Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Nicolas Robinson-Garcia

Publications and source records attributed to Nicolas Robinson-Garcia.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2018

Methodological considerations on the use of the normalized impact in the Severo Ochoa and María de Maetzu programmes

In 2011, the programme for Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence and María de Maeztu Units of Excellence was launched for the first time. Since this programme has become one of the axes of the Spanish scientific policy. 186 million euros have been distributed and 26 centers and 16 units have been accredited. One of the most relevant criteria for submission is the need for guarantor researchers to have a Normalized Impact of 1.5. In this work, we critically analyze the origin of this bibliometric indicator rooted in the 1980s, the different variants that have been proposed and the limitations its use in this programme have. Finally, we offer a series of practical recommendations for a more accurate use of normalized impact indicators for evaluative purposes.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

Global research collaboration: Networks and partners in South East Asia

This is an empirical paper that addresses the role of bilateral and multilateral international co-authorships in the six leading science systems among the ASEAN group of countries (ASEAN6). The paper highlights the different ways that bilateral and multilateral co-authorships structure global networks and the collaborations of the ASEAN6. The paper looks at the influence of the collaboration styles of major collaborating countries of the ASEAN6, particularly the USA and Japan. It also highlights the role of bilateral and multilateral co-authorships in the production of knowledge in the leading specialisations of the ASEAN6. The discussion section offers some tentative explanations for major dynamics evident in the results and summarises the next steps in this research.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

Is it reasonable to limit scientific coauthorship? There is no inflation of co-authors in Social Sciences and Education in Spain

This paper analyzes the evolution of coauthorship in Spain in the social sciences between 2000 and 2013. The goal is to explore to which extent limitations on the number of coauthors established by Spanish national evaluation agencies are justified. The analysis of 11681 papers authored by researchers affiliated to Spanish institutions in 20 subject categories of the social sciences reveals that there is no inflation in the number of authors, team size is similar to that found in foreign papers and the number of authors is dependent on international and institutional collaboration. With the exception of Anthropology and Special Education, in no area the average of authors by paper is higher than four. However, papers with a higher number of authors receive more citations. Overall, our results suggest that there is no justification on limiting the number of coauthors in publications, acknowledging that their inclusion in the criteria employed by Spanish evaluation agencies is to prevent honorary authors. Such limitation endangers institutional and international collaboration, and consequently, high impact research.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

Filling the citation gap: Measuring the multidimensional impact of the academic book at institutional level with PlumX

More than five years after their emergence, altmetrics are still seen as a promise to complement traditional citation-based indicators. However, no study has focused on their potential usefulness to capture the impact of scholarly books. While recent literature shows that citation indicators cannot fully capture the impact of books, other studies have suggested alternative indicators such as usage, publishers' prestige or library holdings. In this paper, we calculate 18 indicators which range from altmetrics to library holdings, views, downloads or citations to the production of monographs of a Spanish university using the bibliometric suite PlumX from EBSCO. The objective of the study is to adopt a multidimensional perspective on the analysis of books and understand the level of complementarity between these different indicators. Also, we compare the overview offered by this range of indicators when applied to monographs with the traditional bibliometric perspective focused on journal articles and citation impact. We observe a low presence of altmetric indicators for monographs, even lower than for journal articles and a predominance of library holdings, confirming this indicator as the most promising one towards the analysis of the impact of books.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

Tweeting about journal articles: Engagement, marketing or just gibberish?

This paper presents preliminary results on the analysis of tweets to journal articles in the field of Dentistry. We present two case studies in which we critically examine the contents and context that motivate the tweeting of journal articles. We then focus on a specific aspect, the role played by journals on self-promoting their contents and the effect this has on the total number of tweets their papers produce. In a context where many are pushing to the use of altmetrics as an alternative or complement to traditional bibliometric indicators. We find a lack of evidence (and interest) on critically examining the many claims that are being made as to their capability to trace evidences of 'broader forms of impact'. Our first results are not promising and question current approaches being made in the field of altmetrics.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

DataCite as a novel bibliometric source: Coverage, strengths and limitations

This paper explores the characteristics of DataCite to determine its possibilities and potential as a new bibliometric data source to analyze the scholarly production of open data. Open science and the increasing data sharing requirements from governments, funding bodies, institutions and scientific journals has led to a pressing demand for the development of data metrics. As a very first step towards reliable data metrics, we need to better comprehend the limitations and caveats of the information provided by sources of open data. In this paper, we critically examine records downloaded from the DataCite's OAI API and elaborate a series of recommendations regarding the use of this source for bibliometric analyses of open data. We highlight issues related to metadata incompleteness, lack of standardization, and ambiguous definitions of several fields. Despite these limitations, we emphasize DataCite's value and potential to become one of the main sources for data metrics development.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

Analyzing the disciplinary focus of universities: Can rankings be a one-size-fits-all?

