Part 1:

Bibliometric Analysis of Remote Sensing of Environment

Abstract

Remote Sensing of Environment is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, English-language journal focusing on Earth terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric remote sensing topics. This paper examines the scholarly nature and productivity of the journal in a number of ways. The journal's publishing record in terms of documents published, most cited authors, citivity (cited references), impact factors, and immediacy indices are examined.

Introduction to Journal

Remote Sensing of Environment (ISSN: 0034-4257) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, English-language journal focusing on Earth terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric remote sensing topics.¹ The publisher, Elsevier B.V., lists its target audience as, "Researchers in agriculture, ecology, environment, forestry, geography, geology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography and remote sensing."² The current editor-in-chief is M. E. Bauer, the associate editor for oceanographic remote sensing is W. Gregg, and the other 24 editorial board members are employed at 20 other respected universities, governmental agencies, and other institutions located in the United States, Canada, Australia, and France.³

A comparison of print and electronic issue content indicated that all print issue content, except Volume 1, is available in electronic issues. The full-text of electronic articles is offered in three formats including PDF, HTML, and "SummaryPlus" (limited HTML full-text including citation, abstract, outline, figures and tables text, thumbnails of illustrations, and references). Links to some electronic content, including "Instructions to the Authors," "Help," and "Search Tips," did not work properly.

The ScienceDirect® journal Web site includes additional journal content and functionality not found in the print issues. Beginning with the November 30, 2003, issue, authors have the option of requesting that illustrations printed in black and white in the print journal be published in color in the electronic journal.⁴ (Authors are charged for including color illustrations in the print, but not the electronic, version of the journal.)⁵ Additional features of the electronic journal are listed below:

• an individually customizable profile including tracking of "My Favorite Journals,"
• an alert service for notification of new issue postings,
• a "Quick Search" feature allowing searching within the journal, within all ScienceDirect journals, or within all ScienceDirect full-text resources, and
• "Articles in Press, accepted, peer-reviewed articles that are either uncorrected proofs still to be edited by the authors or corrected proofs that usually are unchanged except for minor corrections and the addition of page numbers.

Remote Sensing of Environment is unique among journal titles in that it has had no changes in title over its entire 35-year publishing history.⁶ The publishing frequency of the journal, however, has varied considerably over time. A detailed study of the frequency (see Table 1 below) indicates there has been a nearly steady growth in the number of issues published, as well as a doubling in the mean number of pages published per issue.

Contents

Productivity Analysis

The scholarly nature of the journal, Remote Sensing of Environment, may be evaluated in a number of ways. The remainder of this paper reviews the journal's publishing record in terms of documents published, most cited authors, citivity (cited references), impact factors, and immediacy indices.

Document Types

As Table 2 below indicates, nearly all documents (95 to 99 percent) published in Remote Sensing of Environment in the last five years have been research articles.⁸ A small number of editorial materials, letters, corrections or errata, and review articles also have been published during this time period. Items such as prefaces to articles, editorials introducing and commenting upon special issue topics, comments, and responses to comments are included in the editorial material category. The letter category includes both letters and the responses to those letters.

Contents

Most Cited Authors

Two articles published in Remote Sensing of Environment tied for the most cited article in the five-year period spanning 1999 to 2003. These two articles were both cited a total of 63 times as of March 6, 2004, making their 11 authors the most five plus cited authors in the past five years. The authors of these two articles are listed in Table 3 below with statistics regarding their publication history in Remote Sensing of Environment.⁹

Five of the authors, or approximately 50 percent, went on to publish additional articles in the journal. One can surmise that these authors have a certain level of confidence that articles published in the journal will be read by a sufficient number of other researchers. Since most articles published in this journal are research articles, it is not surprising to see that the additional published articles were nearly all research articles.

If one examines data for the top five most cited articles (see Table 4 below), it is still apparent that approximately 50 percent of the authors went on to publish additional articles in Remote Sensing of Environment. Even the lead authors, who are presumably more experienced in their fields and probably more prolific authors, follow this publishing pattern; only half went on to publish additional articles in the journal. The number of additional journal articles published varies from one to fourteen. Since most articles published in this journal are research articles, it is not surprising to see that the additional published articles also tended to be research articles (only two out of 72 were not).

