EDITORIAL CONTENTS - International Society for ... · Anne Sylvia ACHOM (Uganda), Helen Hagos BERHE (Ethiopia), Sangeeta Namdev DHAMDHERE (India), Alicia ESGUERRA (The Philippines),

© 2005-2009, International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI)

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CONTENTSEditorial: Election Report ............... 1

Conference Calls14th NWBRP .......................... 2ASIST & ISSI Pre-Conf Symp. ..... 2

Web of Knowledgevs. Google Scholar ..................... 3

Patent-Bibliometric Analysis(Y. Zhiping & F. Shu) ..................... 7

Open Access in India (A.K. Das) ...... 9

Peripheral Articles (Y. Liu) ......... 15

Introducing Price-Medalists of 2009:Péter Vinkler ....................... 17Michel Zitt ........................... 21

EDITORIALn Latest Board Member Elections – A Report

In order to ensure continuous renewal ofISSI's governing body, a partial boardmember election is launched in everysecond year. In accordance with this prin-ciple, in November 2008 the ISSI boardinitiated to vote about 3 board memberpositions fallen vacant as a consequenceof voluntary resignation. All ISSI mem-bers in good standing were entitled totake part in the nominating and voting

procedures and were informed about the details accordingly. Boththe nomination and the voting took place online, directly on the ISSIwebsite. After logging in to the "members only" area of the ISSIwebsite voters could submit their nominations (and later, in the secondand third round, their votes) anonimously.

In the first turn each ISSI member had the opportunity to nominate3 potential board members. The first (nominating) turn ended upwith 38 candidates, of which 30 accepted the nomination. (1 nomineerefused it, 6 nominees did not reply at all and 1 nominee replied afterthe deadline of declaration of intent.)

The call for the actual voting was announced in mid-December2008. Once again, ISSI members were offered to vote for threenominees out of those 30 candidates who had accepted theirnominations after the first round. After counting the votes it turned outthat while the first two positions could unambiguously be determinedon the basis of the votes (Peter Ingwersen: 8,08% and AparnaBasu: 7,07% of all votes), a very tight outcome caused a tie in caseof the third board member position: Sujit Bhattacharya, Grant Lewisonand Henk Moed received 6.06% of all the votes, each.

This unforeseen situation forced the ISSI board to call on all theISSI members to cast a vote for the third time in January. Memberswere asked to select only one of the 3 nominees in question. In the endSujit Bhattacharya received 21.1%, Grant Lewison received 42,1%and Henk Moed received 36,8% of all the votes of the third round.

That is, on 01 February 2009 the latest partial board memberelection was closed with the following end-result: the Society’srenewed board consists of Judit Bar-Ilan, Aparna Basu, WolfgangGlänzel, Peter Ingwersen, Grant Lewison, Martin Meyer, OllePersson and Ronald Rousseau.

Balázs Schlemmer election assistant

EDITORIAL BOARDEditor in chief:

Wolfgang Glänzel (KU Leuven, BEL)

Editors:Judit Bar-Ilan (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, ISR)

Sujit Bhattacharya (NISTADS, New Delhi, IND)

María Bordons (CINDOC, Madrid, ESP)

Jacqueline Leta (UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, BRA)

Olle Persson (Umeå University, SWE)

Ronald Rousseau (KHBO Oostende, BEL)

Dietmar Wolfram (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)

Technical Editor:Balázs Schlemmer (HUN)

Published By:International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics


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CONFERENCE CALLS

The Swedish Research Council announces the14th Nordic Workshop on

Bibliometrics and Research Policy

29-30 September 2009,Swedish Research Council, Stockholm, Sweden

Bibliometric researchers in the Nordic countrieshave arranged annual Nordic workshops on bib-liometrics since 1996. The general idea of theworkshop is to present recent bibliometric re-search in the Nordic countries and to create betterlinkages between bibliometric research groupsand their PhD students. The workshop languageis English and the workshop is open to partici-pants from any nation. Starting from year 2007,the workshop is also open to participants whowish to take part without presenting.

Please update your calendars now and visit theworkshop web site at http://vr.se/nwb2009/ for regis-tration and submission of suggested presentations.

Further questions can be addressed to theworkshop coordinators:

• Ulf Kronman, [email protected]• Sara Billfalk, [email protected]

More information is available at the workshopwebsite: http://vr.se/nwb2009/

Very welcome to the workshop!Ulf Kronman

ASIST & ISSI Pre-Conference Symposium onInformetrics and Scientometrics

07 November 2009,Hyatt Regency, Vancouver, BC, Canada

This ASIST Annual Meeting pre-conference, co-sponsored with the International Society forScientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI), will providea focused day for metrics researchers to presenttheir recent projects and to discuss issues ofinterest in the field.n ScopeProposals addressing any topic of relevance tobibliometrics, scientometrics, webometrics, cyber-metrics and allied areas are encouraged. Examplesof topics include, but are not limited to: informetriclaws, aspects of inequality or concentration anddiffusion, growth and obsolescence, citationtheory, linking theory, indicators, open access andelectronic publishing, evaluation techniques for

scientific output, visualization and mapping ofscience, and applications for information systemcontent, use and management (e.g., informationretrieval, libraries).nnnnn Submission ProcessFull papers of up to 12 single-spaced pages aresought and are to include a title, name(s) of theauthor(s), and an informative abstract of up to300 words. Papers are to be submitted electroni-cally to the symposium submission system at:http://www.softconf.com/asis/MetricsPreCon/and should follow the formatting guidelines usedfor ASIST Annual Meeting submissions(www.asis.org/Conferences/editorial_guidelines.html).Submissions will be double blind-refereed. Priority


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will be given to papers that represent completedor ongoing research. Submissions by students areencouraged. Proposals will be evaluated basedon relevance to the field, originality, significance,organization, and clarity.

Accepted papers will be made electronicallyavailable to attendees of the symposium. Authorsof accepted papers are expected to be inattendance to present their work during thesymposium. High ranking papers will be invitedfor submission to a special issue of the Journal ofInformetrics.n Important DatesDeadline for paper submissions - April 15, 2009Acceptance decisions - May 29, 2009Final papers due - August 15, 2009n NoteASIST member registration rates for the ASISTAnnual Meeting will also apply to ISSI members.

n For further details, please contact:

• Ronald Rousseau, KHBO - Association K.U.Leuven; Industrial Sciences and Technology;Zeedijk 101 - 8400 Oostende, BelgiumE-mail: [email protected]

OR

• Dietmar Wolfram, School of Information StudiesUniversity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; P.O. Box 413,Milwaukee, WI USA 53201E-mail: [email protected]

For more information about the ASIST AnnualMeeting, seehttp://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM09/am09cfp.html

Additional information about the symposium isavailable at: http://www.sois.uwm.edu/MetricsPreCon

THE WEB OFKNOWLEDGE

VERSUS GOOGLESCHOLAR:

PRESENCE OFNON-WESTERN

COUNTRIESTHE STIMULATE 8 GROUP

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL (VUB)BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

The STIMULATE 8 Group consists of:Anne Sylvia ACHOM (Uganda), Helen Hagos BERHE

(Ethiopia), Sangeeta Namdev DHAMDHERE (India), AliciaESGUERRA (The Philippines), Nguyen Thi Ngoc HOAN

(Vietnam), John KIYAGA (Uganda), Sheldon Miti MAPONGA(Zimbabwe), Yohannis MARTÍ-LAHERA (Cuba), Kelefa Tende

MWANTIMWA (Tanzania), Marlon G. OMPOC (ThePhilippines), A.I.M. Jakaria RAHMAN (Bangladesh), Ronald

ROUSSEAU (Belgium), Bahiru Shifaw YIMER (Ethiopia).

n AbstractThis investigation illustrates differences between dataavailable in professional databases such as the Web ofKnowledge and data that are freely available on the Internetvia Google Scholar. Our findings seem to indicate that, ingeneral, non-Western countries are better representedin the Web of Science than in Google Scholar. Resultsmoreover illustrate one aspect of the digital divide bet-ween Western countries and other ones, in particular de-veloping countries.Keywords: digital divide; Web of Knowledge; GoogleScholar; ideal world of science; topic searches

1. IntroductionSTIMULATE stands for Scientific and TechnologicalInformation Management in Universities and Lib-raries: an Active Training Environment. It is an in-ternational training programme in informationmanagement, supported by the Flemish Interuni-versity Council (VLIR), aiming at young scientistsand professionals from developing countries. Theprogramme has a dual purpose: it intends to de-velop the personal professional skills of the parti-cipants, and the participants are actively encour-aged to transfer their newly acquired knowledgeand skills to their colleagues and other stakehold-ers in their home country (Nieuwenhuysen & Va-nouplines, 1997; Nieuwenhuysen, 2003; Stimu-late 6 Group, 2007).


