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Chapter 8 Bibliometric analysis
Karen Gurney Manager, Bibliometric Reporting, Thomson Reuters (Evidence), Leeds, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Bethan Sheridan-Jones Data Analyst, Thomson Reuters (Evidence), Leeds, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Simon Thomson Data Analyst, Thomson Reuters (Evidence), Leeds, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
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Contents
Abstract ...... 249 1 Introduction ...... 251 1.1 Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction ...... 251 1.2 Objectives of the report ...... 251 1.3 About Thomson Reuters ...... 251 2 Methodology ...... 252 2.1 Bibliometric data and citation analysis...... 252 2.2 Data source ...... 253 2.3 Definitions used in this report ...... 253 2.4 Interpretation of data and analyses ...... 254 3 Baseline bibliometric analysis of HRP research publications ...... 255 3.1 Key findings ...... 255 3.2 HRP publication dataset for bibliometric analyses ...... 256 3.3 In which journals do HRP researchers publish most frequently? ...... 257 3.4 Is research published by HRP well cited? ...... 259 3.5 Trends in the numbers of papers published by HRP researchers ...... 261 3.6 Trends in the citation impact of papers published by HRP researchers...... 262 4 International authorship and collaboration ...... 264 4.1 Key findings ...... 264 4.2 The principal countries publishing HRP research papers ...... 264 4.3 Collaboration between countries publishing HRP research papers ...... 266 4.4 HRP research papers published by researchers based in low-and middle-income countries ...... 268 References ...... 271 Annex 1: Bibliometrics and citation analysis ...... 272 Annex 2: HRP research portfolio ...... 279 Page | 248
Abbreviations HRP UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction ISI Institute for Scientific Information mNCI mean normalized citation impact NCI normalized citation impact
NCIF field-normalized citation impact PMID unique publication identifier assigned by PubMed UK United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNFPA United Nations Population Fund UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund USA United States of America UT unique publication identifier (unique tag) assigned by the Web of Science WHO World Health Organization HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 249
Abstract The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)/United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)/World Health Organization (WHO)/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) database contained 3459 records (the “research portfolio”), of which 1903 were linked to Thomson Reuters’ citation databases (the “publication dataset”). Those records that did not match the citation databases could not be included in citation analyses in this report. The principal reasons for this are: • some niche regional journals and specialist journals in obstetrics and gynaecology are not currently abstracted by the Web of Knowledge; • some document types, such as reports are not abstracted by the Web of Knowledge. Consequently, this report has evaluated the research performance of between one half and two thirds of the HRP research portfolio and focuses on the research published in journals. It therefore captures only a specific part of the HRP’s research output over the period. • Over the 21-year time period 1990–2011 encompassed by this report, HRP researchers have authored 1842 unique publications abstracted by the Web of Knowledge. Of these, 1645 are papers (substantive journal articles and reviews). • The top 20 journals in which HRP researchers have published most frequently include titles focused on contraception, andrology and obstetrics and gynaecology, as well as substantial output in elite medical journals. • The journal category of Obstetrics & Gynaecology accounts for the highest share of HRP research, with more than one third (40.9%) of HRP papers falling into this category. This research is well cited, with a citation impact approaching twice the world average. • HRP has published fewer papers in the journal categories of General & Internal Medicine and Oncology but this research is very well cited, with a citation impact of between two and three times the world average. • While the average number of papers produced by HRP researchers per annum has fallen between the time period 1990–2007 and 2008–2011, the normalized citation impact of HRP papers has risen from 1.42 between 1990 and 2007 to 2.14 by 2008– 2011, as has the percentage of these papers that are highly cited (from 16.5% to 18.3%). These indicators of research performance are significantly above the world average, and indicative of research that is of strong international standing. This report contains detailed country-level analyses of HRP research production. As WHO is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and because over 95% of Swiss papers are authored by WHO authors, the designation “WHO/Switzerland” has been used rather than the country label Switzerland to reflect this. Overall, Australia, China, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), the United States of America (USA) and WHO/Switzerland have produced the highest volumes of HRP research papers over the period 1990–2011. Comparing the most recent 4 years of the analyses (2008–2011) with the longer-term period 1990–2007, the relative percentage of research papers produced by country has increased in WHO/Switzerland, the USA, Argentina, South Africa and Brazil. By contrast, the relative percentage of research papers in China, Australia and India has decreased.
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Collaboration analysis has shown that research associated with HRP has become more collaborative in recent years. The most noticeable change is the involvement of low-income countries. In the period 1990–2007, there were no collaborative papers published with low- income countries. In the most recent 4-year period, five countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Nepal, Uganda and Viet Nam have all published at least four collaborative papers associated with HRP. There has also been increased participation in HRP by lower-middle-income countries. HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 251
1 Introduction
1.1 Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction The Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) is a special United Nations (UN) programme, cosponsored by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank, and founded in 1972. It is the main instrument within the UN for research in human reproduction. The Programme is hosted by WHO, but is governed independently. Since 1990, it has trained more than 70 000 staff at regional and country centres, and has administered more than 4860 research-capacity- strengthening grants. It is currently active in seven programme areas: • promoting family planning; • improving maternal and perinatal health; • preventing unsafe abortion; • controlling sexually transmitted and reproductive tract infections; • adolescent reproductive health and sexuality; • gender issues and reproductive rights in reproductive health; • sexual health.
1.2 Objectives of the report HRP wishes to use bibliometric data as an input into its 5-yearly external review process. This report provides a baseline bibliometric analysis of research funded by HRP since 1990. This project covered: • matching the publications recorded in the HRP database to Thomson Reuters’ citation databases (see Annex 2); • identifying additional HRP publications (currently not in the HRP database) and including these in the analyses (see Annex 2); • adding these publications, once verified, to the HRP database; • baseline bibliometric analyses of HRP research, looking at trends in research output and the citation impact of HRP research over the time frame 1990–2011, with particular focus on the most recent 4-year period, 2008–2011 (see Section 3); • author analysis to show the countries in which the authors of HRP research are based, and how this pattern of authorship by country has changed over time (see Section 4).
1.3 About Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for business and professionals. It combines industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver critical information to leading decision-makers in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare, science and media markets, powered by the world’s most trusted news organisation. More information is available on their web page (http://thomsonreuters.com). Thomson Reuters Research Analytics is a suite of products, services and tools that provide comprehensive research analysis, evaluation and management. For over half a century, it has
Page | 252 pioneered the world of citation indexing and analysis, helping to connect scientific and scholarly thought around the world. Today, academic and research institutions, governments, not-for-profit organizations, funding agencies and all others with a stake in research need reliable, objective methods for managing and measuring performance. More information is available on their web page (http://researchanalytics.thomsonreuters.com). Thomson Reuters Custom Analytics and Engineered Solutions (including the Evidence business of Thomson Reuters) provide reporting and consultancy services within Research Analytics, using customized analyses to bring together several indicators of research performance in such a way as to enable customers to rapidly make sense of and interpret a wide range of data points to facilitate research strategy decision-making. Their consultants have up to 20 years’ experience in research performance analysis and interpretation. They have extensive experience with databases on research inputs, activity and outputs and have developed innovative analytical approaches for benchmarking, interpretation and visualization of international, national and institutional research impact.
