arXiv subjects

Werner Marx

Publications and source records attributed to Werner Marx.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Tracing the origin of a scientific legend by Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS): the legend of the Darwin finches

In a previews paper we introduced the quantitative method named Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS). With this method one can determine the historical roots of research fields and quantify their impact on current research. RPYS is based on the analysis of the frequency with which references are cited in the publications of a specific research field in terms of the publication years of these cited references. In this study, we illustrate that RPYS can also be used to reveal the origin of scientific legends. We selected Darwin finches as an example for illustration. Charles Darwin, the originator of evolutionary theory, was given credit for finches he did not see and for observations and insights about the finches he never made. We have shown that a book published in 1947 is the most-highly cited early reference cited within the relevant literature. This book had already been revealed as the origin of the term Darwin finches by Sulloway through careful historical analysis.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2013

Referenced Publication Years Spectroscopy applied to iMetrics: Scientometrics, Journal of Informetrics, and a relevant subset of JASIST

We have developed a (freeware) routine for "referenced publication years spectroscopy" (RPYS) and apply this method to the historiography of "iMetrics," that is, the junction of the journals Scientometrics, Informetrics, and the relevant subset of JASIST (approx. 20%) that shapes the intellectual space for the development of information metrics (bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, and webometrics). The application to information metrics (our own field of research) provides us with the opportunity to validate this methodology, and to add a reflection about using citations for the historical reconstruction. The results show that the field is rooted in individual contributions of the 1920s-1950s (e.g., Alfred J. Lotka), and was then shaped intellectually in the early 1960s by a confluence of the history of science (Derek de Solla Price), documentation (e.g., Michael M. Kessler's "bibliographic coupling"), and "citation indexing" (Eugene Garfield). Institutional development at the interfaces between science studies and information science has been reinforced by the new journal Informetrics since 2007. In a concluding reflection, we return to the question of how the historiography of science using algorithmic means--in terms of citation practices--can be different from an intellectual history of the field based, for example, on reading source materials.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2013

How to evaluate individual researchers working in the natural and life sciences meaningfully? A proposal of methods based on percentiles of citations

Although bibliometrics has been a separate research field for many years, there is still no uniformity in the way bibliometric analyses are applied to individual researchers. Therefore, this study aims to set up proposals how to evaluate individual researchers working in the natural and life sciences. 2005 saw the introduction of the h index, which gives information about a researcher's productivity and the impact of his or her publications in a single number (h is the number of publications with at least h citations); however, it is not possible to cover the multidimensional complexity of research performance and to undertake inter-personal comparisons with this number. This study therefore includes recommendations for a set of indicators to be used for evaluating researchers. Our proposals relate to the selection of data on which an evaluation is based, the analysis of the data and the presentation of the results.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2013

The Wisdom of Citing Scientists

This Brief Communication discusses the benefits of citation analysis in research evaluation based on Galton's "Wisdom of Crowds" (1907). Citations are based on the assessment of many which is why they can be ascribed a certain amount of accuracy. However, we show that citations are incomplete assessments and that one cannot assume that a high number of citations correlate with a high level of usefulness. Only when one knows that a rarely cited paper has been widely read is it possible to say (strictly speaking) that it was obviously of little use for further research. Using a comparison with 'like' data, we try to determine that cited reference analysis allows a more meaningful analysis of bibliometric data than times-cited analysis.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2013

Detecting the historical roots of research fields by reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS)

We introduce the quantitative method named "reference publication year spectroscopy" (RPYS). With this method one can determine the historical roots of research fields and quantify their impact on current research. RPYS is based on the analysis of the frequency with which references are cited in the publications of a specific research field in terms of the publication years of these cited references. The origins show up in the form of more or less pronounced peaks mostly caused by individual publications which are cited particularly frequently. In this study, we use research on graphene and on solar cells to illustrate how RPYS functions, and what results it can deliver.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2013

The normalization of citation counts based on classification systems

If we want to assess whether the paper in question has had a particularly high or low citation impact compared to other papers, the standard practice in bibliometrics is to normalize citations in respect of the subject category and publication year. A number of proposals for an improved procedure in the normalization of citation impact have been put forward in recent years. Against the background of these proposals this study describes an ideal solution for the normalization of citation impact: in a first step, the reference set for the publication in question is collated by means of a classification scheme, where every publication is associated with a single principal research field or subfield entry (e. g. via Chemical Abstracts sections) and a publication year. In a second step, percentiles of citation counts are calculated for this set and used to assign the normalized citation impact score to the publications (and also to the publication in question).

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

The Anna Karenina principle: A concept for the explanation of success in science

The first sentence of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina is: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Here Tolstoy means that for a family to be happy, several key aspects must be given (such as good health of all family members, acceptable financial security, and mutual affection). If there is a deficiency in any one or more of these key aspects, the family will be unhappy. In this paper we introduce the Anna Karenina principle as a concept that can explain success in science. Here we will refer to three central areas in modern science in which scarce resources will most usually lead to failure: (1) peer review of research grant proposals and manuscripts (money and journal space as scarce resources), (2) citation of publications (reception as a scarce resource), and (3) new scientific discoveries (recognition as a scarce resource). If resources are scarce (journal space, funds, reception, and recognition), there can be success only when several key prerequisites for the allocation of the resources are fulfilled. If any one of these prerequisites is not fulfilled, the grant proposal, manuscript submission, the published paper, or the discovery will not be successful.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2009

