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
Rankings of scholarly journals based on citation data are often met with skepticism by the scientific community. Part of the skepticism is due to disparity between the common perception of journals' prestige and their ranking based on citation counts. A more serious concern is the inappropriate use of journal rankings to evaluate the scientific influence of authors. This paper focuses on analysis of the table of cross-citations among a selection of Statistics journals. Data are collected from the Web of Science database published by Thomson Reuters. Our results suggest that modelling the exchange of citations between journals is useful to highlight the most prestigious journals, but also that journal citation data are characterized by considerable heterogeneity, which needs to be properly summarized. Inferential conclusions require care in order to avoid potential over-interpretation of insignificant differences between journal ratings. Comparison with published ratings of institutions from the UK's Research Assessment Exercise shows strong correlation at aggregate level between assessed research quality and journal citation `export scores' within the discipline of Statistics.
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
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
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
Using the Scopus dataset (1996-2007) a grand matrix of aggregated journal-journal citations was constructed. This matrix can be compared in terms of the network structures with the matrix contained in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI). Since the Scopus database contains a larger number of journals and covers also the humanities, one would expect richer maps. However, the matrix is in this case sparser than in the case of the ISI data. This is due to (i) the larger number of journals covered by Scopus and (ii) the historical record of citations older than ten years contained in the ISI database. When the data is highly structured, as in the case of large journals, the maps are comparable, although one may have to vary a threshold (because of the differences in densities). In the case of interdisciplinary journals and journals in the social sciences and humanities, the new database does not add a lot to what is possible with the ISI databases.
Using three years of the Journal Citation Reports (2011, 2012, and 2013), indicators of transitions in 2012 (between 2011 and 2013) are studied using methodologies based on entropy statistics. Changes can be indicated at the level of journals using the margin totals of entropy production along the row or column vectors, but also at the level of links among journals by importing the transition matrices into network analysis and visualization programs (and using community-finding algorithms). Seventy-four journals are flagged in terms of discontinuous changes in their citations; but 3,114 journals are involved in "hot" links. Most of these links are embedded in a main component; 78 clusters (containing 172 journals) are flagged as potential "hot spots" emerging at the network level. An additional finding is that PLoS ONE introduced a new communication dynamics into the database. The limitations of the methodology are elaborated using an example. The results of the study indicate where developments in the citation dynamics can be considered as significantly unexpected. This can be used as heuristic information; but what a "hot spot" in terms of the entropy statistics of aggregated cit
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
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 introduces the Unique Citing Documents Journal Impact Factor(Uniq-JIF) as a supplement to the traditional Journal Impact Factor(JIF). The Uniq-JIF counts each citing document only once, aiming to reduce the effects of citation manipulations. Analysis of 2023 Journal Citation Reports data shows that for most journals, the Uniq-JIF is less than 20% lower than the JIF, though some journals show a drop of over 75%. The Uniq-JIF also highlights significant reductions for journals suppressed due to citation issues, indicating its effectiveness in identifying problematic journals. The Uniq-JIF offers a more nuanced view of a journal's influence and can help reveal journals needing further scrutiny.
Using Scopus data, we construct a global map of science based on aggregated journal-journal citations from 1996-2012 (N of journals = 20,554). This base map enables users to overlay downloads from Scopus interactively. Using a single year (e.g., 2012), results can be compared with mappings based on the Journal Citation Reports at the Web-of-Science (N = 10,936). The Scopus maps are more detailed at both the local and global levels because of their greater coverage, including, for example, the arts and humanities. The base maps can be interactively overlaid with journal distributions in sets downloaded from Scopus, for example, for the purpose of portfolio analysis. Rao-Stirling diversity can be used as a measure of interdisciplinarity in the sets under study. Maps at the global and the local level, however, can be very different because of the different levels of aggregation involved. Two journals, for example, can both belong to the humanities in the global map, but participate in different specialty structures locally. The base map and interactive tools are available online (with instructions) at http://www.leydesdorff.net/scopus_ovl.
Publication patterns of 79 forest scientists awarded major international forestry prizes during 1990-2010 were compared with the journal classification and ranking promoted as part of the 'Excellence in Research for Australia' (ERA) by the Australian Research Council. The data revealed that these scientists exhibited an elite publication performance during the decade before and two decades following their first major award. An analysis of their 1703 articles in 431 journals revealed substantial differences between the journal choices of these elite scientists and the ERA classification and ranking of journals. Implications from these findings are that additional cross-classifications should be added for many journals, and there should be an adjustment to the ranking of several journals relevant to the ERA Field of Research classified as 0705 Forestry Sciences.
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.