2 Methodology
2.1 Bibliometric data and citation analysis Research evaluation is increasingly making wider use of bibliometric data and analyses. Bibliometrics is the analysis of data derived from publications and their citations. Publication of research outcomes is an integral part of the research process and is a universal activity. Consequently, bibliometric data have a currency across subjects, time and location that is found in few other sources of research-relevant data. The use of bibliometric analysis, allied to informed review by experts, increases the objectivity of and confidence in evaluation. Research publications accumulate citation counts when they are referred to by more recent publications. Citations to prior work are a normal part of publication, and reflect the value placed on a work by later researchers. Some papers get cited frequently and many remain uncited. Highly cited work is recognized as having a greater impact and Thomson Reuters (Evidence) has shown that high citation rates are correlated with other qualitative evaluations of research performance, such as peer review (1). This relationship holds across most science and technology areas and, to a limited extent, in social sciences and even in some humanities subjects. Indicators derived from publication and citation data should always be used with caution. Some fields publish at faster rates than others and citation rates also vary. Citation counts must be carefully normalized to account for such variations by field. Because citation counts naturally grow over time, it is essential to account for growth by year. Normalization is usually done by reference to the relevant global average for the field and for the year of publication. Bibliometric indicators have been found to be more informative for core natural sciences, especially for basic science, than they are for applied and professional areas and for social sciences. In professional areas, the range of publication modes used by leading researchers is likely to be diverse, as they target a diverse, non-academic audience. In social sciences, there is also a diversity of publication modes, and citation rates are typically much lower than in natural sciences. Bibliometrics work best with large data samples. As data are disaggregated, so the relationship weakens. Average indicator values (e.g. of normalized citation impact) for small numbers of publications can be skewed by single outlier values. At a finer scale, when analysing the specific outcome for individual departments, the statistical relationship is rarely a sufficient guide by itself. For this reason, bibliometrics are best used in support of, but not as a substitute for, expert decision processes. Well-founded analyses can enable conclusions to be HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 253
reached more rapidly and with greater certainty, and are therefore an aid to management and to increased confidence among stakeholders, but they cannot substitute for review by well- informed and experienced peers. Annex 1 of this report provides the standard methodology and data definitions used in bibliometric and citation analyses.
2.2 Data source For this report, bibliometric data are sourced from Thomson Reuters’ databases underlying the Web of Knowledge, which gives access to conference proceedings, patents, websites, and chemical structures, compounds and reactions, in addition to journals. It has a unified structure that integrates all data and search terms together and therefore provides a level of comparability not found in other databases. It is widely acknowledged to be the world’s leading source of citation and bibliometric data. The Web of Science is part of the Web of Knowledge, and focuses on research published in journals and conferences in science, medicine, arts, humanities and social sciences. The authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 12 000 of the highest-impact journals worldwide, including open-access journals and over 150 000 conference proceedings. Coverage is both current and retrospective in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, in some cases back to 1900. Within the research community, these data are often still referred to by the acronym “ISI” (Institute for Scientific Information – now the IP and Science business of Thomson Reuters). Thomson Reuters (Evidence) has extensive experience with databases on research inputs, activity and outputs and has developed innovative analytical approaches for benchmarking and interpreting international, national and institutional research impact. Granularity of analysis is an important issue. Unduly fine analysis at the level of research groups provides little comparability or connectedness, while coarse analysis may miss spikes of excellence in key areas. Journals are mapped to one or more subject categories, and every article within that journal is subsequently assigned to that category. Thomson Reuters (Evidence) uses these categories as the basis for bibliometric analysis because they are well established and informed by extensive work with the research community since inception. Papers from prestigious, “multidisciplinary” and general “biomedical” journals such as Nature, Science, BMJ, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America are assigned to specific categories based on the journal categories of the citing and cited references in each article. Further information about the journals included in the citation databases and how they are selected is available at http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/. The citation analyses presented in this report will not cover conference proceedings, meeting abstracts, books, chapters in books or grey literature such as reports. It therefore captures only a specific part of the total output of the specified institutional research base(s) over the period, but this part is usually recognized as describing the most direct contribution to the research base.
2.3 Definitions used in this report HRP research portfolio: this refers to the entire body of research, including internal WHO and external reports, as well as journal articles and conference papers recorded in the HRP publications database. Not all of these outputs will be included in the citation analyses in this report. HRP publications dataset: this refers to those publications from the HRP research portfolio that have been matched to Thomson Reuters’ citation databases.
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Papers/publications: Thomson Reuters abstracts publications, including editorials, meeting abstracts and book reviews, as well as research journal articles. The terms “paper” and “publication” are often used interchangeably to refer to printed and electronic outputs of many types. In this report, the term “paper” has been used exclusively to refer to substantive journal articles, reviews and some proceedings papers, and excludes editorials, meeting abstracts or other types of publication. Papers are the subset of publications for which citation data are most informative and that are used in calculations of citation impact. Citations: the citation count is the number of times that a citation has been recorded for a given publication since it was published. Not all citations are necessarily recorded, since not all publications are indexed. However, the material indexed by Thomson Reuters is estimated to attract about 95% of global citations. Citation impact: “citations per paper” is an index of academic or research impact (as compared with economic or social impact). It is calculated by dividing the sum of citations by the total number of papers in any given dataset (so, for a single paper, raw impact is the same as its citation count). Impact can be calculated for papers within a specific research field such as clinical neurology, or for a specific institution or group of institutions, or a specific country. The citation count declines in the most recent years of any time period, as papers have had less time to accumulate citations (papers published in 2007 will typically have more citations than papers published in 2010).
Field-normalized citation impact (NCIF): citation rates vary between research fields and with time; consequently, analyses must take both the field and year into account. In addition, the type of publication will influence the citation count. For this reason, only citation counts of papers (as defined above) are used in calculations of citation impact. The standard normalization factor is the world average citations per paper for the year and journal category in which the paper was published. This normalization is also referred to as “rebasing” the citation count. Mean-normalized citation impact (mNCI): the mNCI indicator for any specific dataset is calculated as the mean of the NCIF of all papers within that dataset. Highly cited (top decile) papers: using the calculated percentile data based on the ranking of each paper within the journal category, “highly cited” papers can be defined. This refers to the world’s top 10% of most frequently cited papers, taking into account the year of publication and field. Research field: standard bibliometric methodology uses the journal category as a proxy for research field. Journals are assigned to one or more categories, and every article within that journal is subsequently assigned to that category. Papers from prestigious, “multidisciplinary” and general medical journals such as Nature, Science, The Lancet, BMJ, The New England Journal of Medicine and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America are assigned to specific categories based on the journal categories of the references cited in the article. The selection procedures for the journals included in the citation databases are documented at http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/. For this evaluation, the standard classification of Web of Science journal categories has been used.
