost. The status is “IN LIBRARY.” Additionally, the journal is available as an electronic publication through the UA e-journals database starting with volume 18 (1997) through volume 24 (2003). According to the bibliographic record, publication is quarterly or at least started that way, as the journal looks to be published twice a month according to the e-journals site.
The publication is from the United Kingdom and lists editors from the Division of Electronic Engineering and Physics, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK. The journal homepage lists the journal as being published 24 issues per year at an online subscription cost of Institutional: US$3983/L~2415.
Scholars submitting articles to the journal were from all over the world. The website also listed a “Scholarly Articles Research Alerting” option, also known as SARA. The publisher, Taylor & Francis, “publishes over 750 academic peer-reviewed journals across a variety of disciplines…SARA is a service designed to deliver by email, tables of contents for any issues of ” certain scholarly publishers, free of charge to anyone who requests the information (SARA, http://tandf.co.uk/sara/sara.html).
Document Types:
When a search by each document search limit was performed, these are the documents that were listed: articles, biographical item, correction, correction-addition, editorial, material item about an individual, letter, note, and review. As far as the frequency of the document type, it was overwhelmingly articles. There were a couple of the other items spread in over many issues.
Cited Authors (Productivity)
Author – Top 5 cited
Year Author Docs published Research articles
1998 De Vries 3 3
1999 Rao 3 3
2000 Hansen 2 2
2001 Sathyendranath 2 2
2002 Schlapfer 1 1
Citivity
Most current issue listed – 24(1), Jan. 10, 2003. This issue contained 17 articles. There were only cited references for such a new publication, which I didn’t think of until I was a few articles into the issue and noticed all zeros as far as times cited.
The figures are as follows: 1, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 12, 13, 14, 14, 17, 26, 26, 30, 31, 49
Median: 13 Mean: 16.412
I then decided to do some more research, since the issue I started with was so current and did not provide a realistic productivity analysis of previous years, volumes, or issues. I sampled the first five items from 1997 and 1993. These too were all articles, although there were other document items listed later. It would be best to compare all articles anyway, since this was the predominant majority.
1997, v.18, issue 17:
Cited Ref Times Cited
15 0
30 5
50 5
4 1
9 4
Median = 30 Mean = 19.2 Median = 4 Mean = 3
1993, v. 14, issue 16:
Cited Ref Times Cited
0 0
16 8
25 4
5 3
36 3
Median = 16 Mean = 16.6 Median = 3 Mean = 3.6
The International Journal of Remote Sensing cited articles far more than the publication was cited. I believe these numbers prove that this would have been about consistent given whatever year calculated. I will expound more on what these numbers may infer during my conclusions.
Subjects - keywords
Smoke, identification, resolution, tropics, Brazil, cover, vegetation, classification, imagery, texture, GIS, temperature, satellite, area, surface, model, climate, population, forest, patterns, rates, land sat, eruption, lava flow, water depth, sea, circulation, region.
JCR
(Journal Citation Reports) for IJRS
Impact factor = 0.827
Immediacy index = 0.123
As was stated in the introduction, and shown by the productivity analysis,
The material in this publication is very technical. I first received a glimpse of this when I printed the Journal Summary List from the JCR. The journal had the one of the lowest impact factors on both pages containing the “Citing Journal” and the “Cited Journal.” The first page of “Citing Journal” listed journals 1-20 of 478 and “Cited Journal” listed journals 1-20 of 199.
Journals such as Nature (27.955) and Science (23.329) had the highest impact factors. Peer review once again has its say. But does this really mean that the International Journal of Remote Sensing was less important that higher impact journals? I don’t think so. I’m sure as far as subject matter; it’s an industry standard within its field. However, if one wants to have his or her work recognized or cited, it would be better in just about any other GIS publication.
For this author within The International Journal of Remote Sensing (IJRS), the years 1997-2003 were used. This was done for several reasons. First of all, it gives a better view of the overall bibliometric analysis to use several years, as long as it is not too unmanageable. And this is such an esoteric journal, with authors overwhelmingly citing and providing a citation identity, rather than being cited, it took several years being included to give some feedback as to a citation identity, set and image.