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One of the higher level STIMULATE coursesintroduces students to the use of the World WideWeb and to bibliographic databases such asThomson/Reuters’s Web of Knowledge as toolsfor library management and research evaluation(Stimulate 6 Group, 2007). This article is the re-sult of the ‘active training part’ of this particularcourse. It illustrates differences between dataavailable in professional databases such as theWeb of Science and data that are freely availableon the Internet via Google Scholar. In generalnon-Western countries are better representedin the Web of Science than in Google Scholar.2. An ideal world of scienceIn an ideal world scientists publish their resultsin peer reviewed journals or conference pro-ceedings and put a preprint version in a local,e.g. university, repository. The whole world ofscience is interconnected via the Internet.

An ideal publication-citation database coversall peer-reviewed journals and conferenceproceedings in the world.

An ideal search engine covers the wholeInternet and clusters results such that each clus-ter refers to one item. More precisely: a clusterbrings duplicate items in mirror sites together;preprint versions in an institutional repositoryand the published version on a publisher's web-site; etc..

In this ideal world the number of existing sci-entific publications, e.g. per country, as foundin the ideal database is equal to the number ofpublications, e.g. per country, as found by theideal search engine.3. AimIt would be a fine research project to study alldifferences between reality and the ideal worldof science, and how this difference has changedover the years. Our investigation does not gothat far, but has two rather modest aims: first, todraw attention to the existing gap betweenreality and the ideal (although some aspects,such as the underrepresentation of Third Worldcountries, are well known), and second toinvestigate one aspect of this gap. Practically,for some topics, we compare the ranking of thetop-10 countries in the Web of Science (in short:WoS) with the ranking of these same tencountries based on the number of retrieveditems (on this same topic) in Google Scholar. Itis clear that in an ideal world these rankings must

be the same. This study must be considered apilot study for a larger and more thoroughinvestigation.4. MethodEach member of the STIMULATE 8 team chosea topic, preferably related to the country or theregion he or she originated from. This topic wasthen represented by a word or phrase and withthis word or phrase a topic search was per-formed in the Web of Science (December 2008).The five available databases were used: ScienceCitation Index Expanded (data available from1955 on), Social Science Citation Index (datasince 1956), Arts & Humanities Citation Index(data since 1975), Conference ProceedingsCitation Index – Science (data since 1990) andConference Proceedings Citation Index – SocialScience & Humanities (data since 1990).

The essential part of our investigationconsisted of using the “Analyze” option in orderto obtain a ranking of countries that published(read: whose addresses occurred in the addressline) about this topic. The ranked list was saved,and after some cleaning the top-10 countries(or more in case of ties) were kept. Cleaningmeans that we added the results for Germany,Federal Republic of Germany and the DemocratRepublic of Germany, leading to a result for thetwo German countries together; and weobtained a representative number for the UnitedKingdom, based on the results for England,Scotland, Wales and North Ireland. Note thatby performing searches on topics related todeveloping countries we tried (and alsosucceeded) to have a reasonable group ofdeveloping countries among the top-10 mostactive countries.

Next a search in Google Scholar aiming atretrieving the same topic (using the same query,or a slightly adapted one) was performed foreach of the ten countries. For example: the queryKiliman* in WoS became

(Kilimanjaro OR Kilimandjaro) AND site:tzwhen we wanted scientific articles available ona Tanzanian website dealing with the topicKilimanjaro. This search was repeated a total often times, once for each top-10 country(according to the WoS ranking). Results anddetails are shown in the next section and in thefull article (Stimulate 8 Group, 2009). Nocleaning for duplicates was performed.


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5. Data and some resultsThe following queries were performed in theWoS (Table 1). In case of differences the GoogleScholar query is shown between squarebrackets. The total number of retrieveddocuments (in the WoS) are also shown.

Some comments: although the AND-operatoris unnecessary in Google and Google Scholarwe used it anyway, as it made queries logicallyclear. The terms (pesticide OR molluscicidal) wereadded to the query ‘endod’ as it turned out thatEndod is also proper name. The term elephant*retrieved besides articles related to the well-known large herbivorous animal with a longtrunk, also quite some articles dealing with theelephant seal. However, we saw no reason toeliminate them. We kept the British term“diarrhoeal” as in this way a country such asBangladesh entered the top 10. Results for thequery on the Rwandan genocide and on endodare not used for further analysis as the first oneincluded only two non-Western countries (so-called region B countries, see Section 6) and thesecond one did not retrieve enough results inGoogle Scholar.

The complete results for each query, includingdetails for each top-10 country, are given in thefull paper, available on the E-LIS e-print server(Stimulate 8 Group, 2009).

6. FindingsFor simplicity we divided the world into two re-gions. Part A includes the Western industrializedcountries, namely the USA, Canada, Australia,New Zealand and all European Countries(except Russia). All other countries are groupedtogether in region B.

Our main finding is that in the majority of cases(9 out of 12; two queries are not considered bylack of relevant data) B countries occupy aposition which is farther away from the topposition in Google Scholar than in the Web ofScience. If Japan and South Africa had beenplaced in group A then the difference wouldhave been even larger.

We note that our findings are based on asmall sample and cannot be considered to givestatistical evidence. Yet, based on this case study,there is no reason to think that the Internet offersa fairer representation of non-Western countries’science than the Web of Science.

We are fully aware of the fact that ‘site’-searches in Google Scholar are not the same assearches for address fields in a bibliographicdatabase. Yet, by concentrating on country siteswe eliminate websites from publishers (all .comsites) and large international organizations (.orgor .net sites). In this way, a country’s scientificoutput, as it is made public by the country itself,is compared to another country’s scientific out-put. In theory, and probably also in practice, it ispossible that some Western countries, e.g. theformer colonial powers, specialize in databaseson topics related to their former colonies. In thisway articles written by scientists working in deve-loping countries may end up in Western data-bases (available, e.g. on a .fr or .uk site). Clearly,investigating this might be a worthwhile project:are such databases a service to developingcountries (giving them visibility) or do theyprevent developing countries from designingtheir own databases and repositories?7. ConclusionIt is sometimes thought that the Web of Scienceoffers a Western view on science (Gibbs, 1995;Garfield, 1997; Kieling & Gonçalves, 2007),while the Internet is considered to be an equalplayground, or at least a huge opportunity forequal treatment (Chan & Kirsop, 2001).Certainly, the Web of Science is largely based

Table 1


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on Western journals and conference proceed-ings, yet a moment’s reflection reveals that, forreasons of technological infrastructure theInternet is certainly not an equal playground(Oyelaran-Oyeyinka & Lal, 2005) and searchengines show large biases against languagesother than English (Aguillo et al., 2006). Note,however, that language bias does not play arole in our investigation as all queries areperformed in English and target scientificarticles included in the WoS.

Web presence inequality is confirmed by ourinvestigation: with few exceptions (South Africaand Japan) the Web of Science as reflected byaddresses, favours B countries’ science morethan the Internet, as covered by Google Scholarand measured using country codes (this is ahuge caveat!). As such our article studies oneaspect of the digital divide (Yu, 2006).

Leaving aside possible bias in the wayGoogle Scholar views the Web (Vaughan &Thelwall, 2004), it seems that B countries, andespecially the developing countries among thisgroup, should do more to publicize scientificachievements of their scientists. Followingothers, e.g. (Chan & Kirsop, 2001), it is thisgroup’s opinion that all forms of Open Accesscan be a big step forward in this direction.

Finally, we hope that colleagues will take upthe challenge and expand our preliminaryfindings. Based on our suggestions it shouldnot be difficult to draw a plan for a researchproject mapping and explaining observedinequalities between Western countries (ourregion A), other industrialized countries (suchas Japan, South Africa and China), anddeveloping countries, in particular the LeastDeveloped ones (LDCs).

AcknowledgementThe members of the STIMULATE 8 Groupexpress their sincere thanks to Professor PaulNieuwenhuysen (VUB, Brussels) and the VLIR(Flemish Interuniversity Council) who made thismultinational collaboration possible. Theythank Raf Guns (Univ. Antwerp) and WolfgangGlänzel (K.U.Leuven) for useful suggestionsleading to a considerable improvement of theoriginal version.

ReferencesI. F. Aguillo, B. Granadino, J.L. Ortega and J.A. Prieto

(2006). Scientific research activity and communicationmeasured with cybermetrics indicators. Journal of the

American Society for Information Science and

Technology, 57, 1296-1302.L. Chan and B. Kirsop (2001). Open Archiving

opportunities for developing countries: towardsequitable distribution of global knowledge. Ariadne,30. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue30/oai-chan/intro.html

E. Garfield (1997). A statistically valid definition of bias isneeded to determine whether the Science CitationIndex discriminates against third word journals. Current

Science, 73(8), 639-641.W.W. Gibbs (1995). Lost science in the Third World.