2.4 Interpretation of data and analyses Papers: the minimum number of papers suitable as a sample for quantitative research evaluation is a subject of widespread discussion. Larger samples are always more reliable, but a very high minimum may defeat the scope and specificity of analysis. Experience has indicated that a threshold between 20 and 50 papers can generally be deemed appropriate. For work that is likely to be published with little contextual information, the upper boundary (≥50) is a desirable starting point. For work that will be used primarily by an expert, in-house group, then HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 255
the lower boundary (≥20) may be approached. Because comparisons for in-house evaluation often involve smaller, more specific research groups (compared to broad institutional comparisons), a high volume threshold is self-defeating. Smaller samples may be used but outcomes must be interpreted with caution and expert review should draw on multiple information sources before reaching any conclusions.
Mean field-normalized citation impact: NCIF values for individual papers vary widely and it is more useful to consider the mNCI. This average can be at several granularities: field (either journal category or field), annual and overall (total output under consideration). When considering such mNCI data points, care must be taken to understand that these data are highly skewed and the average can be driven by a single, highly cited paper (this would be highlighted in accompanying text though not apparent from tables and figures). The world average is 1.0, so any NCIF value higher than this indicates a paper, or set of papers, that is/are cited more than average for similar research worldwide. For the purposes of research management, experience suggests that NCIF values between 1.0 and 2.0 should be considered to be indicative of research that is influential at a national level, while that cited more than twice the world average has international recognition. Table 1 summarizes the thresholds used for the various indicators discussed. Table 1 Indicator values and thresholds Indicator Threshold Number of publications (all output types) No threshold Number of papers (articles and reviews) Citation analyses based on fewer than 20 papers at any particular aggregation, e.g. year or field are not reliable. Percentage of highly cited papers (those ranked in A value of more than 10% indicates better than world average. the top decile of world papers relative to field/journal category and year) Mean normalized citation impact (mNCI – an A value of more than 1.0 indicates better than the world average. indication of paper quality within the field)
3 Baseline bibliometric analysis of HRP research publications
3.1 Key findings • The HRP research publications used in these analyses comprise 1842 publications, of which 1645 are substantive journal articles and reviews (papers) matched to citation data (see Annex 2 for details of matching the HRP database to Thomson Reuters’ citation databases). • The list of the top 20 journals in which HRP researchers have published most frequently includes journals focused on contraception, andrology and obstetrics and gynaecology, as well as elite medical journals. • The journal category of Obstetrics & Gynaecology accounts for the highest share of HRP research, with more than one third (40.9%) of HRP papers falling into this category. This research is also well cited, with a citation impact approaching twice the world average (1.71). • While the average number of papers produced per annum has fallen between the time periods 1990–2007 and 2008–2011, the mNCI of HRP papers has risen (from 1.42 between 1990–2007 to 2.14 by 2008–2011), as has the percentage of these papers that are highly cited (from 16.5% to 18.3%). These measures of citation impact are
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significantly above the world average and indicative of research of international standing.
3.2 HRP publication dataset for bibliometric analyses The HRP publication dataset for bibliometric analyses comprises 1842 publications linked to the citation databases underlying the Web of Knowledge, of which 1645 are papers with NCI data. The citation analyses do not include research published in grey literature such as reports, nor does it include meeting abstracts or books. It also does not include research published in journals not abstracted by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. It is difficult to assess what proportion of the HRP research portfolio recorded in the HRP database is included in these analyses, as the database contains duplicates and document types other than journal articles, but it is estimated to be between one half and two thirds (see Figure 1 and Annex 2). Figure 1 The relationship of the HRP publications dataset to the HRP database; UT, unique tag
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Figure 2 shows the categorization and share of the HRP research publications for bibliometric analysis by document type. Figure 2 Categorization of HRP research publications by document type, 1990–2011
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
Well over three quarters (89.6%) of HRP publications were substantive papers (journal articles and reviews, some proceedings papers and notes). These are the document types used in citation analyses. It should be remembered that Figure 2 is based only on the research publications matched to Thomson Reuters’ databases and not the entire HRP research portfolio as recorded in the database.
3.3 In which journals do HRP researchers publish most frequently? The 20 journals used most frequently by HRP researchers in the period 1990–2011 are listed in Table 2 (a total of 148 journal titles are used more than once). There is a total of 1023 publications in these most frequently used journals – just over half (55.5%) the number of publications in the dataset. This demonstrates the uniformity of the research publications produced by HRP researchers. The core set of journals includes journals focused on contraception, andrology and obstetrics and gynaecology, with a strong focus on the latter. There is also a substantial number of publications in elite or well-regarded general medical titles such as The Lancet and BMJ. All but four of the journals in Table 2 are ranked in the top quartile (by journal impact factor) of journals in their specific research fields.1 Journals shaded in grey are in lower quartiles, that is, they are typically less frequently cited than other journals in their field.
1 Where a particular journal is associated with more than one Web of Science journal category, the one in which it performs best has been used.
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Table 2 Journals in which HRP publications have appeared most frequently (1990–2011), top 20 ranked by number of publications Number of Journal impact factor Journal publications (2011) Contraception 294 2.724 Human Reproduction 154 4.475 The Lancet 98 38.278 Bulletin of the World Health Organization 46 4.641 Biology of Reproduction 44 4.009 Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 43 5.715 International Journal of Andrology 38 3.591 Fertility and Sterility 36 3.564 The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 35 5.967 American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 29 3.468 International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics 28 2.045 Reproductive Health Matters 24 1.371 BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 22 3.407 Obstetrics and Gynaecology 21 4.73 Journal of Reproductive Immunology 21 2.966 Statistics in Medicine 20 1.877 Journal of Reproduction and Fertilitya 19 n/a British Medical Journal 17 14.093 Placenta 17 3.693 Journal of Biosocial Science 17 0.98 n/a, not available. a This journal is no longer abstracted in Web of Science. The most recent HRP publication in this journal was published in 1996.