Citation Environment of Angewandte Chemie

Recently, aggregated journal-journal citation networks were made accessible from the perspective of each journal included in the Science Citation Index see (http://www.leydesdorff.net/). The local matrices can be used to inspect the relevant citation environment of a journal using statistical analysis and visualization techniques from social network analysis. The inspection gives an answer to the question what the local impact of this and other journals in the environment is. In this study the citation environment of Angewandte Chemie was analysed. Angewandte Chemie is one of the prime chemistry journals in the world. Its environment was compared with that of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The results of the environment analyses give a detailed insight into the field-embeddedness of Angewandte Chemie. The impacts of the German and international editions of this journal are compared.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2008

Graphene - A rising star in view of scientometrics

We have carried out a scientometric analysis of the literature dealing with graphene, a material which has been identified as a new carbon allotrope. The investigation is based on the CAplus database of Chemical Abstracts Service, the INSPEC database of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Web of Science (WoS) of Thomson Reuters. The time evolution of the publications shows a dramatic increase since 2004 when graphene has been isolated for the first time. The graphene literature has been analyzed with respect to the most productive authors, research organizations, countries of authors, and the leading journals. Furthermore, the time evolution of the major graphene based research topics and the top 10 most productive research organizations with respect to their specific topics have been analyzed and are shown as heat maps. In addition, the graphene research landscape has been established using the analysis tool STN AnaVist. Finally, a brief citation analysis has been performed. The time evolution of the impact reveals that, rather similar to the output evolution, the impact increase of the graphene papers within the starting period is possibly going to outrun the impact increase of the fullerenes and nanotubes papers.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2007

Comment on the history of the stretched exponential function

The original article of Rudolf Kohlrausch (1854) on stretched exponentials and their application to describe relaxation phenomena has been often misquoted in the literature after its rediscovery around 1984. We discuss here this fact and attempt to set the record straight.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2007

The citation impact outside references - formal versus informal citations

In this study the amount of informal citations (i.e. those mentioning only author names or their initials instead of the complete references) in comparison to the formal (full reference based) citations is analyzed using some pioneers of chemistry and physics as examples. The data reveal that the formal citations often measure only a small fraction of the overall impact of seminal publications. Furthermore, informal citations are mainly given instead of (and not in addition to) formal citations. As a major consequence, the overall impact of pioneering articles and researchers cannot be entirely determined by merely counting the full reference based citations.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2006

Using time dependent citation rates (sales curves) for comparing scientific impacts

As a simple means for comparing and - if possible - predicting scientific impacts of different researchers working in the same field, we suggest comparing their "sales curves". A sales curve is the number of citations of the researcher's papers per year, the citation rate, considered as a function of time. As examples, we present the citation histories of 10 older well-cited scientists working in the same field. The sales curve is found to be highly individual, that is, there is a large variation between different scientists' sales curves. For each well-cited scientist, however, the sales curve is steadily increasing as long as he is young and active, and its slope, the citation acceleration, contains the essential information about his impact. The slope averaged over the time of activity of the scientist is roughly independent of time and is a fairly age-independent measure of his scientific impact. In physics and chemistry, well-cited active scientists have time-averaged citation accelerations at the order of 10 citations per year^2 or more. The normal citation acceleration is an order of magnitude smaller. We also show the sales curves for three large research institutes whose sizes have been fairly constant over the last 35 years. These sales curves are quite linear and have slopes at the order of 1 citation per scientist per year^2.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2006

Mapping High-Temperature Superconductors - A Scientometric Approach

This study has been carried out to analyze the research field of high-temperature superconductivity and to demonstrate the potential of modern databases and search systems for generating meta-information. The alkaline earth (A2) rare earth (RE) cuprate high-temperature superconductors as a typical inorganic compound family and the corresponding literature were analyzed by scientometric methods. The time-dependent overall number of articles and patents and of the publications related to specific compound subsets and subject categories are given. The data reveal a significant decrease of basic research activity in this research field. The A2 RE cuprate species covered by the CAS compound file were analyzed with respect to the occurrence of specific elements in order to visualize known and unknown substances and to identify characteristic patterns. The quaternary and quinternary cuprates were selected and the number of compound species as function of specific combinations of A2 and RE elements is given. The Cu/O and RE/A2 ratios of the quaternary cuprate species as function of A2 and RE atoms are shown. In addition, the research landscape of the MgB2 related publications was established using STN AnaVist, an analysis tool recently developed by STN International.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2006

Georg(e) Placzek: a bibliometric study of his scientific production and its impact

The availability of a number of databases, in particular the Science Citation Index (SCI), have encouraged the development and use of bibliometric techniques to analyze and evaluate the production and impact of scientists. To avoid pitfalls and their sometimes serious consequences, however, considerable experience with the method is needed. The case of George Placzek appears as an excellent one to illustrate the procedure and its problems. Placzeks work covered a broad range of topics, including optical and neutron spectroscopy, neutron diffusion, nuclear reactions, and nuclear energy. He worked in a large number of places with some of the most outstanding collaborators and also as sole author during his short professional life. His publications appeared in regular, so-called source journals, in books, lecture notes and also internal reports which were classified till several years after the end of the war. In this article we analyze Placzeks work and its impact with the aim of illustrating the power and virtues of bibliometric techniques and their pitfalls.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2004

The disaster of the Nazi-power in science as reflected by some leading journals and scientists in physics - A bibliometric study

The consequences of the Nazi-power for the scientific process are described qualitatively in various articles and books. However, recent progress in information systems allows a quantitative reflection. Literature databases ranging back to the beginning of the 20th century, the ISI citation indexes ranging back to 1945 now and sophisticated search systems are suitable tools for this purpose. In this study the overall break in the scientific productivity and that of selected physical journals are examined. An overview of the citation impact of some 50 leading physicists is given. The productivity before and after departure is analyzed and connected to biographical data.

physics.hist-ph↗