Scientific American, 273(2), 76-83.C. Kieling and R. R. F. Gonçalves (2007). Assessing the quality

of a scientific journal: the case of Revista Brasileira de

Psiquiatria. Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 29, 177-181.P. Nieuwenhuysen (2003). International training programs

in Brussels related to scientific information and ICT. In:Proceedings of the Second Open Round Table onDeveloping countries access to scientific knowledge:quantifying the digital divide. Editors: Hilda A. Cerdeiraand Enrique Canessa, Trieste : Abdus SalamInternational Center for Theoretical Physics, October2003, 135 pp., ISBN 92-95003-22-5, pp. 35-38.

P. Nieuwenhuysen and P. Vanouplines (1997). Internationaltraining courses on retrieval and management ofinformation in science and technology. Information

Development, 13(1), 23-26.B. Oyelaran-Oyeyinka and K. Lal (2005). Internet diffusion

in sub-Saharan Africa: a cross-country analysis.Telecommunications Policy, 29, 507-527.

STIMULATE 6 Group (2007). The Hirsch index applied totopics of interest to developing countries. First Monday,

volume 12, number 2, available at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_2/stimulate/index.html

STIMULATE 8 Group (2009). The Web of Knowledge andGoogle Scholar: non-Western countries occurring inthe byline versus country top level domain queries.Available at: http://eprints.rclis.org/15606/

L. Vaughan and M. Thelwall (2004). Search enginecoverage bias: evidence and possible causes.Information Processing and Management, 40, 693-707.

LZ. Yu (2006). Understanding information inequality:making sense of the literature of the information anddigital divides. Journal of Librarianship and Information

Science, 38, 229-252.


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RESEARCH ON PATENT-BIBLIOMETRICANALYSIS IN NSLC

(NATIONAL SCIENCE LIBRARY OF CHINESEACADEMY OF SCIENCES)

Yang Zhiping Fang [email protected] [email protected]

Chengdu Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 610041

The task of NSLC (National Science Library ofChinese Academy of Sciences) is to provideinformation services and knowledge services forall Science & Technology decision-makingleaders, managers, scientist, researchers, andgraduate students of CAS (Chinese Academy ofScience). NSLC is composed of the Main Librarylocated in Beijing, three legal branchesrespectively located in Lanzhou, Chengdu andWuhan, and some special branch libraries basedon some institutions of CAS.

The scientometric research in NSLC mainlyfocuses on carrying out applied researches ondisciplinary or technological development trendsand scientific evaluation of research institutes bybibliometrics methods. The bibliometric study ofNSLC on journal papers was developed in theearly 1990s, represented by the Chinese ScienceCitation Database (CSCD for short) created andestablished by the Main Library, which is knownas China's SCI. CSCD has already establishedreasonable influence at home and abroad. Thefour libraries also used international databasessuch as SCI, CA (Chemical Abstracts), BA (Biolo-

gical Abstracts) and EI (Engineering Index) forcarrying out scientific-development evaluationsby bibliometrics methods respectively in national,institutional and disciplinary levels as well as studyon development trends in various subject areas.For example, Jin Bihui of the Main Library hadmade a number of bibliometric analysis in thefields of technology development evaluationand periodical evaluation. In recent years, theresearch made by Jin emphasized on H-indexand other scientific evaluating indicators. In2007, Jin, in collaboration with other researchersin the Main Library proposed R-index and AR-index (The R- and AR-indices: complementing theh-index, Chinese Science Bulletin, 2007, 52 (6):855-863).

Comparatively speaking, the study of patent-bibliometric was carried out late, around 2002.As the first researchers, through statisticalanalysis, the staffs in Chengdu Branch Librarywrote a report "Development Trend of WorldChemical Technology" part of which focused onpatent-bibliometric study. In 2004 they contrib-uted another report "Development Trend of


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Electronic Communication Technology", whichfocused on the method of patent-bibliometric.This report was for the conference on"Construction of Strategically High Technologyand Patent Innovative Information Platform";research achievements thereof were publishedin the Science Times (December 7th, 2004, the3rd edition).

The two reports were instrumental for theChengdu Branch Library to focus more activelyon patent-bibliometric. Since 2005, with the grantof the Finance Planning Bureau of CAS, ChengduBranch Library has been taking on the researchand writing work of annual report of PatentAnalysis of CAS, and so far, three annual reports2005, 2006 and 2007 have been completed.These reports revealed the patent's applicationand authorized situations for more than onehundred research institutes of CAS mainly fromthe quantitative angle, and expounded the trendsand key points of technological innovation andthe market layout of the patents from thequantitative angle by analysis and evaluation.Furthermore, funded by other organzations,Chengdu Branch Library also finished a numberof patent-bibliometric projects on some fields,such as biomedicine and information technology,etc. Meanwhile, it also carried out researches onthe development of China's regional innovativetechnology and the development of regionalinnovative technology in western China from thepoint of research output, and has published morethan 30 related papers.

For further study on patent-bibliometric,Chengdu Branch Library applied for the Fund ofStudying Abroad for Senior Visiting Scholars fromthe Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2006, sent aresearcher to SPRU of SUSSEX University, Englandand later sent another two researchers to CornellUniversity and Indiana University of Americarespectively for further study. Since 2005,researchers of Chengdu Branch Library havebeen publishing theory and applied researchpapers relating to measure analyzing on patents.Researchers of Chengdu Branch Library alsomade presentations in this area at the ISSI 2005and 2007 Conferences. Mr. Fang Shu madepresentation at the 2005 ISSI conference onPower-law Fractal: The Law of TechnologicalInnovation Output Statistics and at the 2007 ISSI

conference on Research and Application of PatentMap Analysis. Profiles of CAS technologicalcapabilities-A Comparison of Patent Applicationof the Chinese Academy of Sciences with othernational level institutions was presented by Ms.Yang Zhiping in ISSI 2007, Study on IndicatorSystem for Core Patent Documents Evaluationpresented by Ms. Zhang Lan in ISSI 2009, AComparative Study on the Biotechnology Patentsof CAS, China by Mr. Chen Yunwei, etc.

In addition, the Chengdu Branch Library alsotook charge of establishing the net of intellectualproperty of CAS (http://www.casip.ac.cn/) which hasnow operational. The website comprises func-tional modules such as intellectual property data-base of CAS, Science & Technology achievementinformation release, business requirementrelease, online patent analysis system of CAS,intellectual property integrated informationsystem, and intellectual property training system,etc. At present, the Chengdu Branch Library isusing the methods of scientometric and theinformation technology to make online retrievaland the visual online statistical analysis systemof patents through the Internet.

Since 2006, the other libraries of NSLC havebeen paying attention to the patent-bibliometricresearch, but on different fields. The Main libraryemphasizes on carrying out researches onnanotechnology, agriculture and optoelectronictechnologies, the Lanzhou Branch Libraryfocuses on resources and environment, theChengdu Branch Library stresses on biologicaltechnology and information technology, andthe Wuhan Branch Library lays emphasis onenergy technology. With a rapid developmentof scientific research and innovation of CAS inrecent years, the demand for technologyinnovation and the protection awareness forintellectual property increased significantly; fordifferent needs of the customers, each librarycarried out measure for analyzing and evaluationof patents on scientific metrology, providingscientific information for decision-making andkey layout's regulation, for an overall grasp ofrelated patents and technology innovation ofrelated research institutes.

The analyzing tool on patents used by theresearchers in each library was Thomson DataAnalyzer (TDA), and later changed to AUREKA,


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according to the requirements of research andanalysis, which enhanced the visual analysis toolsand means of patent information. Meanwhile,some free analysis net-tools and data processingsoftware programmed by the researchersthemselves were also used in the analysis. Inaddition, each library has began to focus ontraining and absorbing researchers on patentstudy, besides sending some personnel asgovernment researchers to study abroad, theyalso strengthened the training at home. Themaster's tutors and the doctorial tutors in eachlibrary also began to emphasize on training their

own students, and at least five of the graduatetheses are on patent-bibliometric research.Presently, a research layout and team is formedinitially, which makes the Main Library and theChengdu Branch as the main body, assistingwith Lanzhou Branch Library and WuhanBranch Library.

NSLC is now in its start level in patent-biblio-metric research, therefore, a wide communica-tion and cooperation is warmly expected in theconstruction of patent index, the analysismethod of patent, and the development ofanalysis tools of patents, etc.

OPEN ACCESS TORESEARCH

LITERATUREIN INDIA:

CONTEMPORARYSCENARIO

Anup Kumar DasCentre for Studies in Science Policy

School of Social SciencesJawaharlal Nehru University

New Delhi-110067, IndiaEmail: [email protected]

1. IntroductionOpen Access to knowledge is an internationalmovement having wider participation of re-search communities in disseminating ones'research outputs and public-funded researchresults through open access channels. Openaccess to information is necessarily based uponprinciple of digital forms of scholarly communi-cation, where research literature is mainly madeavailable through web portals.