Table 3 lists the 20 journals with the highest journal impact factor, used more than once by HRP researchers. These range from elite medical and multidisciplinary titles (The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association) to highly regarded specialist journals (Human Reproduction Update, Cell Death and Differentiation). HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 259
Table 3 Journals in which HRP publications have appeared most frequently (1990–2011), top 20 ranked by journal impact factor (2011) Journal impact factor Journal Number of publications (2011) The New England Journal of Medicine 7 53.298 The Lancet 98 38.278 Nature 1 36.28 JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association 3 30.026 Endocrine Reviews 1 19.929 Lancet Infectious Diseases 3 17.391 PLOS Medicine 3 16.269 BMJ 17 14.093 Journal of the National Cancer Institute 1 13.757 Journal of Cell Biology 2 10.264 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 3 9.681 Current Biology 1 9.647 Human Reproduction Update 13 9.234 Cell Death and Differentiation 1 8.849 Canadian Medical Association Journal 1 8.217 Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism 2 8.115 Nucleic Acids Research 2 8.026 Cancer Research 1 7.856 Clinical Cancer Research 1 7.742 Epidemiologic Reviews 1 7.583
3.4 Is research published by HRP well cited? The citation impact of research, an indicator linked to the accumulation of citations, is subject specific. Typically, papers published in areas such as biomedical research receive more citations than papers published in subjects such as engineering, even if the papers are published in the same year. All data on citation impact presented in this report are therefore normalized to the relevant world average, to allow comparison between years and fields. For example, the mNCI for HRP research in obstetrics and gynaecology is the raw citation impact (citations/paper) of HRP papers in obstetrics and gynaecology for any given year of publication, divided by the raw impact (citations/paper) for all the world’s publications in obstetrics and gynaecology journals from the same year. The overall mNCI for HRP papers is 1.53 (where the world average is 1.0) for the period 1990– 2011. This can be disaggregated by journal category to show the fields in which HRP papers are most cited (see Section 3.4.1). Section 3.6 analyses the way the citation impact of HRP papers has changed since 1990.
3.4.1 In which fields is research published by HRP well cited? Standard bibliometric methodology uses the journal category as a proxy for research field. Journals are assigned to one or more categories, and every article within that journal is subsequently assigned to that category.2 Figure 3 shows the total number of papers and mNCI
2 There are exceptions to this – see Section 2.3, Definitions used in this report.
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The journal category of Obstetrics & Gynaecology accounts for the highest share of HRP research, with more than one third (40.9%) of HRP papers falling into this category. This research is also well cited, with a citation impact approaching twice the world average (1.71). HRP papers published in the journal categories of General & Internal Medicine and Oncology are extremely well cited, with a citation impact between two and three times the world average, though a smaller numbers of papers have been published in these fields (see Table 4). HRP papers in journals in the category Andrology have been cited less than the world average for similar research. Table 4 Summary of volume and citation impact in the top 10 most frequently used Web of Science journal categories Web of Science journal category Number of papers Citation impact (mNCI) Obstetrics & Gynaecology 672 1.71 Public, Environmental & Occupational Health 139 1.48 Reproductive Biology 131 1.26 Endocrinology & Metabolism 106 1.19 General & Internal Medicine 76 2.41 Andrology 54 0.89 Infectious Diseases 53 1.61 Demography 49 1.21 Oncology 39 3.09 Paediatrics 29 1.50 Overall 1654 1.53 HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 261
3.4.2 Highly cited research published by HRP Average citation impact, especially on relatively small paper numbers such as in this report, can be misleading. If, for example, there is a single paper that is very highly cited, this can “pull the average up” while in general the papers may have been cited less well. Another indicator of research performance based on citation count is the percentage of highly cited papers – defined here as those ranked in the top decile of world papers relative to the field/journal category and year. If this indicator is below 10% (the world benchmark), then this would indicate that a high average citation impact may be due to one or a few very highly cited papers and not indicative of the general trend. The overall percentage of highly cited papers published by HRP is 15.7% (where the world benchmark is 10%) for the period 1990–2011. Section 3.6.1 analyses how the citation impact of HRP papers has changed since 1990. This, taken in consideration with the above world average citation impact, indicates that the research performance of HRP papers is consistently good and above the world average.
3.5 Trends in the numbers of papers published by HRP researchers The numbers of papers published by HRP researchers sharply decreased in the years 2007 and 2008 but in 2011 recovered to a number comparable to that before these years. This trend is apparent in the HRP research portfolio and is not specific to the part of the research included in these analyses. Also, the searches to identify additional papers not recorded by HRP have not removed this apparent decline, that is, a significantly larger number of papers was not found for these years than for those either before or after. The number of papers produced by HRP researchers has decreased over the period 1990 to 2007, averaging 76.8 papers per annum. While, from 2008 to 2011, the number of papers produced by HRP researchers increased year-on-year, the average for the period (65.8) is lower than the average for the previous period (see Figure 4). Figure 4 The number of HRP papers by year, 1990–2011, in two time periods 1990–2007 and 2008–2011, with averages
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
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3.6 Trends in the citation impact of papers published by HRP researchers The citation impact of HRP papers has increased since 1990, from around the world average to more than twice the world average. The improvement is more marked in the most recent 4-year period since 2007, though this is partly due to the sharp drop in citation impact for the 2008 papers. Owing to the small number of papers on which the calculations of mNCI are based, data are rather “spiky” in Figure 5. However, with the exception of 3 years when the mNCI of HRP research papers was below 1.0 (the world average), typically it is well above the world average; averaging 1.42 over the period 1990–2007, and 2.14 over the period 2008–2011. This is a significant increase between the time periods, suggesting a significant improvement in the mNCI of HRP research. Figure 5 Normalized citation impact by year, 1990–2011, in two time periods 1990–2007 and 2008– 2011, with averages (axis intercept at 1.0 = world average)
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
3.6.1 Trends in highly cited research published by HRP researchers Trend analysis of highly cited papers (in the world’s 10% most frequently cited papers) shows a similar pattern to that seen for NCI (compare Figures 4 and 5). Again, there has been a steady improvement since 1990, from just over 11%; however, the data for the most recent four-year period are quite variable. The average for 2008–2011 is higher than for the pre-2007 period but has not shown the consistent upturn seen in the NCI. Figure 6 shows that the percentage of HRP papers that are highly cited has broadly increased over the period 1990–2007, averaging 16.5% overall. Between 2008 and 2011, this figure rose to 18.3%. There is a marked spike around 2006 and 2007, driven by particularly highly cited papers published in The Lancet and JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association. HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 263
Figure 6 Percentage of highly cited (top decile) papers by year, 1990–2011, in two time periods 1990– 2007 and 2008–2011, with averages (axis intercept at 10% = world benchmark)
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
3.6.2 Summary of changes in the numbers of papers and citation impact between 1990–2007 and 2088–2011 Figure 7 summarizes the data in the previous analyses in Sections 3.5 and 3.6. It shows that, while the average number of papers produced per annum has fallen between two time periods 1990–2007 and 2008–2011, the normalized citation impact has risen, as has the percentage of HRP research that is highly cited. Furthermore, the most recent indicators of research performance are well above the world average: around twice the world average/benchmark in the most recent period (citation impact = 2.14, proportion of highly cited papers = 18.3% in 2008–2011). Previous work suggests that research cited more than twice the world average is likely to be well regarded among the international research community (see Section 2.4). Figure 7 Summary of changes in the numbers of papers and citation impact between 1990–2007 and 2088–2011 (axis intercept at 1.0 = world average)
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
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4 International authorship and collaboration This section of the report shows the countries in which the authors (both directly supported and collaborators) of HRP research are based, and how this pattern of authorship by country has changed over time.
