We compare the network of aggregated journal-journal citation relations provided by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2012 of the Science and Social Science Citation Indexes (SCI and SSCI) with similar data based on Scopus 2012. First, global maps were developed for the two sets separately; sets of documents can then be compared using overlays to both maps. Using fuzzy-string matching and ISSN numbers, we were able to match 10,524 journal names between the two sets; that is, 96.4% of the 10,936 journals contained in JCR or 51.2% of the 20,554 journals covered by Scopus. Network analysis was then pursued on the set of journals shared between the two databases and the two sets of unique journals. Citations among the shared journals are more comprehensively covered in JCR than Scopus, so the network in JCR is denser and more connected than in Scopus. The ranking of shared journals in terms of indegree (that is, numbers of citing journals) or total citations is similar in both databases overall (Spearman's \r{ho} > 0.97), but some individual journals rank very differently. Journals that are unique to Scopus seem to be less important--they are citing shared journals rather than bein
The internationalization characteristics of two Malaysian journals, Bulletin of the Malaysian Mathematical Sciences Society (indexed by ISI) and the Malaysian Journal of Computer Science (indexed by Inspec and Scopus) is observed. All issues for the years 2000 to 2007 were looked at to obtain the following information, (i) total articles published between 2000 and 2007; (ii) the distribution of foreign and Malaysian authors publishing in the journals; (iii) the distribution of articles by country and (iv) the geographical distribution of authors citing articles published in the journals. Citation to articles is derived from information given by Google scholar. The results indicate that both journals exhibit average internationalization characteristics as they are current in their publications but with between 19% -30% international composition of reviewers or editorials, publish between 36%-79% of foreign articles and receive between 60%-70% of citations from foreign authors.
An exploratory, descriptive analysis is presented of the national orientation of scientific, scholarly journals as reflected in the affiliations of publishing or citing authors. It calculates for journals covered in Scopus an Index of National Orientation (INO), and analyses the distribution of INO values across disciplines and countries, and the correlation between INO values and journal impact factors. The study did not find solid evidence that journal impact factors are good measures of journal internationality in terms of the geographical distribution of publishing or citing authors, as the relationship between a journal's national orientation and its citation impact is found to be inverse U-shaped. In addition, journals publishing in English are not necessarily internationally oriented in terms of the affiliations of publishing or citing authors; in social sciences and humanities also USA has their nationally oriented literatures. The paper examines the extent to which nationally oriented journals entering Scopus in earlier years, have become in recent years more international. It is found that in the study set about 40 per cent of such journals does reveal traces of internati
The journal structure in the China Scientific and Technical Papers and Citations Database (CSTPCD) is analysed from three perspectives: the database level, the specialty level and the institutional level (i.e., university journals versus journals issued by the Chinese Academy of Sciences). The results are compared with those for (Chinese) journals included in the Science Citation Index. The frequency of journal-journal citation relations in the CSTPCD is an order of magnitude lower than in the SCI. Chinese journals, especially high-quality journals, prefer to cite international journals rather than domestic ones. However, Chinese journals do not get an equivalent reception from their international counterparts. The international visibility of Chinese journals is low, but varies among fields of science. Journals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have a better reception in the international scientific community than university journals.
The Journal Citation Reports of the Science Citation Index 2004 were used to delineate a core set of nanotechnology journals and a nanotechnology-relevant set. In comparison with 2003, the core set has grown and the relevant set has decreased. This suggests a higher degree of codification in the field of nanotechnology: the field has become more focused in terms of citation practices. Using the citing patterns among journals at the aggregate level, a core group of ten nanotechnology journals in the vector space can be delineated on the criterion of betweenness centrality. National contributions to this core group of journals are evaluated for the years 2003, 2004, and 2005. Additionally, the specific class of nanotechnology patents in the database of the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) is analyzed to determine if non-patent literature references can be used as a source for the delineation of the knowledge base in terms of scientific journals. The references are primarily to general science journals and letters, and therefore not specific enough for the purpose of delineating a journal set.
This Journal of Informetrics special issue aims to improve our understanding of the structure and dynamics of science by reviewing and advancing existing conceptualizations and models of scholarly activity. Several of these conceptualizations and models have visual manifestations supporting the combination and comparison of theories and approaches developed in different disciplines of science. Subsequently, we discuss challenges towards a theoretically grounded and practically useful science of science and provide a brief chronological review of relevant work. Then, we exemplarily present three conceptualizations of science that attempt to provide frameworks for the comparison and combination of existing approaches, theories, laws, and measurements. Finally, we discuss the contributions of and interlinkages among the eight papers included in this issue. Each paper makes a unique contribution towards conceptualizations and models of science and roots this contribution in a review and comparison with existing work.