Equilibrium and biased MACE accelerated MD simulations in aqueous solutions are performed to investigate the ion capture and transport mechanisms of the {P5W30} Preyssler anion (PA) as the smallest representative member of the extended polyoxometalate (POM) family with an internal cavity. The unique interatomic interactions present in the internal cavity vs. exterior of PA are carefully investigated using equilibrium MACE MD simulations for two representative Na(H2O)@PA and Na@PA complexes. Our careful analyses of radial distribution functions and coordination numbers show that the presence of confined water in Na(H2O)@PA has profound modulating effects on the nature of the interactions of the encapsulated ion with the oxygens of the PA cavity. Using well-converged MACE-accelerated multiple walker well-tempered metadynamics simulations, two different associative and dissociative ion transport mechanisms were carefully investigated for Na+ as one of the most abundant and representative ions present in seawater and saline solutions. By comparing systems with and without confined water, it was found that the presence of only one pre-encapsulated confined water in Na(H2O)@PA dramatical
We introduce a novel methodology for mapping academic institutions based on their journal publication profiles. We believe that journals in which researchers from academic institutions publish their works can be considered as useful identifiers for representing the relationships between these institutions and establishing comparisons. However, when academic journals are used for research output representation, distinctions must be introduced between them, based on their value as institution descriptors. This leads us to the use of journal weights attached to the institution identifiers. Since a journal in which researchers from a large proportion of institutions published their papers may be a bad indicator of similarity between two academic institutions, it seems reasonable to weight it in accordance with how frequently researchers from different institutions published their papers in this journal. Cluster analysis can then be applied to group the academic institutions, and dendrograms can be provided to illustrate groups of institutions following agglomerative hierarchical clustering. In order to test this methodology, we use a sample of Spanish universities as a case study. We f
Predatory journals are Open Access journals of highly questionable scientific quality. Such journals pretend to use peer review for quality assurance, and spam academics with requests for submissions, in order to collect author payments. In recent years predatory journals have received a lot of negative media. While much has been said about the harm that such journals cause to academic publishing in general, an overlooked aspect is how much articles in such journals are actually read and in particular cited, that is if they have any significant impact on the research in their fields. Other studies have already demonstrated that only some of the articles in predatory journals contain faulty and directly harmful results, while a lot of the articles present mediocre and poorly reported studies. We studied citation statistics over a five-year period in Google Scholar for 250 random articles published in such journals in 2014, and found an average of 2,6 citations per article and that 60 % of the articles had no citations at all. For comparison a random sample of articles published in the approximately 25,000 peer reviewed journals included in the Scopus index had an average of 18,1 cit
In his recent paper published in the European Journal of Scientific Research 44, 4, 610-611 (2010), the author, Arthur Boltcho, claims to have found a mathematical disproof of relative time dilatation of Special Relativity Theory (SRT). In this letter we show that the supposed mathematical disproof of relative time dilatation of SRT is totally wrong and that Arthur Boltcho demonstrated nothing. The errors by Boltcho arise from a strong misunderstanding and confusing the concept of "moments" and time intervals in the framework of SRT.
Dyads of journals related by citations can agglomerate into specialties through the mechanism of triadic closure. Using the Journal Citation Reports 2011, 2012, and 2013, we analyze triad formation as indicators of integration (specialty growth) and disintegration (restructuring). The strongest integration is found among the large journals that report on studies in different scientific specialties, such as PLoS ONE, Nature Communications, Nature, and Science. This tendency towards large-scale integration has not yet stabilized. Using the Islands algorithm, we also distinguish 51 local maxima of integration. We zoom into the cited articles that carry the integration for: (i) a new development within high-energy physics and (ii) an emerging interface between the journals Applied Mathematical Modeling and the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. In the first case, integration is brought about by a specific communication reaching across specialty boundaries, whereas in the second, the dyad of journals indicates an emerging interface between specialties. These results suggest that integration picks up substantive developments at the specialty level. An advantage o
The aggregated citation relations among journals included in the Science Citation Index provide us with a huge matrix which can be analyzed in various ways. Using principal component analysis or factor analysis, the factor scores can be used as indicators of the position of the cited journals in the citing dimensions of the database. Unrotated factor scores are exact, and the extraction of principal components can be made stepwise since the principal components are independent. Rotation may be needed for the designation, but in the rotated solution a model is assumed. This assumption can be legitimated on pragmatic or theoretical grounds. Since the resulting outcomes remain sensitive to the assumptions in the model, an unambiguous classification is no longer possible in this case. However, the factor-analytic solutions allow us to test classifications against the structures contained in the database. This will be demonstrated for the delineation of a set of biochemistry journals.
Cervical (CC) and endometrial cancers (EC) are two common types of gynecological tumors that threaten the health of females worldwide. Since their underlying mechanisms and associations remain unclear, computational bioinformatics analysis is required. In the present study, bioinformatics methods were used to screen for key candidate genes, their functions and pathways, and drug agents associated with CC and EC, aiming to reveal the possible molecular-level mechanisms. Four publicly available microarray datasets of CC and EC from the Gene Expression Omnibus database were downloaded, and 72 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were selected through integrated analysis. Then, we performed the protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis and identified 9 shared genetic biomarkers (SGBs). The GO functional and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses of these SGBs revealed some important functions and signaling pathways significantly associated with CC and EC. The interaction network analysis identified four transcription factors (TFs) and two miRNAs as key transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulators of SGBs. The expression of the AURKA, TOP2A, and UBE2C genes was higher in CC and EC ti