4.1 Key findings • Australia, China, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), United States of America (USA) and WHO/Switzerland have published the most HRP research papers over the period 1990–2011 (see Section 4.2). • Comparing the period 2008–2011 with the long-term period 1990–2007, the relative percentage of research papers produced by country has increased in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the USA and WHO/Switzerland. By contrast, the relative percentage of research papers in Australia, China and India has decreased (see Section 4.2).
4.2 The principal countries publishing HRP research papers WHO/Switzerland, USA, UK, China and Australia have published the most HRP research papers over the period 1990–2011 (see Figure 8). Figure 8 Top 20 countries publishing HRP research papers, by number of papers 1990–2011
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence) HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 265
The maps (see Figure 9) show the number of papers, as a percentage of the HRP publication dataset, published by the principal countries, broken down by three time periods: 1990–2002, 2003–2007 and 2008–2011. Table 5 additionally shows the comparison for the long-term period 1990–2007 to the recent period 2008–2011. The arrows show where the percentage change between these two periods is ≥2.5% (↑); or <2.5 and ≥–2.5% (→); or <–2.5% (↓). These analyses show that the percentage of HRP papers published by authors in WHO/Switzerland, USA, South Africa and South America, especially Argentina and Brazil, has increased. By contrast, the percentage of HRP papers published by authors in China, Australia and India has decreased. For the other countries, the percentage of HRP papers may have increased or decreased, but these changes are marginal. Figure 9 Maps showing how the contribution to the HRP publication dataset has changed since 1990 at country level
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Table 5 Principal countries associated with publishing HRP research papers, and change over time 1990–2002 2003–2007 1990–2007 2008–2011 Number % Number % Number % Number % Change HRP papers 1067 — 315 — 1382 — 263 — — Argentina 32 3.0 18 5.7 50 3.6 28 10.6 ↑ Australia 131 12.3 25 7.9 156 11.3 16 6.1 ↓ Brazil 31 2.9 6 1.9 37 2.7 28 10.6 ↑ Canada 45 4.2 11 3.5 56 4.1 16 6.1 → Chile 67 6.3 9 2.9 76 5.5 9 3.4 → China 147 13.8 47 14.9 194 14.0 18 6.8 ↓ France 27 2.5 14 4.4 41 3.0 14 5.3 → Germany 42 3.9 8 2.5 50 3.6 6 2.3 → Hungary 29 2.7 2 0.6 31 2.2 1 0.4 → India 59 5.5 21 6.7 80 5.8 8 3.0 ↓ Indonesia 45 4.2 1 0.3 46 3.3 3 1.1 → Italy 15 1.4 8 2.5 23 1.7 9 3.4 → Kenya 24 2.2 10 3.2 34 2.5 3 1.1 → Mexico 46 4.3 6 1.9 52 3.8 6 2.3 → South Africa 14 1.3 20 6.3 34 2.5 37 14.1 ↑ Sweden 61 5.7 22 7.0 83 6.0 15 5.7 → Thailand 64 6.0 12 3.8 76 5.5 11 4.2 → UK 225 21.1 81 25.7 306 22.1 59 22.4 → USA 267 25.0 90 28.6 357 25.8 106 40.3 ↑ WHO/Switzerland 231 21.6 133 42.2 364 26.3 175 66.5 ↑
4.3 Collaboration between countries publishing HRP research papers Section 4.2 showed that the contribution made to HRP by Africa and South America, in terms of publication volume, has increased since 1990. However, this is country specific; for example, while authors in Argentina and Brazil now publish an increased percentage of HRP papers, those in Mexico and Chile have decreased their relative contribution. The visualizations in Figures 10 and 11 illustrate the international collaboration at country level in the HRP publications dataset for the long-term period 1990–2007 and the recent period 2008–2011, using lines to link two countries that have collaborated on published research papers. Such visualizations rely on subjective thresholds and two thresholds have been used: • higher threshold: the lines link two countries that have collaborated on at least one paper per year on average for the time period; • lower threshold: the lines link two countries that have collaborated on at least one paper every 2 years on average for the time period In both figures, the countries are arranged around the cartwheel, from the top, in alphabetical order within World Bank income category: high income, lower middle income, low income and upper middle income. Figure 10 shows that, in line with increasing contribution to the HRP research papers, WHO/Switzerland, UK and USA have expanded their collaboration worldwide. HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 267
Some high-income countries, for example, Hungary and Slovenia, were active in this programme pre-2007 but no longer contribute to HRP. There has been little change in those middle-income countries participating in HRP – those who were publishing pre-2007, in general, have published most recently too. The most noticeable change is the involvement of low-income countries. In the period 1990– 2007, there were no collaborative papers published with low-income countries but in the most recent 4-year period, five countries: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Nepal, Uganda and Viet Nam have all published at least four collaborative papers associated with HRP. Figure 10 Collaboration cartwheels showing how research collaboration at country level has changed between 1990–2007 and 2008–2011, higher threshold = one paper per year on average over the period
In Figure 11, the collaboration cartwheels again show the overall increase in collaboration centred around the high-income countries: Canada, Sweden, WHO/Switzerland, UK and USA. At this lower threshold, which will pick up more collaborations, among the high-income countries, Hungary, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Singapore have become less active, while Austria, Denmark and New Zealand now contribute to HRP. There has been more change in those middle-income countries participating in HRP – especially among the lower-middle-income group, which has expanded to include some south American and central Asian countries. As with the higher-threshold analysis, the most noticeable change is the involvement of low- income countries, which has increased from one (Kenya) to eight, including two more African countries (Ethiopia and Kenya) and Cambodia, as well as the five countries listed earlier.
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Figure 11 Collaboration cartwheels showing how research collaboration at country level has changed between 1990–2007 and 2008–2011, lower threshold = one paper every two years on average over the period
4.4 HRP research papers published by researchers based in low-and middle-income countries The analyses in this section look at the subset of HRP research papers published by researchers based in low- and middle-income countries.3 • The percentage of HRP research papers published where all the authors are from low- or middle-income countries has decreased since 1990 by almost half (from 23.2% in 1990–2002 to 13.7% in 2008–2011, see Figure 12). • Over the same period, the percentage of HRP research papers where at least one author is from a low- or middle-income country has increased by nearly 20% (from 43.4% in 1990–2002 to 63.9% in 2008–2011, see Figure 12). • WHO/Switzerland, the USA, the UK, China and Australia were the countries that collaborated most frequently on papers where the first author is affiliated with a low- or middle-income country (see Figure 13).