This study examines the social media uptake of scientific journals on two different platforms - X and WeChat - by comparing the adoption of X among journals indexed in the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) with the adoption of WeChat among journals indexed in the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD). The findings reveal substantial differences in platform adoption and user engagement, shaped by local contexts. While only 22.7% of SCIE journals maintain an X account, 84.4% of CSCD journals have a WeChat official account. Journals in Life Sciences & Biomedicine lead in uptake on both platforms, whereas those in Technology and Physical Sciences show high WeChat uptake but comparatively lower presence on X. User engagement on both platforms is dominated by low-effort interactions rather than more conversational behaviors. Correlation analyses indicate weak-to-moderate relationships between bibliometric indicators and social media metrics, confirming that online engagement reflects a distinct dimension of journal impact, whether on an international or a local platform. These findings underscore the need for broader social media metric frameworks that incorporate locally dom
This study aims to present a scientometric analysis of the journal titled Cognition for a period of 20 years from 1999 to 2018. The present study was conducted with an aim to provide a summary of research activity in current journal and characterize its most aspects. The research coverage includes the year wise distribution of articles, authors, institutions, countries and citation analysis of the journal. The analysis showed that 2870 papers were published in journal of Cognition from 1999 to 2018. The study identified top 20 prolific authors, institutions and countries of the journal. Researchers from USA have been made the most percentage of contributions.
Single journal studies are reviewed and measures used in the studies are highlighted. The following quantitative measures are used to study 272 articles published in Malaysian Journal of Computer Science, (1) the article productivity of the journal from 1985 to 2007, (2) the observed and expected authorship productivity tested using Lotka's Law of author productivity, identification and listing of core authors; (3) the authorship, co-authorship pattern by authors' country of origin and institutional affiliations; (4) the subject areas of research; (5) the citation analysis of resources referenced as well as the age and half-life of citations; the journals referenced and tested for zonal distribution using Bradford's law of journal scattering; the extent of web citations; and (6) the citations received by articles published in MJCS and impact factor of the journal based on information obtained from Google Scholar, the level of author and journal self-citation.
Ageing of publications, percentage of self-citations, and impact vary from journal to journal within fields of science. The assumption that citation and publication practices are homogenous within specialties and fields of science is invalid. Furthermore, the delineation of fields and among specialties is fuzzy. Institutional units of analysis and persons may move between fields or span different specialties. The match between the citation index and institutional profiles varies among institutional units and nations. The respective matches may heavily affect the representation of the units. Non-ISI journals are increasingly cornered into "transdisciplinary" Mode-2 functions with the exception of specialist journals publishing in languages other than English. An "externally cited impact factor" can be calculated for these journals. The citation impact of non-ISI journals will be demonstrated using Science and Public Policy as the example.
A number of journal classification systems have been developed in bibliometrics since the launch of the Citation Indices by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) in the 1960s. These systems are used to normalize citation counts with respect to field-specific citation patterns. The best known system is the so-called "Web-of-Science Subject Categories" (WCs). In other systems papers are classified by algorithmic solutions. Using the Journal Citation Reports 2014 of the Science Citation Index and the Social Science Citation Index (n of journals = 11,149), we examine options for developing a new system based on journal classifications into subject categories using aggregated journal-journal citation data. Combining routines in VOSviewer and Pajek, a tree-like classification is developed. At each level one can generate a map of science for all the journals subsumed under a category. Nine major fields are distinguished at the top level. Further decomposition of the social sciences is pursued for the sake of example with a focus on journals in information science (LIS) and science studies (STS). The new classification system improves on alternative options by avoiding the problem
Scholarly communication has the scope to transcend the limitations of the physical world through social media extended coverage and shortened information paths. Accordingly, publishers have created profiles for their journals in Twitter to promote their publications and to initiate discussions with public. This paper investigates the Twitter presence of humanities and social sciences (HSS) journal titles obtained from mainstream citation indices, by analysing the interaction and communication patterns. This study utilizes webometric data collection, descriptive analysis, and social network analysis. Findings indicate that the presence of HSS journals in Twitter across disciplines is not yet substantial. Sharing of general websites appears to be the key activity performed by HSS journals in Twitter. Among them, web content from news portals and magazines are highly disseminated. Sharing of research articles and retweeting was not majorly observed. Inter-journal communication is apparent within the same citation index, but it is very minimal with journals from the other index. However, there seems to be an effort to broaden communication beyond the research community, reaching out to
The structural properties of the network generated by the editorial activities of the members of the boards of "Information Science & Library Science" journals are explored through network analysis techniques. The crossed presence of scholars on editorial boards, the phenomenon called interlocking editorship, is considered a proxy of the similarity of editorial policies. The evidences support the idea that this group of journals is better described as a set of only relatively connected subfields. In particular two main subfield are identified, consisting of research oriented journals devoted respectively to LIS and MIS. The links between these two subsets are weak. Around these two subsets there are a lot of (relatively) isolated professional journals or journals characterized more by their subject-matter content than by their focus on information flows. It is possible to suggest that this configuration of the network may be the consequence of the youthfulness of Information Science & Library Science, which has not permitted yet to reach a general consensus through scholars on research aims, methods and instruments.