Electronic journals, both subscription-basedand open access (OA) coexist in developedcountries, giving wider choices to theresearchers to publish and disseminate theirresearch results. Paid electronic journals reach alimited number of subscribers, whereas openaccess journals can in principle reach widernumber of researchers. On the other hand, mostprestigious journals or high impact journals inall major disciplines are still available in fee-basedchannels.

Inspite of paid subscription, journals fromdeveloped countries have dedicated clientele.The situation is somewhat different in developingcountries. Journals published in developingcountries have relatively low visibility as they haverelatively weaker worldwide marketing chan-nels. The situation improves to some extentwhen the journals establish collaboration withsome internationally renowned publishers.Open access removes this barrier of lesser visibi-lity of journals. The print-only Indian journalshave limited circulation mostly within the na-tional boundary, thus, they are less visible


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globally. Whereas, journals available in openaccess channels have greater potential ofinternational visibility. OA journals also havegreater chance of getting wider coverage byjournal indexing and harvesting services as wellas getting high rate of citations and receivinghigh quality papers/manuscripts.

Figure 1 show how an open access journal canstep into the bracket of highly visible journals withsuperior quality in content. OA can also maketransition of a national journal into an internationalone, provided the journal publisher puts specialefforts in quality control, timeliness and indexingby secondary databases. So, embracing openaccess channels is becoming compulsion tojournals published from developing countries.

Indian journal publish-ers, particularly scientificjournal publishers, are se-riously considering orfirmly stepping into theopen access channels.There is also national levelconsensus at differentlevel of policymakingbodies promoting openaccess mandates forpublic-funded researchliterature. The NationalKnowledge Commission(NKC), a policy advisorybody to Government ofIndia, recommendedopen access to researchliterature resulted from thepublic-funded research [2,3]. Several institutions

Figure 1 Increased Outreach and Visibility of Indian OA Journals

Table 1 Open Access Gateways for Primary Journals in India

such as national S&T academies and R&D apexbodies in India such as Indian Academy of Sciences(IAS), Indian National Science Academy (INSA),Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)and Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR)have started building up open access channelsby establishing OA journal gateways and insti-tutional repositories.2. Open Access Channels for IndianPeriodicals2.1 Open Access Journal Gateways

Indian open access journals are made availablethrough OA journal gateways where an OAjournal gateway is dedicated for archiving all OAjournals of the same publisher. Table 1 providesan indicative list of open access journal gatewaysfor Indian scholarly journals. This Table indicatesthat Medknow Publications is major OA journalpublisher in India having eighty journal titles onits credit. This is followed by medIND OA journalgateway, which hosts forty Indian biomedicalperiodicals. Public-funded S&T institutions suchas Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), IndianNational Science Academy (INSA), NationalInstitute of Science Communication andInformation Resources (NISCAIR), DefenceScience Information and Documentation Centre(DESIDOC), etc. have established their own OAjournal gateways, where most of their peer-reviewed journals are placed for worldwide


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dissemination. This Table also indicates thatprivate-sector enterprises such as MedknowPublications, Kamla-Raj Enterprises and DivanEnterprises have established OA journalgateways for different Indian journals.

Apart from OA journal gateways, institutionalrepositories or subject repositories can also sys-tematically archive journal contents of some specificjournals [1]. For example, OpenMED@NIC, asubject repository maintained by the NationalInformatics Centre, provides access to eleven Indianjournals. Similarly, IIAP Repository, an institutionalrepository of Indian Institute of Astrophysics,provides access to one Indian journal.

OA Journal Gateways in India, listed inTable 1, are briefly described below:• Medknow Publications OA gateway provides

full-text access to eighty peer-reviewed biome-dical journals published by Medknow Publica-tions in collaboration with different learned so-cieties and institutions in India and abroad. Thesejournals are OAI-PMH-compliant1. Apart fromcurrent volumes of Medknow journals, archiveof back volumes is also available through eachjournal's homepage. These journals are widelyindexed by secondary databases, searchengines, OA directories and metadata harvest-ing services, giving wider visibility to the journaltitles. Medknow also provides solutions to thescientific societies and scholarly institutionsthrough Journal-on-Web – a web-based manu-script submission and peer review system thathandles pre-publication and post-publicationprocesses for journal issues.

• medIND@NIC provides full-text access to fortybiomedical journals published by differentscientific societies and institutions in India. Thisservice is provided by Indian MEDLARS Centreat the National Informatics Centre (NIC), incollaboration with Indian Council of MedicalResearch. This is a subsidiary service of IND-MED@NIC, an online bibliographic databaseof articles published in over seventy bio-medical journals in India.

• NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository (NOPR)presently provides full-text access to threejournals published by NISCAIR, namely, IndianJournal of Biochemistry and Biophysics (IJBB),

Indian Journal of Chemistry Section A (IJC-A)and Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge(IJTK). Full-text content of thirteen morejournals published by NISCAIR will be madeavailable in due course of time. This gatewayis developed using DSpace open sourcesoftware. This initiative is supported by CSIR.

• OA Gateway of IAS provides full-text accessto eleven peer-reviewed journals published bythe Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), a re-nowned scientific academy funded by theGovernment of India. IAS has already archivedall articles of major journals from the volumeone. From 2007 onwards, ten IAS-publishedjournals are also available throughSpringerLink (Springer), a subscription-basedgateway of electronic journals.

• OpenMED@NIC is an open access archive formedical and allied sciences, maintained byBibliographic Informatics Division of NIC. Hereauthors and editors can self-archive theirscientific and technical documents. Full-text ar-ticles of thirteen Indian biomedical periodicalsare systematically archived in this subject re-pository. This gateway is developed usingEPrints open source software. This gatewayis OAI-PHM-compliant.

• IndianJournals.com provides single-windowaccess to multidisciplinary Indian journalspublished by different scholarly societies andinstitutions. It provides free access to sevenpeer-reviewed OA journals and three OAperiodicals. It also maintains archive of backvolumes. These open access scholarly journalsmainly belong to the science, technology andmedicine (STM) areas. This common journalgateway is freely accessible if the users registertheir names in the website. In addition to OAjournals, this gateway also provides access tosubscription-based journal content.

• KRE Journals Online is the open access journalgateway for journals published by Kamla-RajEnterprises in Delhi in collaboration withdifferent scholarly societies and institutions.Presently KRE publishes ten (seven existingand three new additions) OA peer-reviewedjournals mainly in the areas of social sciences.These journals are OAI-PHM-compliant.

• eJournals@INSA is the open access journal gate-way for Indian National Science Academy (INSA)-published journals. This portal provides access

1 Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)-compliant journal systems expose metadata information to harvesters.


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to current and backvolumes full-text liter-ature of four peer-re-viewed INSA journals,namely, Indian Journal ofPure and Applied Math-ematics (IJPAM), IndianJournal of History of Sci-ence (IJHS), and Pro-ceedings of the Indian National ScienceAcademy - Part A and Part B. INSA has archivedall articles of these journals from the first volume.For getting access to full-text resources in thisgateway, user registration is required. Thisproject was one of the pioneering open accessinitiatives in India, supporting the concept of freeaccess to scientific literature.

• DRDO Publications Gateway provides full-textaccess to two peer-reviewed journalspublished by DESIDOC, namely, DESIDOCJournal of Library and Information Technology(DJLIT) and Defence Science Journal (DSJ).This gateway is developed using OpenJournal Systems (OJS) open source software.These journals are OAI-PHM-compliant.

• ISIK OA Journal Gateway provides full-text accessto two high-quality journals published by IndianStatistical Institute Kolkata, namely, Sankhya - theIndian Journal of Statistics, Series A and Series B.These journals are OAI-PHM-compliant.

• IIAP Repository is an institutional repository ofIndian Institute of Astrophysics (IIAP), Banga-lore. Full-text articles of Bulletin of the Astro-nomical Society of India are systematicallyarchived in this institutional repository. Thisgateway is developed using DSpace opensource software. This gateway is OAI-PHM-compliant.

2.2 Coverage of Indian Open Access Journals by

Secondary Gateways and OA Journal Aggregator

Online secondary database services are veryuseful referral tools to the researchers across theworld to locate scholarly literature published inwide array of open access journals. There arealso secondary gateways that provide referralservice to the end-users and re-direct theirqueries to the appropriate journal gateways.Table 2 provides an indicative list of secondarygateways referring Indian open access journals.The most important ones are described below:

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ),maintained by Lund University Libraries in Swe-den, provides a directory service to the users ofopen access journals. DOAJ is considered as amost comprehensive directory for peer-reviewedopen access journals published worldwide.DOAJ aims to cover all subjects and languages.As on 17th March 2009, out of 3928 journalsin listed in the directory 1403 journals aresearchable at article level. This content indexingservice is known as DOAJ Content.

