International Journal of Information Science and Management
Volume:9 Issue: 1, Jan-Jun 2011

The study is based on 1808 citations appended to 101 research articles published in 7 volumes of 14 issues appeared in the International Journal of Information Science and Management (IJISM) during 2003 to 2009. Earlier, this journal was known (before 2008) as the Iranian Journal of Information Science and Technology (IJIST). Here, the author is considering the latest title (IJISM) for the study. The study reveals that totally 190 authors have contributed 101 articles during 2003 to 2009. The majority of the articles were published in 2007, and more numbers of 32 (16.84%) authors had contributed 14 articles in 2006. The greatest number of (49.47) authors contributed with two-authored papers and authors’ collaboration was found to be 0.80. The average number of authors per volume was 27.14. IJISM contained 1808 references out of which 1573 are print-citations and 235 are electronic-citations in 101 articles. This means that every issue published approximately 14.43 articles and each article had an average of 12.43 percent of print references and 1.86 percent of electronic citations. It was noted that authors had preferred print information for citations and journals were the most preferred sources among the print and electronic references compared to books, proceedings, theses and other sources. The country wise distributions of articles were 17 countries. Out of total 190 contributions, the highest numbers i.e., 157 have been contributed from Iran, which stands in the first rank among the contributors. UK and Germany stand in the second and third place respectively, followed by India, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh and Malaysia which are in the fourth place with a contribution of 2 articles each. Similarly, 9 countries are together in the fifth rank with a contribution of one article each.

Findings revealed that out of 691 articles in the field of Scientometrics, a total number of 183 articles (26.48%) were written during 1980 to 2009 by the top ten authors. Some of these articles were produced in authors’ collaboration and some of them were by single authors. Geographical analysis indicated that the field had evolved considerably in different regions of the world. Hungarian Academy of Science with 40 records (5.71%) was the most productive institution in the field of Scientometrics. Furthermore, chronological analysis disclosed that the scientific production in the field of Scientometrics showed a slow increase from 1980 to 2009. The overwhelming majority of documents were in English, and the international journal of Scientometrics was the most prolific journal in the field. It has also been declared that 67.87% of the literature was published in the area of Library and Information Science.

Highly cited papers are mostly authored in international collaboration. It is expected that co-authored papers bring more citations. On the other hand, it is inevitable that a part of citations is self-citation. This study investigates 134 and 236 highly cited papers in Iran and Turkey, respectively, to determine the extent to which highly cited papers are affected by author self-citation. A comparison accross subject disciplines shows that highly cited papers in Clinical Medicine (in Turky) and Physics (in Iran) received more citations than others while Engineering stands at the top position based on author self-citation counts in both countries. There is a significant relashionship between Iranian nationally co-authored papers and author self-citation. But it is not true of Turkish researchers. This indicates that Iranian contributors have more tendency toward author self-citation than Turkish researchers. Consequently, the influence of author self-citation on highly cited papers is to some extent a matter of citation behavior.

There are evidences of the relationship between collaboration rate and quality of articles. The more the number of authors, the more qualified the article. Study of the collaboration rate among researchers is essential for strategic planning and research policy in major.The main objective of this research is to determine the author's collaboration rate in the articles of Scientometrics journal. Other aims are determination of the number of articles of the journal during the mentioned year, the most prolific authors, the most prolific organizations and research centers, etc. The type of research is descriptive survey. Data was gathered via check list and analyzed through Excel.The most articles have been published in 2006 and the least in 2004. The mean number for each article is 2.33 authors. The collaboration coefficient is 0.60. Wolfgang Glänzel, Ronald Rousseau, and Leo Egghe are 3 writers who had the most articles and also the more collaboration during the mentioned years.Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) with 71 articles, University of Granada (Spain (with 49 articles and Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Hungary) with 33 articles are the centers which had the most collaborations

In this research, the citations received by DOAJ’s journals from the ISI Web of Science’s articles in 2003 to 2008 were studied and compared. The citations received by the journals in five fields (Arts & Humanities, Social Sciences, Pure Sciences, Technology & Engineering, and Health & Medical Sciences) as well as the difference among the citations received by DOAJ’s journals in the above- mentioned five fields were examined. The research method is citation analysis and the research data have been collected by means of Cited Reference Search in the ISI Web of Science. The English-language journals in DOAJ were chosen, and no sampling was used. Findings showed that out of 2953 journals, 321 journals (10.87%) received citations, and the total citations received by these journals were 19050 with the mean of 6.45 per journal; the journals in Pure Sciences received most citations (10116 citations, equal to 53.1%), and the ones in Arts & Humanities received the least citations (701 citations, equal to 3.68%). On the other hand, the findings of Chi-Square test (χ2) indicate that there is a significant difference among the citations in the above-mentioned five fields.

This study investigates correlation between journal self – citation and impact factor in Agriculture and Veterinary subject category through the scientific journals indexed in ISC's PJCR during 2001 to 2007. Citation analysis is used to conduct the research. The results indicate a significant correlation between impact factor and journal self – citation (r=0.425, sig= 0.000); that is, journals with low impact factor have less self – citation that indicates self – citation has a positive effect on impact factor. Pearson Correlation Coefficient demonstrates a relationship between impact factor and number of articles in negative side (r=-0.170, sig=0.037) that means the number of articles does not affect journal impact factor and also journals with more articles do not have higher impact factor. There is a significant relationship between the number of articles and journal self – citation (r= 0.596, sig = 0.000) that indicates the more number of articles the more number of self-citations. Findings show that journal self – cited rate in Agriculture and Veterinary subject category during 2001 to 2007 has undergone a descending process. After the removal of journal self – citation, the rank of 47 journals descended, 86 journals ascended, the rank of 18 journals did not change and the impact factor of 28 journals decreased to zero.

The increasing number of scientific journals, even in a subfield, necessitates a reliable and authoritative measure for researchers and libraries to identify core journals in a given subfield. The impact factor value is affected by different factors such as subject area, type of documents or length of the citation measurement window.In order to prioritize the choice of quality journals for scientists and libraries two new measures (Indices) have been developed.The DSI is an aid to decision-making with regards to the level of journal specialism within a particular discipline and serves to inform researchers in the field who wish to make individual subscription decisions. DPI has been proposed as a decision-making tool for libraries as it indicates the proportion of all citations within a particular discipline that have been received by a particular journal.