A Comparison of Citation Disciplinary Structure in Science between the G7 Countries and the BRICS Countries

Purpose： This study aims to compare the characteristics of citation disciplinary structure between the G7 countries and the BRICS countries.Design/Methodology/Approach： In this contribution, which uses about 1 million Web of Science publications and two publications years（1993 and 2013）, we compare the G7 countries and the BRICS countries with regard to this type of structure. For the publication year 2013, cosine similarity values regarding the citation disciplinary structures of these countries（and of nine other countries） were used as input to cluster analysis. We also obtained cosine similarity values for a given country and its citation disciplinary structures across the two publication years. Moreover, for the publication year 2013, the within-country JeffreysMatusita distance between publication and citation disciplinary structure was measured. Research limitations： First, the citation disciplinary structures of countries depend on multiple and complex factors. It is therefore difficult to completely explain the formation and change of the citation disciplinary structure of a country. This study suggests some possible causes, whereas detailed explanations might be given by future research. Second, the length of the citation window used in this study is three years. However, scientific disciplines differ in their citation practices. Comparison between citations across disciplines using the same citation window length may affect the citation discipline structure results for some countries.Practical limitations： First, the results of this study are based on the WoS database. However, in this database some fields are covered to a greater extent than others, which may affect the results for the citation discipline structure for some studied countries. In future research, we might repeat this study using another database（like Scopus） and, in that case, we would like to make comparisons between the two outcomes. Second, the use of a constant journal setyielded that a large share of the journals covered by WoS year 2013 is ignored in the study. Thus, disciplinary structure is studied based on a quite restricted set of publications. The three mentioned limitations should be kept in mind when the results of this study are interpreted.Originality/value： Disciplinary structure on country level is a highlighted topic for the S＆T policy makers, especially for those come from developing countries. This study observes the disciplinary structure in the view of academic impact, and the result will provide some evidence to make decision for the discipline strategy and funding allocation. Besides, JeffreysMatusita distance is introduced to measure the similarity of citation disciplinary structure and publication disciplinary structure. By applying this measure, some new observations were drawn, for example, ＂Based on the comparison of publication disciplinary structure and citation disciplinary structure, the paper finds most BRICS counties have less impact with more publications＂.Findings： The outcome of the cluster analysis indicates that the G7 countries and BRICS countries are quite heterogeneous regarding their citation disciplinary structure. For a majority of the G7 countries, the citation disciplinary structure tend to be more stable compared to BRICS countries with regard to the years 1993 and 2013. Most G7 countries, with United States as an exception, turned out to have lower values on the Jeffreys-Matusita distance than BRICS countries, indicating a higher degree of heterogeneity between the publication and the citation disciplinary structure for the latter countries. In other words, BRICS countries still receive much less citations in most disciplines than their publication output would suggest. G7 countries can still expect more citations than is to be expected based on their publication output, thereby generating relatively more impact than BRICS countries.

Document Type Profiles in Nature, Science, and PNAS： Journal and Country Level

Purpose： In this contribution, we want to detect the document type profiles of the three prestigious journals Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States （PNAS） with regard to two levels： journal and country. Design/methodology/approach： Using relative values based on fractional counting, we investigate the distribution of publications across document types at both the journal and country level, and we use （cosine） document type profile similarity values to compare pairs of publication years within countries. Findings： Nature and Science mainly publish Editorial Material, Article, News Item and Letter, whereas the publications of PNAS are heavily concentrated on Article. The shares of Article for Nature and Science are decreasing slightly from 1999 to 2014, while the corresponding shares of Editorial Material are increasing. Most studied countries focus on Article and Letter in Nature, but on Letter in Science and PNAS. The document type profiles of some of the studied countries change to a relatively large extent over publication years. Research limitations： The main limitation of this research concerns the Web of Science classification of publications into document types. Since the analysis of the paper is based on document types of Web of Science, the classification in question is not free from errors, and the accuracy of the analysis might be affected.Practical implications： Results show that Nature and Science are quite diversified with regard to document types. In bibliometric assessments, where publications in Nature and Science play a role, other document types than Article and Review might therefore be taken into account. Originality/value： Results highlight the importance of other document types than Article and Review in Nature and Science. Large differences are also found when comparing the country document type profiles of the three journals with the corresponding profiles in all Web of Science journals.

Do Chinese and American contributions in top journals have an equal citation potential?

Purpose： We want to contribute to the evaluation of Chinese research, focusing on contributions in top journals. Design/methodology/approach： Using a Mann-Whitney test we investigate if contributions in Nature, Science or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America （PNAS） by Chinese or American authors only, i.e. articles for which all authors have a Chinese or an American address, have a different citation potential. Findings： There is no reason to state that Chinese and American contributions in these top journals have a different citation potential. Research limitations： Because of the small numbers involved we were not able to make a distinction between publications in Nature, Science or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Practical implications： These results suggest that the better Chinese research results are of a similar level as those by American colleagues. Originality/value： It is well-known that the number of citations per publication by Chinese authors is still lagging with respect to leading scientific nations and in particular compared with the USA. We have shown that this difference does not necessarily hold in contributions in Nature, Science or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.