Contents

Citivity

To determine the citivity per document type, the September 15, 2003 (Volume 87, Issue 1), issue of Remote Sensing of Environment was selected for study. A total of nine documents, all of them research articles, was published in this issue. Table 5 below provides the number of cited references listed in Science Citation Index for each article.¹⁰ The number of cited references ranges from a low of 20 to a high of 68. The mean number of references for the articles published in the September 15, 2003, issue is 42.44, while the median number of references is 37. These numbers seem to indicate that authors of Remote Sensing of Environment research articles are researching their topics more thoroughly and then basing their own research upon the work of a number of other researchers. One would expect this leads to higher quality research and subsequently, higher quality articles.

Contents

Impact Factor and Immediacy Index

The impact factor for Remote Sensing of Environment as listed in the most recent Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Science Edition (2002) is 1.992, while the immediacy index is 0.799.¹¹ The data included in Table 6 below shows that except for 1997, the impact factor of Remote Sensing of Environment has steadily risen in the last six years. The immediacy index for the journal also has risen every year during that same time period. The impact factor indicates the average number of articles cited from Remote Sensing of Environment is increasing, and the immediacy index shows that citations are occurring more quickly after an article's publication than ever before.

Table 7 below displays data regarding how the impact factors and the immediacy index for Remote Sensing of Environment compare with other journals appearing in the same JCR Science Edition subject categories (Environmental Sciences, Imaging Science & Photographic Technology, and Remote Sensing). The first number indicates the ranking of Remote Sensing of Environment for each category, while the second number following the slash indicates the total number of journals assigned to that category.

Remote Sensing of Environment impact factors were in the top 6 to 17 percent of journals (mean: 12 percent; median; 12 percent) assigned to the broader subject category, Environmental Sciences. The journal's immediacy indexes ranked in the top 2 to 29 percent of journals (mean: 16 percent; median; 17 percent) assigned to the broader subject category, Environmental Sciences. For the other two more specific subject categories, the journal has the highest or second highest impact factor and immediacy index of all the journals assigned to those categories during the entire six year period.

Contents

Conclusion

Remote Sensing of Environment appears to be a reputable journal devoted to quality scholarly publishing. It is directed by a diverse editorial staff and also demonstrates these productive characteristics:

• Nearly all documents (95 to 99 percent) published in the last five years have been original, peer-reviewed research articles. The number of errata published was quite low, indicating careful writing and editing practices are observed.
• Approximately 50 percent of the journal's noted authors choose to publish additional articles in the journal, indicating they have confidence in the journal.
• Articles published in the journal include a sizable number of references (mean: 42.44; median: 37). This indicates that authors have researched their topics more thoroughly and are more likely to publish higher quality research articles.
• The journal has the highest or second highest impact factor and immediacy index of all journals publishing in its specific subject categories in the last six years.
• The journal's impact factor and immediacy factor compare well with other journals in the broad field of environmental sciences.

Contents

References

¹Elsevier. (2004). Remote Sensing of Environment: Online Submissions, Retrieved March 6, 2004, from http://authors.elsevier.com/JournalDetail.html?PubID=505733&Precis=&popup=)

²Elsevier. (2004). Remote Sensing of Environment: Online Submissions. Retrieved March 6, 2004, from http://authors.elsevier.com/JournalDetail.html?PubID=505733&Precis=&popup=)

³Elsevier. (2004). Remote Sensing of Environment: Editorial Board. Retrieved March 11, 2004, from http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaleditorialboard.cws_home/505733/editorialboard

⁴Elsevier. (2003). Publisher's note. Remote Sensing of Environment, 88(1-2), iii.

⁵Elsevier. (2004). Information for Authors. Remote Sensing of Environment, 89(1), back cover verso.

⁶OCLC. (2004). WorldCat. Retrieved February 19, 2004, from http://oboler.isu.edu:2048/login?url=http://firstsearch.oclc.org/fsip/

⁷R.R. Bowker. (2004). Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory. Retrieved February 19, 2004, from http://www.library.arizona.edu/indexes/links/ulrichs.shtm

⁸Thomson ISI. (2004). Science Citation Index. Retrieved February 28, 2004, and May 5, 2004, from http://www.library.arizona.edu/indexes/links/sciencecitationindex.shtml

⁹Thomson ISI. (2004). Science Citation Index. Retrieved March 6, 2004, from http://www.library.arizona.edu/indexes/links/sciencecitationindex.shtml

¹⁰Thomson ISI. (2004). Science Citation Index. Retrieved February 28, 2004, from http://www.library.arizona.edu/indexes/links/sciencecitationindex.shtml

