Bibliometric research methods
Faculty Brown Bag
IUPUI
Cassidy R. Sugimoto
Overview
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Vocabularly
Citation analysis
Citation indices
Bibliometric laws
Impact factor
Applications
Vocabulary
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Scholarly Communications
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Formal and information
Scientometrics
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Scientific communication
Infometrics
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Thinking beyond scholarly “texts”
Webometrics
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web
Bibliometrics
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Application of statistical and mathematical methods
(formal channels)
Citation analysis
Citing
document
Cited
document
A
B
A references B
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B is cited by A
Why do people cite?
Why are some articles not cited?
What does a citation mean?
Who’s on first?
Embedded citation index
from ` En mishpat:
Babylonian Talmud (1546)
(Weinberg, 1997)
Shepard’s Citation Index (1873)
Shapiro (1992)
Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
Scopus
GoogleScholar
Comparison
Scopus
n=7,333 (86%)
Web of Science
n=6,108 (71%)
Scopus
29%
(2,441)
Overlap
57%
(4,892)
Web of
Science
14%
(1,216)
Distribution of unique and overlapping citations in Scopus and Web of
Science (n=8,549)
Are you a citation index?
Bibliometric research OR
“Why I love good indexes”
Citation analysis
Citing
document
Cited
document
A
B
A references B
B is cited by A
Citation analysis: methods
Not just articles…
Variable:PRODUCERS
Variable:PRODUCERS
Variable:ARTIFACTS
Variable:CONCEPTS
Hybrid approaches
Chaomei Chen: http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~cc345/citespace/figures/terrorism1990-2003-300dpi.png
h-index
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Hirsch (2005)
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A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np
papers have at least h citations each, and
the other (Np − h) papers have at most h
citations each.
Bibliometric laws
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Lotka’s Law (1926)
the number (of authors) making n
contributions is about 1/n² of those
making one; and the proportion of
all contributors, that make a single
contribution, is about 60 percent
(60,15,7…6>10)
Not statistically exact
May be changing with the current model of scholarship
Bibliometric laws
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Bradford’s law (1934)
Journals in a field can be divided into three parts:
1) Core: relatively few # of journals producing 1/3 of all articles
2) Zone 2: same # of articles, but > # of journals
3) Zone 3: same # of articles, but > # of journals
The mathematical relationship of the number of journals in the core to the
first zone is a constant n and to the second zone the relationship is n².
1:n:n²
Not statistically exact
General power law distribution (akin to Pareto’s law in economics)
Bibliometric laws
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Zipf’s Law (1935)
listing
wordsUlysses
occurring within that text in order of decreasing
Jamesthe
Joyce's
frequency,
the rank of
a word
on that list multiplied by its
10th most frequent:
2,653
times
frequency
equal a265
constant.
100th mostwill
frequent:
times The equation for this
relationship
is: r x f = k133
where
r is the rank of the word, f is the
200th most frequent:
times
frequency,
and
k is multiplied
the constant
rank of the
word
by the frequency of the word
equals a constant that is approximately 26,500
Not statistically exact
General power law probability distribution
Bibliometric laws
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Other power law probability
distributions
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Pareto’s law (economics)
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80-20 rule
Law of the vital few
Principle of factor sparsity
PageRank (google)
The Long Tail (markets)
Journal impact factors
As a research method…
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Reliability?
Validity?
Limitations?
Applications?
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Finding and use
Collection development
Reference services
Collection evaluation
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Use studies
Information retrieval algorithms
Diffusion of ideas
Domain areas and interdisciplinarity
Mapping science
Writing your paper…