As DOAJ has worldwide coverage, it refersto several journals published from the SouthAsian countries as well. Table 3 provides distri-bution pattern of South Asian journals in DOAJ,based on number of journals listed in this service.This Table shows that India has maximum contri-bution followed by Pakistan. Out of 163 journalslisted in DOAJ, 90 journals are searchable atarticle level, i.e., covered in DOAJ Content ser-vice. Figure 2 illustrates distribution pattern of

Table 2 Secondary Open Access Gateways Providing Access to Select Primary Journals from India

Figure 2 DOAJ Journal Distribution amongst South Asian Countries

Table 3 Country-wise OA Journal Distribution in DOAJ amongstSouth Asian Countries


13

DOAJ-listed journals amongst South Asiancountries. It further shows that India contributes66.9% out of total 163 South Asian journals,followed by Pakistan (26.4%). Unfortunately,three South Asian countries, i.e., Sri Lanka,Maldives and Afghanistan are not included inDOAJ. Probably these countries do not producepeer-reviewed journals having qualifyingfeatures as defined by DOAJ.

• Open J-Gate, a metadata harvesting service ofInformatics India Limited, is a searchable portalfor papers/articles published in open-accessjournals. It covers open access peer-reviewedjournals as well as professional and industryjournals. It provides access to 4793 open accessjournals and million plus records of articles. Outof 4793 OA periodicals covered here, 2607 arepeer-reviewed journals and rest are professionaland industry journals. Although this service hasworldwide coverage, mainly open accessjournals published in English language areindexed in this online database. This is the firstcorporate initiative in India to promote andsupport open access initiatives. Thebibliographic database is maintained in a well-index database, having the metadatainformation of each article, abstract and full-textlinks to each article. It has Quick Search,Advanced Search, and Browse by journaloptions. In this service, full-text links are regularlyvalidated.

Open J-Gate maintains seven main subjectcategories, such as: Agricultural and BiologicalSciences, Arts and Humanities, Basic Sciences,Biomedical Sciences, Engineering andTechnology, Library and Information Sciences,and Social and Management Sciences.

• Bioline International is an international aggre-gator of open access journals that provides afree participatory common platform for journalspublished from developing countries. Presentlyit covers fifty-eight peer-reviewed open accessjournals from sixteen developing countries in thebroad subjects of public health, internationaldevelopment, tropical medicine, food andnutritional security and biodiversity. As indicatedin Table 4, OA journals archived in this gatewayare drawn from sixteen developing countries.Most of these countries are located in globalSouth. India is the highest contributor, i.e.,24.1%, in terms of number of journals archived

from the country of origin as depicted in Figure3. The Indian journals archived in this gatewayare mainly from a single OA publisher namedMedknow Publications.

3. Sustainability IssuesAlbeit some misconception of revenue loss in print-subscription, open access journals enhance theirprint-subscription base and overall revenuegeneration. Open Access journals also enjoyprivilege of publishing advertisements in their print-version as well as in online portal that make themeconomically sustainable. Membership societiesalso can strengthen their membership subscriptionbase while their OA journals are more visible tothe professional or research community. Visiblesocieties and institutions can even receivesubstantial grants and donations from inter-governmental agencies, government agencies,philanthropic trusts and foundations. This way OAjournals as well as OA journal publishers canbecome self-sustainable. Figure 4 depicts a plausiblerevenue earning and self-sustainability model foropen access journals published in India.4. ConclusionPushing journals into open access channels maynot solve the problem of low visibility unless thejournal publishers adopt systematic marketing andpromotional strategies. OA journals should be

Figure 3 OA Journal Distribution in Bioline International - India vs.Other countries

Table 4 Bioline International - Country-wise OA Journal Distribution


14

CARTOON

© Nick Kim (Nearing Zero). Reproduced with the permission of the author.

widely indexed by metadata indexers andmetadata harvesters, in addition to the secondaryjournal databases. Efforts should also be made toinclude or index these journals in directories of OAjournals, including subject directories.

In this direction publishers like Medknow Publi-cations and Indian Academy of Sciences have

shown leadership in pushing Indian OA journalsahead of other developing countries, incorporatingappropriate strategies for wider coverage bysearch engines, directories, metadata harvesters,and secondary databases.5. AcknowledgementAuthor is grateful to Prof. Sujit Bhattacharya ofJNU, India for his encouragement and providingintellectual inputs in shaping up this article.6. References1. Das, Anup Kumar (2008). Open Access to

Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature andDigital Library Initiatives - the South Asian Scenario.New Delhi: UNESCO.

2. National Knowledge Commission (2007). OpenAccess and Open Educational Resources: WorkingGroup Report. New Delhi: National KnowledgeCommission.

3. National Knowledge Commission (2007). Report tothe Nation 2007. New Delhi: National KnowledgeCommission.

Figure 4 Revenue Generation Methods for OA Journals


15

n Abstract: We call for a theory that takes more articlesinto account than those belonging to the h-core.

The standard definition of the h-index (Hirsch,2005) makes a sharp distinction between articlesbelonging to the h-core and all other publica-tions. Borrowing the core-periphery termino-logy, we will refer to articles that do not belongto the core as peripheral articles, or articles be-longing to the periphery. Using this terminologyone may say that the h-index grows whenperipheral articles enter the core.

In the extreme case that the peripheral articleat rank h+1 has zero citations and all articles inthe core have exactly h citations, 2h+1 extra cita-

tions are needed to move from an h-index equalto h to an h-index equal to h+1. In this scenario itbecomes more and more difficult to reach ahigher h-index. However, this extreme case is notlikely to happen in reality. Often the difference innumber of citations between the article ranked hand that ranked h+1 is zero or one. It is then rela-tively easy to increase an h-index by one. Ingeneral, the smaller the difference in citationsbetween the group of most-cited peripheralarticles and the core, the higher the probabilitythat the h-index (and the h-core) will increase.This fact also explains why an h-index can increasealthough a scientist is not active anymore. It isstated as a disadvantage of the h-index that ascientist may rest on his laurels as his h-index willincrease by itself. With some luck one of theperipheral articles may even turn out to be asleeping beauty, and give a boost, if not to the h-index (the effect is only one unit), then certainlyto the g-index. Although we mentioned this factas a disadvantage (Liu & Rousseau, 2007), wedo not believe this anymore. The h-index just

reflects the influence of a scientist’s oeuvre and assuch it may happen that this influence increaseseven after the scientist stopped being active.

In h-index studies one almost exclusivelyfocuses on the core. Yet, it is the periphery thatdetermines if the h-core has the potential to

increase or not. Ignoring the periphery, andespecially the most-cited articles in the periphery,means that no real study of the dynamics of the

growth of the h-core canbe performed.

We must admit that ona small scale the peripheryhas already been takeninto account, namely inthe definition of the ra-tional h-index (Ruane &Toll, 2008). This definitiontakes the most-cited articlein the periphery into

account, but no other peripheral articles. Recall thatif a scientist’s h-index is h and he needs (at least) nnew citations in order to increase his h-index byone, then this scientist’s rational h-index, denotedas h

rat, is defined as

The relation between the rational h-index andthe real one (another approach that takes theperiphery somewhat into account) has beenstudied in (Guns & Rousseau, 2009).

Recently Chinese colleagues have beenconcerned by the possibility of manipulating theh-index. Indeed, if in order to reach a higher h-index one particular article needs just a few morecitations one may cite this target article oneselfor ask friends (or students) to do this. In this wayit is relatively easy to get a higher h-index. Somecall this behaviour a form of fraud.

Yet, we do not consider this behaviour a greatsource of concern and this for several reasons.First, it seems quite impossible to increase one’s

n2h + 1

hrat

= h + 1 –

Yuxian LiuPeriodical Division, Reading Section

Library of Tongji UniversitySiping Street 1239, 200092

Shanghai, PR ChinaE-mail: [email protected]

PERIPHERALARTICLES


16

h-index in this way by more than one or two.Second, it takes time to get published, so theresult of the manipulation is only visible afterquite some time (when it is perhaps not ne-cessary anymore). Third, it is very difficult to citean article that has no or little relation with thearticle in which the citation occurs. Peer reviewwill quickly catch this type of manipulation.Finally, if all players know the ‘rules of the game’– including the role of cumulative advantage –they all ‘play’ with equal chances.

In a more general context we would like tostress that citing is a way of promoting science:it draws attention to those articles (and theirauthors) deserving attention. We think that pro-moting scientific communication is part of theduties of any information scientist.

In conclusion we would like to call for an h-type theory that takes peripheral articles moreinto account than has been done thus far. Thiswill give a more accurate picture of a scientist’sinfluence or impact on others. Such a more ac-curate picture would, moreover, enhanceresearch evaluation results. When there is not asharp distinction anymore between the core(the articles that ‘count’) and the peripheral one(those that do not ‘count’), the influence ofpossible manipulation decreases even more. Atheory that takes the periphery into account putsmore emphasis on academic potential than atheory that draws a sharp distinction betweencore and periphery.