Although White (2000) states that authors tend to “recite themselves and others in multiple works over time, using the insights gained to build citation theory,” this is not too evident in IJRS. And if there is the “core-and-scatter” distribution of names in identities as explaining the principle of least effort, this journal kept it to a minimum. However, it was discovered that De Vries cited and was cited by an author that he co-authored with on several occasions within the Netherlands.
There was also an example of a homonym for CA De Vries. This is the same name for different individuals. Out of the seven articles, it was determined that three of them could be eliminated as not belonging to the De Vries that was being researched. This was mainly because the other author’s articles brought up medical keywords such as spleen, abdominal, and groin pain; all of which have nothing to do with remote sensing and the main keywords that the intended CA De Vries uses, such as sensing, topography, water, etc. As to allonyms, or alternate names for the same person, the journal or author didn’t seem to be so prolific as to cause a problem in this area.
Out of the resultant four articles, De Vries showed no signs of synchronic recitation, or citing an author more than once in the same work. There was evidence of diachronic recitation, citing the work of the same author in works published at different times, seven times. Furthermore, self-citation occurred only once. Interestingly enough, the authors that De Vries cites and cite him come from the Netherlands. This is one of the countries that Schubert lists as an important, smaller country in Scientometrics. The Netherlands does seem to have a found a niche when it comes to IJRS. Table 1 lists the citation identity, which is the set of authors that an author cites.
Table 1
De Vries’ citation identity
Article References Cited Times Cited Self-citation Co-authors
1 28 0 0 5
2 37 1 0 12
3 31 1 1 2
4 8 8 0 2
Table 2 lists the top names that make up the citation identity of De Vries. In this table there are three names in italics. These names represent patterns that are developing in the overall citation analysis of De Vries. This includes the self-citation and other names that appear in the citation set and image. It starts to become obvious that there are certain colleagues or collaborators that De Vries is in contact with in scholarly communication.
Table 2
3 Kuba T
3 Kustas WP
3 Wieringa J
2 Van Loosdrecht MCM
2 Raupach MR
2 Mason PJ
2 Taylor PA
2 Claussen M
2 Erisman JW
2 Tillmans HAC
2 Vansteenkiste F
1 De Vries CA
78 All others
Findings in relation to White (2000):
1. There is scatter than core. Even though this seems to be a limited field, there seems to be plenty of different resources to choose from. Conversely, after analyzing the results, there is a core group of authors.
2. This agrees in that the identity is highly individualized. There is not a small, core group of authors or overlapping names.
3.
It was not researched in great detail as to authors being
from different specialties. De Vries is
with the Department of Water Resources & Planning in Rotterdam,
Netherlands. Van Loosdrecht is with the
Department of Biochemical Engineering in BC Delft, Netherlands. But looking at
the cited works under each article, there are journal titles such as Remote
Sensing Environment, Journal of Atmospheric Science, Journal of Geophysical
Resources, etc. These seem to be
related specialties.
4.
De Vries does cite certain authors, but this is not
excessive. When one finds a good source
and agree with it, one will probably cite it more than once.
5.
Since those cited were mainly from the Netherlands, it can
be deduced that there is a fairly strong social network in place. Furthermore, some of these names are
probably “big names” in the geographical region.
Table 3 lists a brief citation set or listing of authors citing De Vries. He was cited 10 times. The names suggest that the cites are still coming from authors residing in the Netherlands. Van Loosdrecht MCM is listed again. Klassen W will return within De Vries citation image.
Table 3
Top names in citation set of De Vries
3 van Loosdrecht MCM
2 Meijer SCF
2 Heijnen JJ
1
Klassen W
All of De Vries articles are co-authored. One of the articles lists 12 co-authors. Of the four articles, De Vries name is listed first once. It was not determined, and perhaps cannot be determined, if where an author’s name appears within the list of co-authors determines the author’s importance or magnitude of contribution to the article. Maybe the first person listed instigated the project or was in charge of organizing the research? Table 4 presents De Vries citation image with several familiar names listed.