Overlay journals are characterised by their articles being published on open access repositories, often already starting in their initial preprint form as a prerequisite for submission to the journal prior to initiating the peer-review process. In this study we aimed to identify currently active overlay journals and examine their characteristics. We utilised an explorative web search and contacted key service providers for additional information. The final sample consisted of 34 overlay journals. While the results show that new overlay journals have been actively established within recent years, the current presence of overlay journals remains diminutive compared to the overall number of open access journals. Most overlay journals publish articles in natural sciences, mathematics or computer sciences, and are commonly published by groups of academics rather than formal organisations. They may also rank highly within the traditional journal citation metrics. None of the investigated journals required fees from authors, which is likely related to the cost-effective aspects of the overlay publishing model. Both the growth in adoption of open access preprint repositories and researcher
Using the CD-ROM version of the Science Citation Index 2010 (N = 3,705 journals), we study the (combined) effects of (i) fractional counting on the impact factor (IF) and (ii) transformation of the skewed citation distributions into a distribution of 100 percentiles and six percentile rank classes (top-1%, top-5%, etc.). Do these approaches lead to field-normalized impact measures for journals? In addition to the two-year IF (IF2), we consider the five-year IF (IF5), the respective numerators of these IFs, and the number of Total Cites, counted both as integers and fractionally. These various indicators are tested against the hypothesis that the classification of journals into 11 broad fields by PatentBoard/National Science Foundation provides statistically significant between-field effects. Using fractional counting the between-field variance is reduced by 91.7% in the case of IF5, and by 79.2% in the case of IF2. However, the differences in citation counts are not significantly affected by fractional counting. These results accord with previous studies, but the longer citation window of a fractionally counted IF5 can lead to significant improvement in the normalization across fie
This paper investigates the Twitter interaction patterns of journals from the Science Citation Index (SCI) of Master Journal List (MJL). A total of 953,253 tweets extracted from 857 journal accounts, were analyzed in this study. Findings indicate that SCI journals interacted more with each other but much less with journals from other citation indices. The network structure of the communication graph resembled a tight crowd network, with Nature journals playing a major part. Information sources such as news portals and scientific organizations were mentioned more in tweets, than academic journal Twitter accounts. Journals with high journal impact factors (JIFs) were found to be prominent hubs in the communication graph. Differences were found between the Twitter usage of SCI journals with Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) journals.
Using "Analyze Results" at the Web of Science, one can directly generate overlays onto global journal maps of science. The maps are based on the 10,000+ journals contained in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of the Science and Social Science Citation Indices (2011). The disciplinary diversity of the retrieval is measured in terms of Rao-Stirling's "quadratic entropy." Since this indicator of interdisciplinarity is normalized between zero and one, the interdisciplinarity can be compared among document sets and across years, cited or citing. The colors used for the overlays are based on Blondel et al.'s (2008) community-finding algorithms operating on the relations journals included in JCRs. The results can be exported from VOSViewer with different options such as proportional labels, heat maps, or cluster density maps. The maps can also be web-started and/or animated (e.g., using PowerPoint). The "citing" dimension of the aggregated journal-journal citation matrix was found to provide a more comprehensive description than the matrix based on the cited archive. The relations between local and global maps and their different functions in studying the sciences in terms of journal lit
This paper explores, by using suitable quantitative techniques, to what extent the intellectual proximity among scholarly journals is also a proximity in terms of social communities gathered around the journals. Three fields are considered: statistics, economics and information and library sciences. Co-citation networks (CC) represent the intellectual proximity among journals. The academic communities around the journals are represented by considering the networks of journals generated by authors writing in more than one journal (interlocking authorship: IA), and the networks generated by scholars sitting in the editorial board of more than one journal (interlocking editorship: IE). For comparing the whole structure of the networks, the dissimilarity matrices are considered. The CC, IE and IA networks appear to be correlated for the three fields. The strongest correlations is between CC and IA for the three fields. Lower and similar correlations are obtained for CC and IE, and for IE and IA. The CC, IE and IA networks are then partitioned in communities. Information and library sciences is the field where communities are more easily detectable, while the most difficult field is eco
Using the referencing patterns in articles in Cognitive Science over three decades, we analyze the knowledge base of this literature in terms of its changing disciplinary composition. Three periods are distinguished: (1) construction of the interdisciplinary space in the 1980s; (2) development of an interdisciplinary orientation in the 1990s; (3) reintegration into "cognitive psychology" in the 2000s. The fluidity and fuzziness of the interdisciplinary delineations in the different visualizations can be reduced and clarified using factor analysis. We also explore newly available routines ("CorText") to analyze this development in terms of "tubes" using an alluvial map, and compare the results with an animation (using "visone"). The historical specificity of this development can be compared with the development of "artificial intelligence" into an integrated specialty during this same period. "Interdisciplinarity" should be defined differently at the level of journals and of specialties.
The aggregated journal-journal citation matrix derived from the Journal Citation Reports 2001 can be decomposed into a unique subject classification by using the graph-analytical algorithm of bi-connected components. This technique was recently incorporated in software tools for social network analysis. The matrix can be assessed in terms of its decomposability using articulation points which indicate overlap between the components. The articulation points of this set did not exhibit a next-order network of 'general science' journals. However, the clusters differ in size and in terms of the internal density of their relations. A full classification of the journals is provided in an Appendix. The clusters can also be extracted and mapped for the visualization.