References

Hirsch, J. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’sscientific research output. Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences of the United States

of America, 102, 16569-16572.Liu YX & R. Rousseau (2007). Hirsch-type indices and

library management: the case of Tongji UniversityLibrary. In Proceedings of ISSI 2007 (Torres-Salinas& Moed, Eds). Madrid: CINDOC-CSIC, pp. 514-522.

Guns, R. & Rousseau, R. (2009). Real and rationalvariants of the h-index and the g-index. Journal of

Informetrics, 3, 64-71.Ruane, F. & Tol, R.S.J. (2008). Rational (successive)

h-indices: an application to economics in theRepublic of Ireland. Scientometrics, 75, 395-405.

Note (by Ronald Rousseau)It happens that our colleague Leo Egghe has justproposed a theory as called for by Yuxian Liu. Inhis latest preprint “Characteristic scores and scalesbased on h-type indices”, work based on an ideaby Glänzel and Schubert (1988) and revived re-cently in an h-index context by Glänzel (2008),Egghe considers additional marks (besides the firstone, which is the h-index) in a publication list.

References

Glänzel, W. (2008). What are your best papers?ISSI Newsletter, 4(4), 64-67.

Glänzel W. and Schubert, A. (1988). Characteristicscores and scales in assessing citation impact.Journal of Information Science, 14, 123-127.

ISSI e-Newsletter (ISSN 1998-5460) is published by ISSI (http://www.issi-society.info/).Contributors to the newsletter should contact the editorial board by e-mail.

Wolfgang Glänzel: wolfgang.glanzel(at)econ.kuleuven.beJudit Bar-Ilan: barilaj(at)mail.biu.ac.il

Sujit Bhattacharya: sujit_academic(at)yahoo.comMaría Bordons: mbordons(at)cindoc.csic.esJacqueline Leta: jleta(at)bioqmed.ufrj.br

Olle Persson: olle.persson(at)soc.umu.seRonald Rousseau: ronald.rousseau(at)khbo.beDietmar Wolfram: dwolfram(at)uwm.edu

Balázs Schlemmer: balazs.schlemmer(at)gmail.com

Accepted contributions are moderated by the board. Guidelines for contributors canbe found at http://www.issi-society.info/editorial.html Opinions expressed by contributors to theNewsletter do not necessarily reflect the official position of ISSI. Although all publishedmaterial is expected to conform to ethical standards, no responsibility is assumed byISSI and the Editorial Board for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as amatter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of anymethods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material therein.


17

INTRODUCING THEDEREK DE SOLLA PRICE AWARDEES OF 2009

– interviews by Balázs Schlemmer –

The awarding ceremony of theDerek de Solla Price Memorial Me-dal has become an essential partof the programme of ISSI confe-rences since the foundation of theSociety in 1993. The Price Medal wasconceived and launched by Tibor Braun,founder and Editor-in-Chief of the inter-national journal Scientometrics, and isperiodically awarded by the journal toscientists with outstanding contribu-

tions to the fields of quantitativestudies of science. This year’s med-allists are PÉTER VINKLER (HASChemical Research Center, Buda-pest, Hungary) and MICHEL ZITT

(INRA SAE2, Nantes, France; OST, Paris,France). In accordance with the tradi-tion, the awardees are going to receivetheir Medals during the ISSI 2009 con-ference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Congratulations to the award-winners!

PÉTER VINKLER

n I know that you have graduated in chemistry,

moreover you have been working for the Chemical

Research Institute (former Central Research Institute

of Chemistry) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

What are your main research topics in chemistry?

After graduating from secondary school (in spiteof excellent results attained) my admission to theuniversity was rejected because of politicalreasons. I was planning to be a school teacherof literature and German language. Instead, Ihad to start my career doing hard manual work(shoveling coal) at the Hungarian Railway Co..Later, I started studies at the School of PhysicalEducation to be trained as a fencing coach. (Inthe meantime, I was placed second in two sub-sequent years at the National High SchoolChampionship.) A year later I gained admissionto the faculty of chemistry of the University ofSzeged. I obtained my degree in 1966, andstarted research work at the Chemical ResearchCenter (formerly: Central Research Institute forChemistry) of the Hungarian Academy of Sci-ences. I dealt with structural investigations oforganic compounds (primarily thioamides andthiosemicarbazides) by infrared spectroscopy. Igot my PhD in spectroscopy in 1974.

I obtained a scholarship of DAAD, and workeda year at the University of Hamburg. The resultsattained on sulfur chemistry were published inthree papers. I established highly valuable rela-tionships with the colleagues in the “Arbeitskreis”of Professor W. Walter.


18

In 1987 I was nominated Head of Department ofBioactive Complexes. In the early nineties my teamsucceeded in developing an iron-pectine complex,which could be successfully applied in the therapyof anemia. The pectine obtained from apple canform a chelate complex with iron and thus thecompound developed represented the first naturaliron complex on the pharmaceutical market inHungary. The product has no undesirable sideeffects, therefore it may be recommended evenfor the treatment of pregnant women. The drug(FERROCOMP) contains also other metals (zinc,manganese, copper, cobalt) and vitamins (vitaminC, folic acid) needed for the absorption andutilization of iron in the human body.n How did you drift from chemistry to scientometrics?

In 1979 I was asked by the Directory Board ofthe Institute to find appropriate scientometricmethods for the assessment of publications ofour research departments. The aim of the projectwas to obtain scores which could be applied fordistributing among the departments grants forfundamental research.

I began to study the relevant scientometricliterature (I primarily surveyed books written byPrice, Garfield, Merton, Nalimov and Mulchenko;the report of Narin; the book edited by Elkana,Lederberg, Merton, Thackray and Zuckerman;and some papers of Martin and Irvine and Braun,Schubert and Glänzel.) Shortly it turned out thata reasonable publication assessment should takeinto account three main indicators:§ number of publications (primarily journal papers),§ publication strategy of the researchers (i.e., “emi-

nence” of journals where they are publishing),§ impact of the individual publications (i.e., citations

obtained).After discussing with the researchers about thepossible assessment methods, I realized that sug-gesting a scoring system with financial conse-quences involved great responsibilities. Never-theless, I was fascinated by the fantastic potentialof scientometrics. I actually “fell in love” with sci-entometrics. With the years passing by, thepassion has somewhat subsided, as usual, butwe will remain faithful to each other for a life time.

The assessment method I recommended, wasreadily accepted both by the Directory Board andresearchers as well. Application of the methodsoon resulted in a significantly better publication

strategy, and contributed to keeping a reasonablebalance between fundamental and applied(contract) research activity of the departments.

In 2002, I was the first scientist in Hungarywho was awarded the title – Doctor of theHungarian Academy – in scientometrics. I amstill active as scientific secretary of the ResearchCenter, which job involves many administrativeduties. I am also head of our Central Library.

In 2001 the Academy established the ScientificPublication Data Base of the Hungarian Academyof Sciences. The organization in my charge main-tains a bibliometric data base covering all scientificand popular publications (and citations) of the3200 scientists active in the institutes of the Aca-demy and research teams maintained by theAcademy at universities, from 1992 on. The databank offers excellent possibilities for performingcomplex publication assessments across differentfields both in natural and social sciences.n Do you still remember what were the main

findings of your first professional publications?

What was your first publication, actually?

My first scientific publication on the optical rotarydispersion of some morphine and codeine deriva-tives appeared in 1967. My first paper on sciento-metrics was published in 1984 in Hungarian lan-guage on the assessment methods of research re-sults applied in the Central Research Institute forChemistry. These results were also published in En-glish in the Research Policy in 1986. This paper be-came one of my most frequently referenced papers.I would mention here that before submitting myfirst scientometric paper I decided, if it is rejected, Iwill never try to publish a scientometric paperagain. One of my reviewers was an excellent expertin science policy and also an excellent teacher. Iam very grateful to him, and learned a lot from hisstudy (3 full pages!) on my paper, which has beenaccepted after major revision.n What do you consider your most important

publication? (Not necessarily the one with the

highest citation impact, but the one, which is your

personal favourite just because of the complexity

and/or beauty of the research.)

In my opinion, defining phenomena, relations andlaws, as well as classifying items of the study isinevitable in any scientific discipline. Trying to findcommon and special characteristics of the sciento-metric indicators was a great challenge to me. The


19

reviews (Scientometrics, 1988, 2001) dealing withthese problems were acknowledged by several ci-tations. In my forthcoming book (Woodhead Pub-lishing Ltd., Cambridge / Chandos Publ., Oxford)entitled The Evaluation of Research by Sciento-metric Indicators, I tried to give a standard des-cription (definition, calculation formula, unit) andalso practical examples showing the possible ap-plications of scientometric indicators.

