Covid-19 refereeing duration and impact in major medical journals

Two partly conflicting academic pressures from the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic are the need for faster peer review of Covid-19 health-related research and greater scrutiny of its findings. This paper investigates whether decreases in peer review durations for Covid-19 articles were universal across 97 major medical journals, Nature, Science, and Cell. The results suggest that on average, Covid-19 articles submitted during 2020 were reviewed 1.7–2.1 times faster than non-Covid-19 articles submitted during 2017–2020. Nevertheless, whilst the review speed of Covid-19 research was particularly fast during the first five months (1.9–3.4 times faster) of the pandemic (January–May 2020), this speed advantage was no longer evident for articles submitted November–December 2020. Faster peer review also associates with higher citation impact for Covid-19 articles in the same journals, suggesting it did not usually compromise the scholarly impact of important Covid-19 research. Overall, then, it seems that core medical and general journals responded quickly but carefully to the pandemic, although the situation returned closer to normal within a year. Peer Review https://publons.com/publon/10.1162/qss_a_00176

The characteristics of early-stage research into human genes are substantially different from subsequent research

Throughout the last 2 decades, several scholars observed that present day research into human genes rarely turns toward genes that had not already been extensively investigated in the past. Guided by hypotheses derived from studies of science and innovation, we present here a literature-wide data-driven meta-analysis to identify the specific scientific and organizational contexts that coincided with early-stage research into human genes throughout the past half century. We demonstrate that early-stage research into human genes differs in team size, citation impact, funding mechanisms, and publication outlet, but that generalized insights derived from studies of science and innovation only partially apply to early-stage research into human genes. Further, we demonstrate that, presently, genome biology accounts for most of the initial early-stage research, while subsequent early-stage research can engage other life sciences fields. We therefore anticipate that the specificity of our findings will enable scientists and policymakers to better promote early-stage research into human genes and increase overall innovation within the life sciences.

Global research trends in augmented reality: scientometric mapping based on Scopus database

Purpose This study aims to present a scientometric analysis of publications related to “Augmented Reality.” In today’s Information Technology-driven era, augmented reality (A.R.) has evolved as a new immersive data source for developing knowledge combining authentic and digital images. Consequently, extensive research is going on “Augmented Reality” to discover its potential in knowledge development. Methodology The paper analyses and emphasizes the bibliographic data of Scopus articles with a suitable search query. The study was done concerning the chronological growth of research publications, highly cited publications, productive countries, prominent journals, prolific authors and institutions, author and country co-authorship network analysis and keywords analysis. The analysis was conducted by using open-source tools such as VOSViewer, Biblioshiny and Gephi. Findings The study reveals that a maximum number of publications on research in “Augmented Reality” are in the form of conference proceedings and articles. A.R., Virtual reality and A.R. application are the keywords with maximum number of occurrences. A significant number of publications are done in the USA, followed by Germany in the year 2020. Originality/value This study provides a precise idea of work done in different countries, a network of co-authorship between authors and countries, publication and citation impact of authors, journals, institutions and countries, year-wise progression and trending “augmented reality” topics research. This investigation will be advantageous for researchers and stakeholders to obtain rigorous bibliographic knowledge on literature related to the topic and work accordingly for R&D activities.

Research Output of University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka during 2000 2019

Universities play a vital role in the research and development of a country. A scientometric analysis is an essential tool used by the administrators, funding agencies, government, and researchers to know the publication trend on a topic, institution, author, journal, etc. This study analyses pattern of articles published by the University of Jaffna (UoJ) during 2000-2019; identifies publication growth rate, most prolific authors and their citation impact, communication pattern in terms of type of documents, journal publishing country and impact factor of these journals and also the international collaboration. Analysis of the data indicates, there are 293 articles were published in WOS indexed journals. The publication growth rate indicates that there is a consistent growth in the number of publications after 2014. It was found that multi-authorship dominates among UoJ researchers. A high number of publications were on Multidisciplinary Sciences. The UoJ collaborated with different countries; among them 59 articles were published with United Kingdom. Among the highly cited top 10 publications, an article authored by Ravirajan P received a high number of citations of 480. Among the funding agencies National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka funded for 24 publications, while UoJ funded for 16 and among the international funding agencies UK Research Innovation (UKRI) funded for 7 publications during the study period.

