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Toward an objective, reliable and accurate method for measuring research leadership

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Listed:
  • Richard Klavans

    (SciTech Strategies, Inc.)

  • Kevin W. Boyack

    (SciTech Strategies, Inc.)

Abstract

We compare a new method for measuring research leadership with the traditional method. Both methods are objective and reliable, utilize standard citation databases, and are easily replicated. The traditional method uses partitions of science based on journal categories, and has been extensively used to measure national leadership patterns in science, including those appearing in the NSF Science & Engineering Indicators Reports and in prominent journals such as Science and Nature. Our new method is based on co-citation techniques at the paper level. It was developed with the specific intent of measuring research leadership at a university, and was then extended to examine national patterns of research leadership. A comparison of these two methods provides compelling evidence that the traditional method grossly underestimates research leadership in most countries. The new method more accurately portrays the actual patterns of research leadership at the national level.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Klavans & Kevin W. Boyack, 2010. "Toward an objective, reliable and accurate method for measuring research leadership," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 539-553, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:82:y:2010:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-010-0188-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0188-6
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2012. "A new methodology for constructing a publication-level classification system of science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2378-2392, December.
    3. Kevin W. Boyack, 2017. "Thesaurus-based methods for mapping contents of publication sets," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(2), pages 1141-1155, May.
    4. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2018. "Are leaders really leading? Journals that are first in Web of Science subject categories in the context of their groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 111-130, April.
    5. An, Lu & Yu, Chuanming & Li, Gang, 2014. "Visual topical analysis of Chinese and American Library and Information Science research institutions," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 217-233.
    6. Chaocheng He & Jiang Wu & Qingpeng Zhang, 2021. "Characterizing research leadership on geographically weighted collaboration network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4005-4037, May.
    7. Sánchez-Jiménez, Rodrigo & Guerrero-Bote, Vicente P. & Moya-Anegón, Félix, 2017. "The role of guarantor in scientific collaboration: The neighbourhood matters," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 103-116.
    8. Berndt Jesenko & Christian Schlögl, 2021. "The effect of web of science subject categories on clustering: the case of data-driven methods in business and economic sciences," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(8), pages 6785-6801, August.
    9. Pranpreya Sriwannawit & Ulf Sandström, 2015. "Large-scale bibliometric review of diffusion research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(2), pages 1615-1645, February.
    10. Chaocheng He & Jiang Wu & Qingpeng Zhang, 2022. "Proximity‐aware research leadership recommendation in research collaboration via deep neural networks," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 73(1), pages 70-89, January.
    11. Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez & J. A. García & J. Fdez-Valdivia, 2014. "Evolutionary games between subject categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 869-888, October.
    12. Klavans, Richard & Boyack, Kevin W., 2014. "Mapping altruism," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 431-447.
    13. Hisato Tashiro & Antonio Lau & Junichiro Mori & Nobuzumi Fujii & Yuya Kajikawa, 2012. "E-mail networks and leadership performance," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(3), pages 600-606, March.
    14. Juan Miguel Campanario, 2017. "JIF-Plots: using plots of citations versus citable items as a tool to study journals and subject categories and discover new scientometric relationships," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1141-1154, November.
    15. Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez & Cassidy R Sugimoto & Vincent Larivière, 2019. "Follow the leader: On the relationship between leadership and scholarly impact in international collaborations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, June.
    16. Frode Eika Sandnes, 2021. "Everyone onboard? Participation ratios as a metric for research activity assessments within young universities," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6105-6113, July.

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