The phenomenon of rankings is intimately related with the government interest in fiscalizing the research outputs of universities. New forms of managerialism have been introduced into the higher education system, leading to an increasing interest from funding bodies in developing external evaluation tools to allocate funds. Rankings rely heavily on bibliometric indicators. But bibliometricians have been very critical with their use. Among other, they have pointed out the over-simplistic view rankings represent when analyzing the research output of universities, as they consider them as homogeneous ignoring disciplinary differences. Although many university rankings now include league tables by fields, reducing the complex framework of universities' research activity to a single dimension leads to poor judgment and decision making. This is partly because of the influence disciplinary specialization has on research evaluation. This chapter analyzes from a methodological perspective how rankings suppress disciplinary differences which are key factors to interpret correctly these rankings.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2017

Using almetrics for contextualised mapping of societal impact: From hits to networks

In this article, we develop a method that uses altmetric data to analyse researchers' interactions, as a way of mapping the contexts of potential societal impact. In the face of an increasing policy demand for quantitative methodologies to assess societal impact, social media data (altmetrics) has been presented as a potential method to capture broader forms of impact. However, current altmetric indicators were extrapolated from traditional citation approaches and are seen as problematic for assessing societal impact. In contrast, established qualitative methodologies for societal impact assessment are based on interaction approaches. These argue that assessment should focus on mapping the contexts in which engagement among researchers and stakeholders take place, as a means to understand the pathways to societal impact. Following these approaches, we propose to shift the use of altmetric data towards network analysis of researchers and stakeholders. We carry out two case studies, analysing researchers' networks with Twitter data. The comparison illustrates the potential of Twitter networks to capture disparate degrees of policy engagement. We propose that this mapping method can be used as an input within broader methodologies in case studies of societal impact assessment.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2016

Towards a global scientific brain: Indicators of researcher mobility using co-affiliation data

This paper analyses the potential use of bibliometric data for mapping and applying network analysis to mobility flows. We show case mobility networks at three different levels of aggregation: at the country level, at the city level and at the institutional level. We reflect on the potential uses of bibliometric data to inform research policies with regard to scientific mobility.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2016

Public scientists contributing to local literary fiction. An exploratory analysis

Public scientists (scientists only from now onwards), understood as a member of the teaching and/or research staff of a public university or a public research organization (including humanities and social sciences), benefit the academic community, industry and other social collectives through teaching and research. Active involvement of scientists in culture is part of the richness of developed societies. Some voices in current debates on the evaluation of societal impact and the role of universities towards social development are claiming a refocus from a socioeconomic perspective to also including sociocultural benefits from academiaIn this paper we will focus in one facet of cultural engagement; writing literary fiction. We will narrow our general objective to local activities, due to the interest in the engagement of scientist on this geographic dimension. Do local publishers include the literary work of scientists? Are works written by scientists more likely to be local than works not written by scientists?

cs.DL↗
arXiv2016

Tracing scientific mobility of Early Career Researchers in Spain and The Netherlands through their publications

International scientific mobility is acknowledged to be a key mechanism for the diffusion of knowledge, particularly tacit or 'sticky' knowledge that cannot be transferred without geographical proximity and personal contact, for the incorporation of young researchers into elite transnational scientific networks, and for accessing additional resources or infrastructures that are essential to the research process but located in other places. The inadequacy and lack of appropriate data to assess the phenomenon of researcher mobility has been repeatedly pointed out by scholars and policy makers. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of different typologies of researchers according to their traceable mobility using scientific publications covered in the Web of Science (WoS). We compare two populations of researchers, of the same 'scientific age', based in Spain and The Netherlands. We observe differences in the degree of mobility of Spain and Netherlands based researchers. Factors associated with the different institutional conditions characterizing the two national systems need to be taken into account. First, the Spanish and Dutch university and research systems are different in many ways. Second, there may be very different institutional incentives for mobility in the two systems. More sophisticated bibliometric analyses and comparisons with different 'generations' of researchers, possibly combined with qualitative investigation, will be required to better understand the role and function of national institutional context in both research mobility and research careers.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2016

Can we use altmetrics at the institutional level? A case study analysing the coverage by research areas of four Spanish universities