3 Defined by the WHO as all countries except Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, UK and USA. HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 269
Figure 12 Contribution of low- and middle-income countries to publication of HRP research, 1990– 2011a
aData for first-author analyses are available for the period mid-2008 to the end of 2011 only (see text in Section 4.4).
Figure 13 Top countries collaborating on papers where the first author is affiliated to a low- or middle- income country, by number of papers from mid-2008 to the end of 2011
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
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Since mid-2008, Thomson Reuters has included, as part of the metadata associated with the publications it indexes, the explicit links between authors and addresses. Prior to this date the authors and addresses associated with papers were extracted and indexed, but the links between them were not. Of the 260 HRP papers for which author–addresses link metadata are available, 104 (40.0%) have a first author that is affiliated with a low- or middle-income country. Around half of those HRP papers with a first author that is affiliated with a low- or middle-income country have a coauthor affiliated with a Swiss address (including the address of the WHO Headquarters). HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 271
References 1. Adams J et al, Evidence Ltd. (2002) Maintaining research excellence and volume. A report for the Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales and for universities UK. Leeds, Evidence Ltd, 2002 (http://www.evidence.co.uk/downloads/maint-research-exellence.pdf, accessed 3 December 2012). 2. Garfield E. Citation indexes for science – new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science, 1955, 122:108–111. 3. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Frascati manual: proposed standard practice for surveys on research and experimental development, 6th ed. Paris, OECD Publishing, 2002. 4. Yancey R. Fifty years of citation indexing and analysis. Leeds, Thomson Reuters, 2005 (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/50_years_citation_indexin g/, accessed 18 December 2012).
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Annex 1: Bibliometrics and citation analysis Bibliometrics are about publications and their citations. The academic field emerged from “information science” and now usually refers to the methods used to study and index texts and information. Publications cite other publications. These citation links grow into networks, and their numbers are likely to be related to the significance or impact of the publication. The meaning of the publication is determined from keywords and content. Citation analysis and content analysis have therefore become a common part of bibliometric methodology. Historically, bibliometric methods were used to trace relationships among academic journal citations. Now, bibliometrics are important in indexing research performance. Bibliometric data have particular characteristics of which the user should be aware, and these are considered here. Journal papers (publications, sources) report research work. Papers refer to or “cite” earlier work relevant to the material being reported. New papers are cited in their turn. Papers that accumulate more citations are thought of as having greater “impact”, which is interpreted as significance or influence on their field. Citation counts are therefore recognized as a measure of impact, which can be used to index the excellence of the research from a particular group, institution or country. The origins of citation analysis as a tool that could be applied to research performance can be traced to the mid-1950s, when Eugene Garfield proposed the concept of citation indexing and introduced the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, produced by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI – currently the IP and Science business of Thomson Reuters) (2). Citations can be counted, but they are only “indicators” of impact or quality – not metrics. Most impact indicators use average citation counts from groups of papers, because some individual papers may have unusual or misleading citation profiles. These outliers are diluted in larger samples.
Data source The data used in this report come from the Thomson Reuters’ databases underlying the Web of Knowledge, which gives access not only to journals but also to conference proceedings, books, patents, websites, and chemical structures, compounds and reactions. It has a unified structure that integrates all data and search terms together and therefore provides a level of comparability not found in other databases. It is widely acknowledged to be the world’s leading source of citation and bibliometric data. The Web of Science is one part of the Web of Knowledge, and focuses on research published in journals, conferences and books in science, medicine, arts, humanities and social sciences. The Web of Science was created as an awareness and information-retrieval tool but it has acquired an important secondary use as a tool for research evaluation, using citation analysis and bibliometrics. Data coverage is both current and retrospective in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, in some cases back to 1900. Within the research community this data source is often still referred to by the acronym “ISI”. Unlike other databases, the Web of Science and underlying databases are selective; that is, the journals abstracted are selected using rigorous editorial and quality criteria. The authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 12 000 of the highest-impact journals worldwide, including open-access journals, and over 150 000 conference proceedings. The abstracted HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 273
journals encompass the majority of significant, frequently cited scientific reports and, more importantly, an even greater proportion of the scientific research output that is cited. This selective process ensures that the citation counts remain relatively stable in given research fields and do not fluctuate unduly from year to year, which increases the usability of such data for performance evaluation. Evidence, now as part of Thomson Reuters, has extensive experience with databases on research inputs, activity and outputs, and has developed innovative analytical approaches for benchmarking and interpreting international, national and institutional research impact.
Database categories The source data can be grouped in various classification systems. Most of these are based on groups of journals that have a relatively high cross-citation linkage and naturally cluster together. Custom classifications use subject maps in third-party data such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) categories set out in the Frascati manual (3). Thomson Reuters typically uses the broader field categories in the Essential Science Indicators system and the finer journal categories in the Web of Science. There are 22 fields in Essential Science Indicators and 254 fields in the Web of Science. In either case, Thomson Reuters’ bibliometric analyses draw on the full range of data available in the underlying database, so analyses in their reports will differ slightly from anything created “on the fly” from data in the web interface. The lists of journal categories in these systems can be found at http://ip- science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/scope/scope_sci/ and the subject areas for Essential Science Indicators can be found at http://incites- help.isiknowledge.com/incites_112_live/globalComparisonsGroup/globalComparisons/subjAre aSchemesGroup/essentialScienceIndicators.html. Most analyses start with an overall view across the data, then move to a view across broad categories and only then focus in at a finer level in the areas of greatest interest to policy, programme or organizational purpose.
Assigning papers to addresses A paper is assigned to each country and each organization whose address appears at least once for any author on that paper. One paper counts once and only once for each assignment; however, many address variants occur for the country or organization. No weighting is applied. For example, a paper has five authors, thus: Author Organization Country At institutional level At country level Gurney KA University of Leeds UK Counts for University of Leeds Counts for UK Adams J University of Leeds UK No gain for University of Leeds No gain for UK Kochalko D University of USA Counts for UCSD Counts for USA California, San Diego (UCSD) Munshi S Gujarat University India Counts for Gujarat University Counts for India Pendlebury D University of Oregon USA Counts for University of Oregon No gain for USA So this one paper with five authors would be included once in the research output for each of four universities and once in the research output for each of three countries. Work carried out within Thomson Reuters, and research published elsewhere, indicates that fractional weighting based on the balance of authors by organization and country makes little difference to the conclusions of an analysis at an aggregate level. Such fractional analysis can
Page | 274 introduce unforeseen errors in the attempt to create a detailed but uncertain assignment. Partitioning credit would make a greater difference at a detailed, group level but the analysis can then be manually validated.
