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Reports concern about the Elsevier journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, whose editor-in-chief has published 334 papers since 1991, 290 of which appear in his own journal – including 58 papers in the last year, 53 of which are in the journal itself, and whose papers have received 39,540 citations, 35% of which were by himself. Experts still needed: there are good reasons to be suspicious of metric-based research assessment [editorial]. Nature 2009;457:7–8. (doi:10.1038/457007b) There are different kinds of metrics for research, but they do not always prove to give robust results. This is the case of the Research Assessment Evaluation in UK. Expert review is far from a problem-free method of assessment, but policy-makers must recognize its indispensable and central role. Falagas ME, Lerodiakonou V, Alexiou VG. At what age do biomedical scientists do their best work? FASEB Journal 2008; 22(12):4067–4070. (doi:10.1096/fj.08-117606) Several human characteristics that influence scientific research performance, including set goals, mental and physical abilities, education, and experience, may vary considerably during the life cycle of scientists. Is high-quality research productivity is associated with investigator’s age? On the basis of a bibliometric analysis, highly cited research productivity plotted a curve that peaked at age 31–35 years and gradually decreased with advancing age. A considerable proportion of this highly cited research was produced by older scientists. High-quality scientific productivity in the biomedical fields as a function of investigator’s age plots an inverted U-shaped curve, in which significant decreases take place from around 40 years of age and beyond. Levitt JM, Thelwall M. Citation levels and collaboration within library and information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2009;60(3):434–442. Examines the Web of Science subject category of Information Science & Library Science and finds that collaboration varies with citation. Collaboration is clearly associated with higher citation, whereas the collaborative rates and levels of the un-cited articles remained low and stable. Influential information scientists had high collaborative levels, but their more highly cited articles on average are not more highly collaborative than their less highly cited articles, even if, they tend to be published earlier. The article introduces a new indicator of collaborative level: the average partner score, which can be used in other investigations of collaboration. Van Leeuwen T. Testing the validity of the Hirsch-index for research assessment purposes. Research Evaluation 2008;17(2):157–160. (doi:10.3152/095820208X319166) Describes the results of a recent bibliometric study conducted in the Netherlands focusing on the level of the individual researcher, in relation to an academic reward system. The Hirsch index is compared with various bibliometric indicators and other characteristics of researchers, and its usefulness in particularly research assessment procedures is tested. Results show a strong bias towards the research field(s) in which a researcher is active, thereby limiting the validity of this indicator for the specific interest of evaluation practices. Cassi L, Corrocher N, Malerba F, Vonortas N. The impact of EU-funded research networks on knowledge diffusion at the regional level. Research Evaluation 2008;17(4):283–293. (doi:10.3152/095820208X364535) Research networks foster the dissemination of innovation-related knowledge. The structure of collaborative networks and of knowledge transfer between research, innovation, and deployment activities is evaluated in the field of information and communication technology for the European Union as a whole and for several European regions. Results show that research networks complement diffusion networks by increasing the number of links and organizations involved in exchanging knowledge. Two types of actors are key players in these networks: hubs maintain the bulk of ties in the networks also helping the smaller and more isolated members remain connected; gatekeepers bridge research and diffusion networks. © Copyright 2009 by European Association of Science Editors Top of Page |
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