Table 4
Top names in citation image of De Vries
2
Klassen W
2 Kustas WP
1 van Loosdrecht MCM
1 Richie JC
1 Menenti M
1 Rango A
1 Prueger JH
In
Conclusion
AC De Vries does exhibit the “core-and-scatter” distribution that White alludes to. He is also certainly a part of an “invisible college” of small community researchers that communicate informally on a regular basis. Social networks, or ties of personal acquaintanceship among authors are therefore very relevant in this journal and country. There is reflected a knowledge of fellow scholars and their works within this field in a smaller country. Being able to utilize the technology of today and inexpensive communications, this makes even more sense. As White (2000) proposes, “Many citers depend heavily on their own past work and that of known colleagues because that is what immediately comes to mind when they compose.” Anyway, “the citation of members of one’s invisible college is hardly surprising, moreover, because such groups owe their very being to the shared subject interest of creative people…Invisible-college ties affect knowledge of the pool of items to be cited; they do not determine the act itself.”
Subject keywords
There are so many different keywords in the International Journal of Remote Sensing that it is difficult to find which are cited most. Words such as sensing, atmosphere, climate, make up this area. Do these subject keywords fit a discipline such as Geographic Information Science (GIS)? Jones (2002) states that, “Information systems not only retrieve data, but also combine data with services or actions that allow a user to see trends or patterns in the data. A GIS, therefore, should be an information system that, more than other types of information systems, manages geographically based data.” The most basic GIS has the tools for processing graphics and data. The literature that was read and is available within IJRS all supports this.
Final Evaluation
Citation analysis is now used extensively within scholarly communication. Whether it can always cite productivity or bestow prestige are other lesser concerns. “Today, citation analysis is used extensively to measure the impact and quality of scientific work as well as the intellectual influence of scientist and scholars. It is also used as a tool to describe social and intellectual networks, and as a measure of individual achievement” (Cole, 2002, p. 281). Citation analysis or bibliometrics can show scholarly networks and lead researchers to related material available worldwide that they may never have had the opportunity to find. These citations can also give credence to scholars’ work and their careers, depending on whom they cite and who cites them. As was shown in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), journals can be shown to have an impact in various fields of study.
The bibliometric approach may not be the best way to measure productivity in all fields of study. But it does seem to work very well in scientific fields such as applied science, medicine, and applied science. (van Raan, 2002). “These fields of science are the most cost-intensive and the ones with the strongest socio-economic impact. The most central question we want to answer is whether general performance is high or low, and when speaking about scientific excellence, very high. We need measure to identify and assess extraordinary performance, particularly when there are signs that expert-based judgment alone may not be able to provide this crucial assessment” (p. 304).
This makes bibliometric assessment imperative. It ensures that scientists are able to publish papers and have accessibility to other important papers that their findings are based upon. Van Raan goes on to state, “The core of our bibliometric approach can be described as follows. Communication, i.e., exchange results, is a crucial aspect of scientific endeavor. Publications are not the only, but certainly very important, elements in this knowledge exchange process. Work of high quality provokes reaction from colleague-scientists. They are the international forum, the “invisible college,” by which research results are discussed. In most cases, the colleague-scientists play their role as members of the invisible college by referring in their own work to the earlier work of other scientists.”
There are many opportunities open now that weren’t available before for information professionals in library science for a number of reasons. However, because of improvements in research time, cost, and communications among disciplines, library science has been expanding to meet the needs of not only their field, but others. Yes, the business-field mantra of “doing more with less” has also been a reason for some of the enforced changes. But these changes, on the whole have been for the betterment of all. “Academics rarely isolate themselves within one discipline anymore, as they come to appreciate the benefits of interdisciplinary exchanges and collaborations. Their channels of communication now include conversations with one another via listservs, more traditional forms of publication (although the shift to electronic journals is dramatic in many disciplines), access to bodies of research data online, and collaborative projects where multiple scholars contribute to online sites. The incorporation of multimedia and hypertextuality permits a depth of interaction and connections never before possible among academic disciplines. Furthermore, the increased speed of communication provides a more immediate exchange of ideas” (Meszaros, 2002, p. 36).