Citation counts A publication accumulates citation counts when it is referred to by more recent publications. Some papers get cited frequently and many get cited rarely or never, so the distribution of citations is highly skewed. Why are many papers never cited? Certainly some papers remain uncited because their content is of little or no impact, but that is not the only reason. It might be because they have been published in a journal not read by researchers for whom the paper might be of interest. It might be that they represent important but “negative” work reporting a blind alley to be avoided by others. The publication may be a commentary in an editorial, rather than a normal journal article and thus of general rather than research interest. Or it might be that the work is a “sleeping beauty” that has yet to be recognized for its significance. Other papers can be very highly cited: hundreds, even thousands of times. Again, there are multiple reasons for this. Most frequently cited work is being recognized for its innovative significance and impact on the research field of which it speaks. Impact here is a good reflection of quality: it is an indicator of excellence. But there are other papers that are frequently cited because their significance is slightly different: they describe key methodology; they are a thoughtful and wide-ranging review of a field; or they represent contentious views that others seek to refute. Citation analysis cannot make value judgments about why an article is uncited or about why it is highly cited. The analysis can only report the citation impact that the publication has achieved. It is normally assumed, based on many other studies linking bibliometric and peer judgments, that high citation counts correlate, on average, with the quality of the research. Figure 14 shows the skewed distribution of more or less frequently cited papers from a sample of UK-authored publications in cell biology. The skew in the distribution varies from field to field. It is to compensate for such factors that actual citation counts must be normalized, or rebased, against a world baseline. Figure 14 Distribution of citation data
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Thomas Reuters does not seek to account separately for the effect of self-citation. If the citation count is significantly affected by self-citation, then the paper is likely to have been infrequently cited. This is therefore only of consequence for low-impact activity. Studies show that for large samples at national and organizational level, the self-citation has little or no effect on the analytical outcomes and would not alter interpretation of the results.
Time factors Citations accumulate over time. Older papers therefore have, on average, more citations than more recent work. Figure 15 shows the pattern of citation accumulation for a set of 33 journals in the journal category Materials Science, Biomaterials. Papers less than 8 years old are, on average, still accumulating additional citations. The citation count goes on to reach a plateau for older sources. The graph shows that the percentage of papers that have never been cited drops over about 5 years. Beyond 5 years, between 5% and 10% or more of papers remain uncited. Account must be taken of these time factors in comparing current research with historical patterns. For these reasons, it is sometimes more appropriate to use a fixed 5-year window of papers and citations to compare two periods than to look at the longer-term profile of citations and of uncitedness for a recent year and an historical year. Figure 15 Citation accumulation for a set of 33 journals in the category Materials Science, Biomaterials
Discipline factors Citation rates vary between disciplines and fields. For the UK science base as a whole, 10 years produces a general plateau beyond which few additional citations would be expected. On the whole, citations accumulate more rapidly and plateau at a higher level in biological sciences than physical sciences, and natural sciences generally cite at a higher rate than social sciences. Papers are assigned to disciplines (journal categories or research fields) by Thomson Reuters, bringing cognate research areas together. The journal category classification scheme has recently been revised and updated. Before 2007, journals were assigned to the older, well- established Current Contents categories, which were informed by extensive work by Thomson Reuters and with the research community since the early 1960s (4). This scheme has been
Page | 276 superseded by the 254 Web of Science journal categories (4), which allow for greater disaggregation for the growing volume of research that is published and abstracted. Papers are allocated according to the journal in which the paper is published. Some journals may be considered to be part of the publication record for more than one research field. As the example below illustrates, the journal Acta Biomaterialia is assigned to two journal categories: Materials Science, Biomaterials and Engineering, Biomedical. Very few papers are not assigned to any research field and as such will not be included in specific analyses using NCI data. The journals included in the Thomson Reuters’ databases and how they are selected are detailed at http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/. Some journals with a very diverse content, including the prestigious journals Nature and Science were classified as “Multidisciplinary” in databases created prior to 2007. The papers from these multidisciplinary journals are now reassigned to more specific research fields using an algorithm based on the research area(s) of the references cited by the article.
Normalized citation impact Because citations accumulate over time at a rate that is dependent upon the field of research, all analyses must take both field and year into account. In other words, because the absolute citation count for a specific article is influenced by its field and by the year it was published, comparisons of indexed data can only be made after normalizing with reference to these two variables. In calculations of impact for reviews and articles, only citation counts are used, because the document type influences the citation count. For example, a review will often be cited more frequently than an article in the same field, but editorials and meeting abstracts are rarely cited and citation rates for conference proceedings are extremely variable. The most common normalization factors are the average citations per paper for (i) the year and (ii) either the field or the journal in which the paper was published. This normalization is also referred to as “rebasing” the citation count. Impact is therefore most commonly analysed in terms of “normalized citation impact”, or NCI. Figure 16 illustrates how the NCI is calculated at paper level and journal category level. Figure 16 Example of a calculation of the normalized citation impact
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This article in the journal Acta Biomaterialia is assigned to two journal categories: Materials Science, Biomaterials and Engineering, Biomedical. The world average baselines for, as an example, Materials Science, Biomaterials are calculated by summing the citations to all the articles and reviews published worldwide in the journal Acta Biomaterialia and the other 32 journals assigned to this category for each year, and dividing this by the total number of articles and reviews published in the journal category. This gives the category-specific NCI (in the above example the category-specific NCIF for Materials Science, Biomaterials is 5.1 and the category-specific NCIF for Engineering, Biomedical is higher at 6.7). Most papers (nearly two thirds) are assigned to a single journal category, while a minority are assigned to more than five categories. Citation data provided by Thomson Reuters are assigned on an annual census date referred to as the “article time period”. For the majority of publications, the article time period is the same as the year of publication, but for a few publications (especially those published at the end of the calendar year in less mainstream journals), the article time period may vary from the actual year of publication. World average impact data are sourced from the Thomson Reuters National Science Indicators baseline data for 2011.
Mean normalized citation impact Research performance has historically been indexed by using average citation impact, usually compared to a world average that accounts for time and discipline. As noted, however, the distribution of citations among papers is highly skewed because many papers are never cited, while a few papers accumulate very large citation counts. That means that an average may be misleading if assumptions are made about the distribution of the underlying data. In fact, almost all research activity metrics are skewed: for research income, PhD numbers and publications, there are many low-activity values and a few exceptionally high values. In reality, therefore, the skewed distribution means that average impact tends to be greater than, and often significantly different from, either the median or mode in the distribution. This should be borne in mind when reviewing analytical outcomes. The average (normalized) citation impact can be calculated at an individual paper level, where it can be associated with more than one journal category. It can also be calculated for a set of papers at any level, from a single country to an individual researcher’s output. In the example above, the average citation impact of the Acta Biomaterialia paper can be expressed as ((5.1 + 6.7)/2) = 5.9.