What do we know about career and development? Insights from Career Development International at age 25

PurposeCareer Development International (CDI) is an established source of scientific research on careers and development. The journal reached its 25-years milestone in 2021. To commemorate the occasion, the article aims to provide a retrospective of the major trends, research constituents, thematic structure and key factors explaining the citation impact of CDI articles between 1996 and 2020.Design/methodology/approachThe article extracts bibliographic data of CDI from Scopus and uses that data in (1) a series of bibliometric analyses to explain the major trends, research constituents and thematic structure and (2) a negative binomial regression analysis to explain the key factors affecting the citation impact of CDI.FindingsThe article finds that CDI has progressed and contributed substantially to the scientific community since its inception 25 years ago. The contributions in CDI are mainly from America and Europe and can be organized around five major clusters, namely career development, work engagement, entrepreneurship career, career outcomes and career mentoring.Research limitations/implicationsThe article provides a rich overview of CDI, but the findings are limited to the accuracy and availability of bibliographic data of CDI from Scopus.Originality/valueThe article extends Akkermans and Kubasch's (2017) 5-years retrospection of major journals on career and development through a 25-years retrospection of CDI, and in doing so, the article provides a longer and more accurate representation of CDI's contributions to the extant literature on career and development.

How frail is frail? A systematic scoping review and synthesis of high impact studies

Aims While the frailty index (FI) is a continuous variable, an FI score of 0.25 has construct and predictive validity to categorise community-dwelling older adults as frail or non-frail. Our study aimed to explore which FI categories (FI scores and labels) were being used in high impact studies of adults across different care settings and why these categories were being chosen by study authors. Methods For this systematic scoping review, Medline, Cochrane and EMBASE databases were searched for studies that measured and categorised an FI. Of 1314 articles screened, 303 met the eligibility criteria (community: N = 205; residential aged care: N = 24; acute care: N = 74). For each setting, the 10 studies with the highest field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) were identified and data, including FI scores and labels and justification provided, were extracted and analysed. Results FI scores used to distinguish frail and non-frail participants varied from 0.12 to 0.45 with 0.21 and 0.25 used most frequently. Additional categories such as mildly, moderately and severely frail were defined inconsistently. The rationale for selecting particular FI scores and labels were reported in most studies, but were not always relevant. Conclusions High impact studies vary in the way they categorise the FI and while there is some evidence in the community-dweller literature, FI categories have not been well validated in acute and residential aged care. For the time being, in those settings, the FI should be reported as a continuous variable wherever possible. It is important to continue working towards defining frailty categories as variability in FI categorisation impacts the ability to synthesise results and to translate findings into clinical practice.

A comparison of systematic reviews and guideline-based systematic reviews in medical studies

The question of how citation impact relates to academic quality accompanies every decade in bibliometric research. Although experts have employed more complex conceptions of research quality for responsible evaluation, detailed analyses of how impact relates to dimensions such as methodological rigor are lacking. But the increasing number of formal guidelines for biomedical research offer not only the potential to understand the social dynamics of standardization, but also their relations to scientific rewards. By using data from Web of Science and PubMed, this study focuses on systematic reviews from biomedicine and compares this genre with those systematic reviews that applied the PRISMA reporting standard. Besides providing an overview about growth and location, it was found that the latter, more standardized type of systematic review accumulates more citations. It is argued that instead of reinforcing the traditional conception that higher impact represents higher quality, highly prolific authors could be more inclined to develop and apply new standards than more average researchers. In addition, research evaluation would benefit from a more nuanced conception of scientific output which respects the intellectual role of various document types.

Research Productivity and Citation Impact of Indian institutes of Science Education and Research

The paper’s main objective is to investigate the trends of basic science research in India using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. It examines the publication patterns and impact of research productivity of five basic science institutions, i.e., “Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research” (IISER), namely IISER Kolkata, IISER Pune, IISER Mohali, IISER Bhopal, and IISER Thiruvananthapuram. The research output indexed in the SCOPUS bibliographic database of these five established IISERs was obtained from 2015 to 2019. A total number of 7329 research publications were analysed using various scientometric dimensions. This paper makes a concerted effort to present a comprehensive picture of the assessment of research outcomes at the five older IISERs, which are ostensibly India’s most active and prominent basic science research institutions. The findings reveal that these institutions are accountable for important research outcomes, such as a high number of citations, preferences towards open access (OA) publications, a rise in research publication year over year, a strong author network, a high degree of collaboration, and a high impact in terms of other scientometrics indicators. This paper discusses the findings of the research publications on the position of IISERs in basic sciences research and draws some conclusions about their effects.