What about the area of Information Science as a discipline? Can this be considered a “real” science? One would hope so since much of this course on scholarly communication within the School of Information Resources and Library Science devoted a majority of the time to scientific indexes. Is this a “big science” or a “little science,” or somewhere in between? Perhaps it is the information professionals within libraries who are supposed to be tasked with being able to do all things for all disciplines that will determine the difference. Personally, I see Library Science as a social science, and thus a little science. This is not to say that the possibility of it being or become a “big science” in other specialized areas or libraries is out of the question. I’m not sure I agree with Koehler in that information science was little science because single individuals or small teams performed its research and required little funding. Inevitably, I envision information science being a part of all disciplines by utilizing new technologies.
Information science is becoming just as big as any other science when it comes to the increasing number of co-authored papers. These are papers where the authors may or may not share the same field of study, but have perhaps found interests in each others work through the invisible college. For example, in the last 50 years of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, “the single authored paper was most common (about 62%), followed by papers with two authors (about 26%), three authors (about 8%), and four or more (about 4%). The percent of articles published in the Journal with a single author has declined from more than 80% in the 1950’s to almost half in the 1990’s. Articles with two co-authors tripled from about 10% to about 30% and articles with three or more authors doubled from about 10% to 20%” (Koehler, 2001, p. 122).
Publication by information scientists has also increased just as in other traditional scientific disciplines. Where journals may have started quarterly or every other month, publication became monthly or bi-weekly. In the case of JASIS, it “experienced growth both in the number of issues per volume but also in the number of articles per volume. JASIS added special and perspectives articles to its publication of regular research articles” (p. 123). This is more evidence of information science becoming a big science. Possibly gone are the days of libraries and librarians specializing in public access or technical services. The career can no longer survive with people in just these services or its occupants only earning MLS’s. This is a field that has switched from generalist to specialist, and now perhaps both. Having a second advanced degree is starting to become the norm, even in libraries that are not traditionally academic. Librarians are not limited to reference, circulation, cataloging, etc.
The article goes on to state that, “For the Journal’s first three decades, library scientists, though an important segment, were not the dominant group. By the 1980’s, library school authors were in a clear plurality. At the same time that there was an increase in library school author participation, there was also a general growth in other academic departments with a research interest in information science” (p. 125). It has helped information science’s case as to a big science by being a large part of the computer information science (CIS) field.
As the advent of the Internet and other digital communications, has similarly impacted other disciplines, information science has become more global and its communications more efficient and cost effective. JASIS has followed this trend and is reflective of the current market. As Koehler concludes, “These are impressive changes but they are not sufficient to demonstrate that information science as a whole has achieved the status of big science. But it is no longer little science. Parts of information science, perhaps elements of computer science may have achieved big science status; while others, perhaps library science, are still little science. The field as a whole is in transition” (p. 130).
Koehler states the obvious, but as was discussed earlier in this paper, there must be a reason why a class of library school graduate students would be presented with so much material on science indexes and science itself. There is the feeling that this class of scholarly communication is at least an attempt at big science. Why else spend time analyzing a GIS journal on remote sensing within library science curriculum?
The future of webometrics and scholarly communication is virturally unlimited. As future librarians, we have the ability to either be a part of this or be left behind. The same can be said for libraries. Certainly, libraries will be able to keep up if properly funded and used. “Libraries serve to connect people with information. Librarians have a rich history of developing various means of information collection, organization, dissemination, preservation to do just that…the convergence of computing technology and telecommunications technology has given librarians the opportunity to serve information communities in even more vital ways” (Robins, 2002, p. 47.)
Collaboration will continue to grow. Although this was traditionally a very difficult issue to accomplish due to items that have been discussed such as communication tools and scholarly communication along disciplines, everyone will eventually benefit from enhanced collaboration. Perhaps it will be the technology that will now have to keep up with the scholars? There needs to be improvements in software in relation to being able to use it across varying disciplines. There will also be continued improvements not only between collaborating scholars, but also between CIS experts and end-users. Or in relation to the field of library science, improved communication between librarian and patron. Robins points this out in his discussion of disintermediation. “There is movement toward designing systems that will reduce the need for staff who assist end users of information systems. Increasingly, users expect to be able to access information quickly and easily, without the need of human assistance. Therefore, systems that support novice end-user behaviours and collaborative work are needed” (p. 67).
Whatever the outcome of webometrics, bibliometrics, or scholarly communication, libraries will continue to grow within communication technology and information systems whether the information is printed or digital. What is important is the role that libraries and librarians will play in bringing this all together.
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