¹¹Thomson ISI. (2002). Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Science Edition. Retrieved March 8, 2004, from http://www.library.arizona.edu/indexes/links/jcr.shtml

Part 2:

Bibliometric Profile of S. W. Running

Introduction

Steven W. Running. was born on April 18, 1950, and currently lives in Missoula, Montana.¹ He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Botany in 1972 and a Master of Science degree in Forest Management in 1973, both from Oregon State University in Corvallis. He received his Ph.D. in Forest Ecophysiology from Colorado State University in 1979.²

Dr. Running is a Professor of Ecology in the Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Science, which is part of the College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana. He also serves as Director of Numerical Terradynamics Simulation Group there. His research interests include global climate change and forest ecophysiology, and his Associate Team Member currently is Ramakrishna Nemani.³

In addition, Dr. Running also has worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) since 1981 and is currently a meber of the MODIS Science Team.⁴ MODIS is the "Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer" designed to track global evapotranspiration and photosynthesis from Terra and Aqua, two NASA research satellites circling the Earth.⁵ Dr. Running's team developed the software that runs MODIS.⁶

A search of Thomson ISI's Web of Science reveals that Dr. Running has been a prolific writer, as well as researcher. A total of 258 unique items written by Dr. Running were cited by other authors a total of 21,299 times.⁷ The remainder of this biibliometric profile will focus on various aspects of Dr. Running's written research record.

Some limitations to this study include:

• Dr. Running publishes in a scientific field where it is not uncommon that several researchers write an article together. As White (2001) points out, this model of authorship is less useful in recitation analysis.⁸
• Synchronic recitation (when every citation of an item is included, even if the citations occurred more than once in a singlewriting product)is studied here of necessity, due to the limitations of Web of Science and the restricted time limitations under which this study was conducted.
• Web of Science does not include data regarding all items published by Dr. Running, so important information may be missing in this study.
• Citation counts should be considered approximate as authors' names are not normalized in Web of Science, and incorrect data is included.

Authors Cited

A search for all articles authored by Steven W. Running was conducted in Web of Science and the authors cited information downloaded into a word processing document for analysis. An effort was made to normalize variant authors' names in order to obtain more accurate results According to Web of Science, S. Dr. Running cited a total of 6.482 references in his articles. Of those, 311 (4.8% of total) were citations to articles written by himself. This is a relatively low percentage of the total references cited.

Table 1 lists Dr. Running's "citation identity" (phrase coined by White, 2001, p. 88) or the authors cited at least 20 times by S. W. Running.⁹ One can assume that Dr. Running respects the work of these authors and uses their work to form the basis of his own writings. Rankings from Table 2 have been included (second column from left) to highlight the overlap between the authors that Dr. Running cites and the authors who cite his writings.

Because of my unfamiliarity with Dr. Running's field of study, I am unable to comment upon the specific authors listed and their expertise. Cursory examination of the data does seem to reveal that Dr. Running does not favor a handful of authors, as the number of citations seems to spread out evenly except for the top three authors (himself, his current Associate Team Member, and one other author. Because of this citation pattern, White (2001, p. 95) might categorize Dr. Running's citation style as being more of a "literature review."¹⁰

Authors Citing

A search for all articles that cited Steven W. Running was conducted in Web of Science and the author information downloaded from 21,299 citations into a word processing document for analysis. An effort was made to normalize variant authors' names in order to obtain more accurate results. Table 2 below presents the list of authors in ranked order who cited Dr. Running's writings. Not surprisingly, Dr. Running's name appears at the top of the list of "citation image-makers" (phrase coined by White, 2001, p. 620), followed by his current Associate Team Member.¹¹ Rankings from Table 1 have been included (second column from left) to highlight the overlap between the authors that Dr. Running cites and the authors who cite his writings. Because of my unfamiliarity with Dr. Running's field of study, I am unable to comment upon the specific authors listed and their expertise.

Authors Co-Cited

In the same search for all articles that cited Steven W. Running mentioned above, all co-cited author information (300,000+ names) was downloaded into word processing documents and spreadsheets for analysis. An effort was made to normalize variant authors' names in order to obtain more accurate results.

Table 3 lists Dr. Running's "citation image" (term coined by White, 2001, p. 620) or the top 50 authors most frequently co-cited with S. W. Running.¹² Although White chooses to include the author himself in citation images, I have deliberately chosen to exclude the author. This seemed logical, because the very definition of a "citation image" is the other authors who are cited in the same articles in which the chosen author was cited.