Several of my journal papers (e.g., Scientomet-rics, 1986, 1998, 2002, 2006) describe differentpublication evaluation methods applied forinstitutes or laboratories working in differentfields. In 1986 the Relative Subfield Citedness(RW) index was introduced, which was the firstrelative index applying the mean citation rate ofpapers in a field as reference standard. Later, Isucceeded in proving that the RW index can becalculated by relating the percentage share of ateam or journal (country, institute, etc.) incitations within the total (i.e., world, field, etc.)to the percentage share of the correspondingorganization in publications (Specific ImpactContribution Index, SIC). I have verified that theratio of SIC indexes of two journals is equal tothe ratio of their Garfield (Impact) Factor (JASIST,2004). In this way, the right interpretation ofthe impact factor of journals, may be revealed.According to this new interpretation the impactfactor should be regarded as characteristic tothe contribution of the whole journal to the totalimpact of the field, and should not be consideredas the mean citation rate of papers.

One of the main paradigms of scientometricsis that the citation may be regarded as unity ofthe scientific impact. Both the Garfield (Impact)Factor, Publication Strategy (PS), RelativePublication Strategy (RPS), Relative Citation Rate(RCR) and Relative Subfield Citedness (RW) indicesapply citations. Therefore, I wished to reveal thereliability of the application of citations. I haveworked out the Reference Threshold Model(Scientometrics, 1987, 1998). The Model showsthe frequency and relative strength of the motivesof authors for referencing. I arrived at the con-clusion that the professional reasons representthe strongest and most frequent motivations.

On Saturdays, cleaning the carpets in the houseis my job. This activity always gives me a goodopportunity to think about scientometrics. On a

nice bright morning it suddenly downed on methat there should be some relationship betweenrelative indicators. I grabbed a pen and begandrawing formulas. In a few minutes it turned outthat: RW = RCR ⋅ RPS, i.e., the Relative Subfield Ci-tedness is equal to the product of Relative CitationRate and Relative Publication Strategy. I think, thiswas the first time a clear relationship between re-lative scientometric indicators has been established(Scientometrics, 2003).

Some years ago I was asked by Prof. W.E.McGrath to publish a paper on fundamentalaspects of scientometrics without sophisticatedindicators. I have tried, and elaborated the Sciento-metric Model of the Institutionalization of ScientificInformation (ISIS Model). I am extremely sorry but,the paper (Library Trends, 2002) remainedunnoticed. Nevertheless, I consider this paper tobe one of my most important publications. Thecore of the study is that higher number of refe-rences and longer terms of influence may be ac-cepted as proofs for higher grades of institutionali-zation (i.e., incorporation). The paper follows thepossible development of scientific information pub-lished through evaluation and modification pro-cesses toward a cognitive consensus of distin-guished authors of the corresponding scientificfield. The Model assumes sets of information witha short or long term impact, and information whichis integrated into basic scientific knowledge or com-mon knowledge. It describes the information andknowledge systems of science as a global networkof interdependent clusters changing dynamicallyin content and size. The relative and absolute de-velopment of the knowledge systems seems to beslower than the increase in the number of publi-cations. I am very proud of this complex modelalthough the paper raised no particular interest.n Have you ever had a very surprising research

result which was completely against your pre-

liminary expectations?

I often try to build up reasonable, relatively simple,numerical models for revealing relationships inscientometrics. I made a model of the publicationdevelopment in different fields (Scientometrics,2002). Contrary to my expectations, I had torealize that the Chance for Citedness (CC, i.e.,mean citation rate of papers in the field) is stableif the yearly number of publications is constant,and what is more, the CC decreases at a standard


20

increasing rate of publications (e.g., yearly numberof papers: 100, 110, 120, 130). At an acceleratingincrease of publications (e.g., percentagegrowing field), the CC-index is, howeverpermanently growing.n Let’s take a closer look at the scientist behind

science: how do your colleagues characterize you?

And how do you refine the picture?

Obtaining information about yourself throughcolleagues seldom occurs but, at a nice birth-dayparty, after some glasses of good wine, we mayobtain relevant information. According to mycolleagues I am a diplomatic, hard working, helpfuland reasonable fellow who is sometimes a bit over-anxious or even nervous. I think the descriptionmay be right. Nevertheless, I would add that I amcurious, I am always looking for the reasons, and Iappreciate traditional human values. I regardcreative work as one of the most important humanactivities, and I believe that the relationship of manto man and man to the universe should be go-verned by true love and honesty.n Rumour has it that beside chemistry and sciento-

metrics you also liked to sing. Better yet, you would

like to learn to play a musical instrument if you were

not afraid of the reaction of your family members…

Tell us more about it, please: what kind of singing

was it and what instrument would it be?

As far as singing is concerned, well, I was a mem-ber in the choir already in the school. Later, Ientered the Choir of Music Fans of Szeged. I hadthe opportunity to sing also in the choir of theSzeged Opera house, for several years. One ofthe most moving experiences in my life was tosing: “Dies irae, dies illa…” (G. Verdi, Requiem)and “Freude schöner Götterfunken…” (L. vanBeethoven, 9th Symphony).

I had only three piano lessons. When my piano-teacher wanted me to play something with theright hand differently from that I made with theleft hand, I interrupted my studies. I am very sorryfor that even now. The only consolation for me isthat my granddaughter plays the piano beautifully.n Any other hobby or leisure-time activity?

I like science fictions. But, only those books and filmswhere scientific and technical achievements can bereasonably extrapolated from the present knowl-edge (e.g., A.C. Clark, “2001: A Space Odyssey”). Inthe eighties one of my scientometric papers wasrejected. I felt myself deeply offended. I began to

write a book, a science fiction. The book was pub-lished in 1989 under the title: “3728, Revolt on theGreen Planet”. The central problem of the book isthat the thirst for power is spreading among peoplelike an epidemic. At the same time the potential ofhuman brain is decreasing. Mankind could be savedonly through putting all its knowledge and eventhe human brain into a super computer. The humanbody is lost, but the mind is still alive.

My hobby is collecting minerals and rocks. Iam always delighted by watching the differentshape and color of minerals built up fromchemically identical components.

My wife (Judit) and I are working in our gardenon the Danube-curve from spring till winter.

In winter I go skiing with my family, with myadorable grandchildren, Zsófia (10) and Balázs (6).n 5 books, 5 CDs and 5 movies you would take to a

desert island...

I like dramas, primarily “The Tragedy of Man” (ImreMadách) of which conclusion is said by Lord: “Man,I have spoken: strive on, trust, have faith!”Hungarian literature is very rich. I like to read poems,primarily by Dezsõ Kosztolányi, Gyula Juhász, andÁrpád Tóth. I would take with me also the famousbook of W. Durant: “The Story of Philosophy”. But,if I actually had to live on a desert island, I hadbetter to survey “Robinson Crusoe” (D. Defoe).

I am very fond of museums. I am interested inhistorical and painting exhibitions. I especially likepaintings of Renoir, Monet and Vermeer. (By theway, my daughter Zsuzsanna, makes interestingmodern mosaic works.)

Sitting in a comfortable armchair, free of dailyconcerns, I often enjoy evening concerts, listeningto the requiem of Verdi, Mozart or Schumann,organ music of Bach, Pachelbel and Liszt.

The films (“Margaret of the night” (C. Antant-Lara); “Ashes and diamonds” (A. Wajda);“Szindbad” (Z. Huszárik); “Bicentennial man” (C.Columbus) are my favorite movies, perhapsbecause they express my desire for an ideal life.n Could you mention a few of your most memorable

conference (or other job-related) stories?

Each scientometric meeting is memorable forme, one conference for the discussions, anotherfor the excellent meal and wines or forexcursions and visits to museums. But, allconferences are memorable for me for the nicecolleagues in the scientometric community.


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n What was the most embarrassing situation during

your professional career? And the funniest?

Scientometrics is regarded by non scientomet-ricians (perhaps by scientists, who are not tooactive and not too successful) as football, whereeverybody regards him- or herself as an expertand, of course, even better than any coach orprofessional player. A scientometrician is a pro-fessional like a physicist, economist, or a politician,who need professional education. But, sciento-metric articles are often authored by non-pro-fessional or quasi-professional persons. There-fore, it frequently happens that new authors re-veal already existing indicators. Although, thereis nobody and nothing without precedings. Itmight once be revealed that an “impactus factor”had been first mentioned and, moreover, cal-culated by Aristotle in 320 B.C. (JASIST, 1999).

I must admit that it is very embarrassing forme to read papers, e.g., on relative impact indi-cators (like RW or RPS or Relative Reference Stra-tegy) which give no credit to the author whowas first to describe these indexes. (Anyway, thisinformation cannot be regarded as incorporated

information, which needs no referencing anymore, like “gravitation” or “periodic table”.) If theessence of the indicator, relation, phenomenon,etc. has already been revealed and only the timefactor, data base, etc. is changed, the relevantauthor should be referenced. Omitting relevantreferences only once may be a pardonable sinbut, it is definitely unpardonable to omit themconsistently.