Social media based indicators or altmetrics have been under scrutiny for the last seven years. Their promise as alternative metrics for measuring scholarly impact is still far from becoming a reality. Up to now, most studies have focused on the understanding of the nature and relation of altmetric indicators with citation data. Few papers have analysed research profiles based on altmetric data. Most of these have related to researcher profiles and the expansion of these tools among researchers. This paper aims at exploring the coverage of the Altmetric.com database and its potential use in order to show universities' research profiles in relationship with other databases. We analyse a sample of four different Spanish universities.First, we observe a low coverage of altmetric indicators with only 36 percent of all documents retrieved from the Web of Science having an 'altmetric' score. Second, we observe that for the four universities analysed, the area of Science shows higher 'altmetric' scores that the rest of the research areas. Finally, considering the low coverage of altmetric data at the institutional level, it could be interesting for research policy makers to consider the development of guidelines and best practices guides to ensure that researchers disseminate adequately their research findings through social media.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2016

Using network centrality measures to improve national journal classification lists

In countries like Denmark and Spain classified journal lists are now being produced and used in the calculation of nationwide performance indicators. As a result, Danish and Spanish scholars are advised to contribute to journals of high 'authority' (as in the former) or those within a high class (as in the latter). This can create a few problems. The aim of this paper is to analyse the potential use of network centrality measures to identify possible mismatches of journal categories. It analysis the Danish National Authority List and the Spanish CIRC Classification. Based on a sample of Library and Information Science publications, it analyses centrality measures that can assess on the importance of journals to given fields, correcting mismatches in these classifications. We conclude by emphasising the use of these measures to better calibrate journal classifications as we observe a general bias in these lists towards older journals. Centrality measures can allow to identify periphery-to-core journals' transitions.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2016

Tracking the performance of an R&D programme in the Biomedical Sciences

This paper aims at offering an evaluation framework of an Research and Development programme in the Biomedical Sciences. It showcases the Spanish Biomedical Research Networking Centres initiative (CIBER) as an example of the effect of research policy management on performance. For this it focuses on three specific aspects: its role on the national research output in the biomedical sciences, its effect on promoting translational research through internal collaboration between research groups, and the perception of researchers on the programme as defined by their inclusion of their CIBER centres in the address field. Research output derived from this programme represents around 25 per cent of the country's publications in the biomedical fields. After analysing a seven year period, the programme has enhanced collaborations between its members, but they do not seem to be sufficiently strong. With regard to the credit given to the initiative, 54.5 per cent of the publications mentioned this programme in their address, however an increase on the share of papers mention it is observed two years after it was launched. We suggest that by finding the point in which the share of mentions stabilises may be a good strategy to identify the complete fulfilment of these types of Research and Development policies.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2015

Analyzing data citation practices using the Data Citation Index

We present an analysis of data citation practices based on the Data Citation Index from Thomson Reuters. This database launched in 2012 aims to link data sets and data studies with citations received from the other citation indexes. The DCI harvests citations to research data from papers indexed in the Web of Science. It relies on the information provided by the data repository as data citation practices are inconsistent or inexistent in many cases. The findings of this study show that data citation practices are far from common in most research fields. Some differences have been reported on the way researchers cite data: while in the areas of Science and Engineering and Technology data sets were the most cited, in Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities data studies play a greater role. A total of 88.1 percent of the records have received no citation, but some repositories show very low uncitedness rates. Although data citation practices are rare in most fields, they have expanded in disciplines such as crystallography and genomics. We conclude by emphasizing the role that the DCI could play in encouraging the consistent, standardized citation of research data; a role that would enhance their value as a means of following the research process from data collection to publication.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2015

Can we track the geography of surnames based on bibliographic data?

In this paper we explore the possibility of using bibliographic databases for tracking the geographic origin of surnames. Surnames are used as a proxy to determine the ethnic, genetic or geographic origin of individuals in many fields such as Genetics or Demography; however they could also be used for bibliometric purposes such as the analysis of scientific migration flows. Here we present two relevant methodologies for determining the most probable country to which a surname could be assigned. The first methodology assigns surnames based on the most common country that can be assigned to a surname and the Kullback-Liebler divergence measure. The second method uses the Gini Index to evaluate the assignment of surnames to countries. We test both methodologies with control groups and conclude that, despite needing further analysis on its validity; these methodologies already show promising results.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2014

Bibliometric Indicators for Publishers: Data processing, indicators and interpretation

Here we describe the Bibliometric Indicators for Publishers Project, an initiative undertaken by EC3Metrics SL for the analysis and development of indicators based on books and book chapters. Its goal is to study and analyze the publication and citation patterns of books and book chapters considering academic publishers as the unit of analysis. It aims at developing new methodologies and indicators that can better capture and define the research impact of publishers. It is an on-going project in which data sources and indicators are tested. We consider academic publishers as an analogy of journals, focusing on them as the unit of analysis. In this working paper we present the http://bipublishers.es website where all findings derived from the project are displayed. We describe the data retrieval and normalization process and we show the main results. A total 482,470 records have been retrieved and processed, identifying 342 publishers from which 254 have been analyzed. Then six indicators have been calculated for each publisher for four fields and 38 disciplines and displayed.

cs.DL↗