One would assume that the co-cited authors publish articles on similar topics, but determining this would be time-cosuming considering the number of articles cited. That assumption may be supported by the fact that many of the co-cited authors already appeared in Tables 1 and 2 above. This is also simply a snapshot of Dr. Running's citation image at this point in time that may change as his and other's research interests change

Conclusion

An examination of Dr. Running's citation identity, citation image-makers, and citation image reveals that he cites a variety of authors and a variety of authors cite his work. A large number of authors are co-cited with him; a subject analysis, beyond the scope and alloted time for this study, would ascertain to what extent these authors share common research interests with Dr. Running. It should be noted that the citation identity and citation image discussed here is limited by the accuracy of the data and may change over time.

Referen\ces

¹University of Montana, Missoula. (2000). NASA satellite running UM software functioning well. Retrieved May 9, 2004, fromhttp://www.umt.edu/urelations/releases/2000/default.asp?section=Satgood

²University of Montana, Missoul. (n.d.). Steven W. Running. Retrieved May 9, 2004, from http://www.forestry.umt.edu/personnel/faculty/swr/

³University of Montana, Missoul. (n.d.). Steven W. Running. Retrieved May 9, 2004, from http://www.forestry.umt.edu/personnel/faculty/swr/⁴text

⁴Earth observation mission, Terra, to monitor planet's health. (1999, December 15). ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 9, 2004, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/12/991214155913.htm

⁶Herring, D. (2003). NASA satellite measures Earth's carbon metabolism. Retrieved May 9, 2004, from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-04/nsfc-nsm042303.php

⁶University of Montana, Missoula. (2000). NASA satellite running UM software functioning well. Retrieved May 9, 2004, from http://www.umt.edu/urelations/releases/2000/default.asp?section=Satgood

⁷Thomson ISI. (2004). Web of Science . Retrieved May 5, 2004, from http://www.library.arizona.edu/indexes/links/sciencecitationindex.shtml

⁸White, H. D. (2001). Authors as citers over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52, 87-108.

⁹White, H. D. (2001). Authors as citers over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52, 87-108.

¹⁰White, H. D. (2001). Authors as citers over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52, 87-108.

¹¹White, H. D. (2001). Author-centered bibliometrics through CAMEOs: Characterizations automatically made and edited online. Scientometrics, 51, 607-637.

¹²White, H. D. (2001). Author-centered bibliometrics through CAMEOs: Characterizations automatically made and edited online. Scientometrics, 51, 607-637.

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Part 3:

Examination of Subject Keywords Assigned to

Remote Sensing of Environment Articles

Assigned Keywords

In order to compare subject keywords assigned to Remote Sensing of Environment articles, the nine research articles published in the September 15, 2003 (Volume 87, Issue 1), issue were examined. Three sources of subject keywords gathered included author-assigned keywords, BIOSIS descriptors, and Science Citation Index keywords.^{1, 2} Although the Ulrich's Periodical Directory indicates that Remote Sensing of Environment is indexed by many resources, many of the more readily-available indexes only perform selective indexing. Unfortunately the nine specific articles described in Table 16 were not included in that selective indexing.³

The author-assigned keywords are easy to locate as they are listed below the abstract printed on the first page of each article. Authors generally seem to chose main words or concepts from the article titles to serve as their keywords.

BIOSIS includes several descriptor fields including "Chemicals and Biochemicals;" "Geopolitical Location;" "Major Concepts;" "Methods and Equipment;" and "Miscellaneous Descriptors". "Major Concepts" and "Miscellaneous Descriptors" are the two types of descriptors that seem to be assigned to every article, regardless of its topic. Other BIOSIS descriptors are not be appropriate for specific topics. Most BIOSIS descriptors tend to be quite long, very descriptive phrases.

Finally, there are two types of subject keywords listed in Science Citation Index for each of the nine articles. The "Keywords" are simply the author-assigned keywords printed below the abstract on the first page of the article. The "KeywordsPlus" are additional keywords assigned by Science Citation Index staff and are included in Table 5 below. The "KeywordsPlus" found in Science Citation Index seem to focus on the major topics covered in the articles, and far fewer subject terms are provided than those found in BIOSIS.

Table 1 below summarizes the types and quantity of subject keywords that form the basis for this examination.

A complete, alphabetized list of subject keywords is included in Table 2 below. Keywords highlighted in light blue in Table 7 appear to be simple variations of the same term, so the data for those terms was combined for the purposes of this examination.