At the end of the interview, I should mentionthat I am very anxious about the future of sciento-metrics. The number of new indicators is, namely,exponentially increasing. I am afraid that we willsoon run out of Latin letters for labeling indexes(like A, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, etc. index). Therefore, Ibegan applying the Greek alphabet (see, e.g.,π-index). I have made statistical calculations andit turned out that we will have no problem till2012 if the letters of the Hebrew, Arabic andSanskrit alphabet are also used. But, what willhappen after 2012? Should scientometricians stoppublishing new indexes? Not at all, I realized thatwe may use thousands of Chinese characters. Yes,the future of scientometrics is guaranteed.

MICHEL ZITT

n Little boys usually want to be truck drivers or fa-

mous soccer players. It is hardly conceivable that a

child decides that he would deal with scientometrics

when he grows up. How did it all begin then? In what

major did you graduate and how did you get in contact

with scientometrics? (And by the way, what did you,

as a little boy, want to become?)

“Hardly conceivable” as you say, to such anextent that our children have always had somedifficulties understanding and explaining whattheir parents are really doing, and now agrandson has revealed that behind thisprofessional front my true occupation was, infact, “inventing stories”. Actually, my way toscientometrics was gradual. While preparing myfirst dissertation, on Delphi method - a strangearrangement of descriptive/predictive aims andnormative processes - I gained interest in historyand philosophy of science. At this period,academic debates between various schools of


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thought, from Popper to Lakatos and Feyera-bend, were flourishing. It was the first time Icame across Little Science, Big Science, as partof the general background.

I really became interested in scientometricswhen working on my thesis in economics de-voted to invention processes, and attended asummer school (1985) held by the CSI-Minesteam in Paris. This team (Latour, Callon, Courtial,Turner) was a pillar of the “strong program” inrelativist sociology of science – now “actor-net-work theory” – a landmark in science studies. Inline with their well-known radical positions, theyacclimated in my country the culture of sciento-metrics, especially the lexical approaches as-sumed to be more appropriate for describinghot and controversial science, leaving citationsto the cold “normal” science – this comparison isstill present in our current works. In 1990, theminister H. Curien with the help of M. Callon, P.Papon and R. Barré created the Observatoire desSciences et des Techniques (OST, Paris) in res-ponse to growing needs of French administra-tion and public research organizations. I wascalled by R. Barré to join OST in 1991 on a part-time basis and during the first years I contributedto operationalize the database and to establishbasic indicators from the state-of-the-art. It wasa good training for applied scientometrics. Thatwas the start of it.

Long before that, like many boys of the “Spout-nik generation”, I was fascinated by science-fiction,astronautics and astronomy, enrolling friends inbuilding (sort of) telescopes or manufacturing aboard game called “The conquest of space” - onlythe board has survived. I certainly would havebeen happy to discover that I would later workin an “observatory”- although the kind ofconstellations/stars we observe at OST shine in adifferent way...n It is a well-known fact that you always publish

together with your wife, Elise Bassecoulard. How

did it come?

It was rather natural, we already worked in thesame institution. At the time she was involved infood economics. As she committed herself to amaster degree in operation research andmanagement sciences, she was looking for analgorithmic application for her dissertation. Isuggested that mapping of changes in lexicalassociations could be a good topic. She eventually

dropped her previous specialty and we sort ofco-founded our scientometric team in additionto the family team. I could not thank her enoughfor the happy collaboration in those two areas!n Do you still remember what the main findings of

your first professional publications were? What was

your first publication, actually?

My very first article, published in 1983 in a Frenchjournal of agricultural economics, was focused onan early biotech innovation, the “high-fructose-corn-syrup” based on enzymatic isomerization ofcorn glucose and a competitor to sugar. Later on,in my thesis, I studied it again as an interestingcase of Schmookler’s diachrony of economic signalsand patenting. My first article in our field was aboutthe dynamic mapping issue just mentioned,published in 1991 in Scientometrics.n What do you consider your most important

publication? (Not necessarily the one with the

highest citation impact, but the one, which is your

personal favourite just because of the complexity

and/or beauty of the research.).

Perhaps a couple of related papers on fieldnormalization issues, “From cross-field to cross-scale effects of normalization” (with Elise andSuzy Ramanana) and “the audience factor” (withHenry Small) sketching an exploratory way for asource-based normalization, to compare bothto usual ex post normalization and to renewedinfluence-based measures of impact. Bothpapers try to connect some structural featuresof the universe of publications with practicalissues in designing indicators.

Besides, I have a particular affection for a blacksheep, an almost uncited paper. We all knownow about the concept of “sleeping beauty”coined by Tony Van Raan. In fairy tales, there issome circulation between beauties and beasts.I am afraid that this paper belongs to the cate-gory of “sleeping beasts”! Actually we were tryingto connect referencing and citedness distribu-tions in a stylized cocitation model, namelythrough the number of citing papers with at leastX references to articles cited at least Y times. Nice“IPP” music! Other “at least-at least” forms weremore successful (there are so many ways to failto invent the h-index!). Well, it is not fair to saythis connection we proposed between citingand cited sides was completely useless, at leastone team (ours...) did reuse it at least once, inour work on hybrid delineation of fields!


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n Have you ever had a very surprising research

result which was completely against your

preliminary expectations?

Not recently, but this is probably not a good in-dication, it rather suggests that our hypotheseswere too cautious! In a previous work with Yo-shiko Okubo on collaboration linkages betweenbig countries, we were rather surprised by thelevel of resilience of co-publication channels,shaped by history and culture more than geo-graphical proximity.n Let’s take a closer look at the scientist behind

science: how do your colleagues characterize you?

And how do you refine the picture?

Well I am not convinced that the subject is worthan inquiry. I am afraid they consider me as havingsome ideas, a minority of which useful, but a bitmessy person and moreover definitely allergicto hierarchy. I think they also consider my senseof humour as sometimes interesting butstrange. I try to be helpful when possible. I wouldnot try to refine...n What leisure-time activity do you like to do?

Not very original I guess: arts in general, music,literature, poetry, painting being the only art Iregularly practise. A moderate amount of travel,preferably with museums, is welcome too.n 5 books, 5 CDs and 5 movies you would take to a

desert island...

Just five? Even Bradford would have been moregenerous!

Books: Well if I take seriously the hypothesis ofthe desert island, I sacrifice, alas, my favouriteauthors with too short books (Borgès, Inoue,Kawabata, Conrad, Boulgakov, Marai I dis-covered recently), except Philippe Jaccottet’santhologies of French and European Poetry XXcentury and Hergé’s diptych The 7 Seven CrystalBalls/Prisoners of the Sun. Main courses wouldbe The Alexandria Quartet, In Search of Lost Time,The Brothers Karamazov. Lastly, a wild card: whateconomists call Robinsonades are supposed tobe helpful on desert islands (?). I pick a fascinatingone, Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island. Unfor-tunately, it does not tell us how to feed CD andDVD players with solar energy!

CD: Bach: Well-tempered clavier, Glenn Gould;Beethoven: Last quartets, Quartetto Italiano;Brahms: Intermezzi, Glenn Gould. The imperfectrecording conditions give to this CD the magic

of the “radio days”; Schubert: Winterreise, Goerne-Johnson; Ravel: Piano works, Samson François.A few jazz titles would be necessary too, especiallyby Armstrong, Ellington and Monk.

Movies: After all these rather serious books andCDs, let us turn towards pure entertainment,so farewell to Renoir, Kurozawa, Fellini,Bergman, Wong Kar Wai, Kubrick...

B. Wilder: Avanti; G. Lautner: Les tontonsflingueurs, “Crooks in clover” (cult film in France,pieces of dialogues known by quite a lot ofpeople); M. Carné: Drôle de drame (another cultfilm, adapted from J. Storer Clouston’s His firstoffence); A. Mackendrick: Whisky Galore; J.Demy: The young girls of Rochefortn Could you mention a few of your most memorable

conference (or other job-related) stories? What was

the most embarrassing situation during your

professional career? And the funniest?

Embarrassing situations may stem from projectsor work packages when you have to endorseproblems or delays that do not depend on you.During conferences, questions difficult tounderstand for any reason, may also beembarrassing, but just for a while... A recentevent, both funny and moving, was theretirement celebration of Elise within our lab,where colleagues had organized a fakeinternational conference on bibliometrics andevaluated her “human impact factor” on the labstaff (including myself), with remarkablescientometric rhetoric!

Many conferences are memorable but I willjust pick up a couple of ISSI events. In Chicago(1995) my presentation of the sleeping beastmentioned above had to take place just beforethe talk of a prominent scientist and Pricemedallist, V. Nalimov. Another medallist, J.Vlachy, was the chairman, and in this impressivecontext I was urged to speed up and I wasprobably quite unclear. A bit troublesome for thebeginner I was, but I was spared some possiblyembarrassing questions... The ISSI conference inColima, Mexico, remains in my memory for itsspecial neighbourhood with the puffingvolcano, the warm atmosphere, perhapsenhanced by the general optimism at thisparticular period. Social events were especiallylively, following C. Le Pair’s recommendation:don’t look, just participate!