What are uncited papers? It may be a surprise that some journal papers are never subsequently cited after publication, even by their authors. This accounts for about half the total global output for a typical, recent 10-year period. It is not known why papers are not cited. It is likely that a significant proportion of papers remain uncited because they are reporting negative results that are an essential matter of record in their field but make the content less likely to be referenced in other papers. Inevitably, other papers are uncited because their content is trivial or marginal to the mainstream. However, it should not be assumed that this is the case for all such papers. There is variation in non-citation between countries and between fields. For example, relatively more engineering papers tend to remain uncited than papers in other sciences, which is indicative of a disciplinary factor but not a quality factor. While there is also an obvious increase in the likelihood of citation over time, most papers that are going to be cited will be cited within a few years of publication.
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What is the threshold for “highly cited”? Thomson Reuters has traditionally used the term “highly cited paper” to refer to the world’s 1% of most frequently cited papers, taking into account the year of publication and field. In rough terms, UK papers cited more than eight times as often as the relevant world average would fall into the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited category. About 1–2% of papers (all papers, cited or uncited) typically pass this hurdle. Such a threshold certainly delimits exceptional papers for international comparisons but, in practice, is an onerous marker for more general management purposes. After reviewing the outcomes of a number of analyses, a more relaxed definition has been chosen for descriptive and analytical work. For the purpose of this report, “highly cited papers” have been defined as those papers that belong to the world’s top 10% (top decile) of most cited papers relative to the journal category and year. HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 279
Annex 2: HRP research portfolio HRP supplied Thomson Reuters (Evidence) with a database of HRP publications in Reference Manager. This comprised 3459 records with a unique ID (“Ref ID”), although there were duplicate records. As there may be reasons for duplicated records within the HRP research portfolio, duplicates have not been processed.
Matching
Matching HRP records to Thomson Reuters unique tags using HRP-provided unique identifiers The HRP research portfolio contained 170 records with Thomson Reuters unique publication identifiers (unique tags) assigned by the Web of Science (UTs). These were validated. It also contained 1670 records with PMIDs – unique publication identifiers assigned by PubMed; 1444 of these records were matched to Thomson Reuters UTs (see Figure 17). Figure 17 Matching HRP records to Thomson Reuters UTs using HRP unique identifiers
Matching HRP records to Thomson Reuters unique tags using customized algorithms HRP records were transformed to improve match rates, focusing on titles and journal names in particular. For example, titles were truncated and/or transformed, and special characters were removed. Unmatched journals were grouped by frequency and mapped to standardized Thomson Reuters’ journal names (see Figure 18).
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Figure 18 Matching HRP records to Thomson Reuters UTs using customized algorithms
Matching HRP records to Thomson Reuters unique tags using the Web of Knowledge The final stage of the matching process involved manually searching records on the Web of Knowledge. One hundred and twenty-six records were matched; 25 were deemed ambiguous but satisfactory matches (see Figure 19).4
Figure 19 Matching HRP records to Thomson Reuters UTs using the Web of Knowledge
Unmatched records There are two interrelated factors that explain why 1556 records have not matched to the citation databases: (i) document type; and (ii) selectivity of the Web of Knowledge.
Document type Figures 20 and 21 show the numbers and proportions of HRP records matched that were not found or abstracted by Reference Manger document types.
4 Twenty-two of these records were validated by HRP. As the three remaining records (relating to two Thomson Reuters UTs) were non-standard journal articles not used in citation analyses, the report is unadjusted, as it would not materially change the results of the analysis. HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 281
Figure 20 HRP records matched, not found and not abstracted by Reference Manager document types (record numbers in brackets), as a percentage of document type
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
Figure 21 HRP records matched, not found and not abstracted by selected Reference Manager document types (record numbers in brackets)
Data and analysis: Thomson Reuters (Evidence)
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Selectivity of the Web of Knowledge
Not abstracted Unlike other databases, the Web of Knowledge and underlying databases are selective; that is, the journals abstracted are selected using rigorous editorial and quality criteria. These abstracted journals encompass the majority of significant, frequently cited scientific reports, and an even greater proportion of the scientific research output that is cited. However, it does not abstract all journals. The HRP research portfolio contains a substantial proportion of research output from niche regional journals in obstetrics and gynaecology that are not abstracted. Some examples include the Journal of Reproduction and Contraception, the Chinese Journal of Family Planning and the Chinese Journal of Andrology. This principle also applies to some conferences (for example, the Symposium on Reproductive Health and Infection) and books, which are not yet abstracted by the relatively new Book Citation Index. However, regional journal coverage is expanding, as is the Book Citation Index. There are also document types in the HRP research portfolio, such as WHO technical/special reports, CD-ROMS, news items, theses etc., which may be classified as “non-journal literature” and therefore not likely to be abstracted by the Web of Knowledge. Overall, 1181 records from the HRP research portfolio are not abstracted by the Web of Knowledge.
Not found This classification is used where the source of the document is abstracted by the Web of Knowledge but where the particular publication cannot be found. This may be because particular years, volumes, issues or pages have not been abstracted; yet the source overall is abstracted. For example, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews has been abstracted since 2005; therefore, publications before this date are not in the Web of Knowledge. These publications are therefore classified as not found. Overall, 375 records from the HRP research portfolio have not been found in the Web of Knowledge.
Author searching A key deliverable of this project was to identify the publications that were not included in the HRP research portfolio. Analysts at Thomson Reuters (Evidence) searched the Web of Knowledge using 72 researcher names supplied by HRP. Address filters were used to help to identify the institutional affiliations of these authors. These were: • HRP – Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction • RHR – Department of Reproductive Health and Research • UNDP – United Nations Development Programme • UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund • WHO – World Health Organization • World Bank • WHO/RHR HRP External Evaluation 2008−2012 Chapter 8 Page | 283
• UNDP-UNFPA-WHO • WHO/HRP • UN/HRP Publications were collated from the start year to the current date, restricted using the HRP- defined address filters. Six hundred and sixty-two unique publications were found (some publications were found more than once as they have more than one HRP researcher). These publications were then compared to the HRP research portfolio to determine those new to the database, using bibliographic information such as title, source, publication year, volume, issue and pages. Two hundred and twenty-seven were identified as new to the database. These publications were validated by the HRP programme manager and returned to Thomson Reuters (Evidence) (see Figure 22). Figure 22 Publications identified by author searching added to the HRP research portfolio
Data extraction A total of 2090 records with a Thomson Reuters UT were found, equating to 2004 unique Thomson Reuters UTs. These were submitted for data extraction for the time period 1990– 2011, with citation counts to the end of 2011. As Thomson Reuters UTs enable unique counts to be provided, data are presented here by a unique count (see Figure 23).
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Figure 23 Publications extracted and not extracted from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science