This study investigates the Web Impact Factors (WIFs) for Iranian universities and introduces a new system of measurement. Counts of links to the web sites of Iranian universities were calculated from the output of AltaVista search engine. The WIFs for Iranian universities were calculated by dividing link page counts by the number of pages found in AltaVista for each university at a given point in time. These WIFs were then compared, to study the impact, visibility, and influence of Iranian university web sites. Overall, Iranian university web sites have a low inlink WIF. While specific features of sites may affect an institution's Web Impact Factor, there is a significant correlation between the proportion of English-language pages at an institution's site and the institution's backlink counts. This indicates that for linguistic reasons, Iranian (Persian-language) web sites may not attract the attention they deserve from the World Wide Web. This raises the possibility that information may be ignored due to linguistic and geographic barriers, and this should be taken into account in the development of the global Web.

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology [JASIST] (forthcoming) / To be published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 57(12) (2006) 1616-1628. Abstract: Co-occurrence matrices, such as co-citation, co-word, and co-link matrices, have been used widely in the information sciences. However, confusion and controversy have hindered the proper statistical analysis of this data. The underlying problem, in our opinion, involved understanding the nature of various types of matrices. This paper discusses the difference between a symmetrical co-citation matrix and an asymmetrical citation matrix as well as the appropriate statistical techniques that can be applied to each of these matrices, respectively. Similarity measures (like the Pearson correlation coefficient or the cosine) should not be applied to the symmetrical co-citation matrix, but can be applied to the asymmetrical citation matrix to derive the proximity matrix. The argument is illustrated with examples. The study then extends the application of co-occurrence matrices to the Web environment where the nature of the available data and thus data collection methods are different from those of traditional databases such as the Science Citation Index. A set of data collected with the Google Scholar search engine is analyzed using both the traditional methods of multivariate analysis and the new visualization software Pajek that is based on social network analysis and graph theory.

Four subjects, ecology, applied mathematics, sociology and economics, were selected to assess whether there is a citation advantage between journal articles that have an open access (OA) version on the Internet compared to those articles that are exclusively toll access (TA). In two rounds of data collection, citations were counted using the Web of Science and the OA status of articles was determined by using the search tools OAIster, OpenDOAR, Google and Google Scholar. In the first round a purposive sample of 4633 articles for the four subjects from high impact journals were examined, 2280 (49%) were OA and had a mean citation count of 9.04, whereas the mean for TA articles was 5.76. There was a clear citation advantage for those articles that were OA as opposed to those that were TA. This advantage, however, varied between disciplines, with sociology having the highest citation advantage but the lowest number of OA articles from the sample taken and ecology having the highest individual citation count for OA articles but the smallest citation advantage. Tests of correlation between OA status and a number of variables were generally found to be weak or inconsistent but some associations were significant. Google and Google Scholar were more successful at finding OA articles on the Internet than were OAIster or OpenDOAR. The country of origin of the citing authors for applied maths was found in order to assess whether those authors from poorer countries cited OA articles more frequently than TA articles. While cited to citing article ratios from lower income countries favoured OA articles, overall percentages gave mixed results. The data from the second round confirmed the result for sociology. The second sample for ecology was randomly taken from 82 journals and exhibited a greater OA advantage. For economics, a second purposive sample of articles from 21 mid-range impact journals was taken and also exhibited a greater OA advantage. In an attempt to establish the cause of any citation advantage, logistic regression was used to try to determine whether the bibliographic characteristics of the articles from both rounds could be used to predict OA status. Results from this were generally inconclusive.

The concept of health literacy finds its origins in the field of education. In its brief history the definition, structure, and direction of the field has changed dramatically and has emerged as a multidisciplinary endeavor full of discipline specific manifestations, most recently, public health literacy. Using bibliometric and citation analyses, this study investigated the field of health literacy from the first use of the term in 1974 to the present year, 2010. A range of databases from the various fields that have contributed to the field were searched using the keyword string, “health literacy.” Data was organized, cleaned and parsed using EndNote X3. A free, Java-based application, CiteSpace, was utilized for visualization of author co-citations, document co-citations, keyword co-occurrences, and document co-citation clusters. This research presents researchers, librarians and those interested in the field with information to efficiently conduct literature searches and understand the structure of the field. In addition, this research provides insight into how and where the field may be progressing in terms of multi- and interdisciplinary research.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2005-10-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:28:57Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 pesce_rag_me_rcla.pdf: 847510 bytes, checksum: 52a6913b6cdf46906c8f597e54f71bbe (MD5) / O número de vezes que um cientista ou uma publicação científica é citada em outra publicação científica é um fator importante na consideração do seu mérito. No presente trabalho, estudamos a distribuição estatística do índice de citação de publicações científicas e de cientistas. Estudamos a densidade da publicação científica versus a citação. Encontramos que a estatística de Tsallis (Lei de Potência) pode explicar toda a distribuição acima de 8 graus de magnitude (10-4 a 104). Confirmamos isto através do gráfico de Zipf. Normalmente os índices de citação dos cientistas mais citados são acessíveis, o que em troca dão somente a informação sobre a dinâmica do mecanismo de citação deste grupo. Estudamos a distribuição estatística do índice de citação de físicos e químicos, brasileiros e internacionais, através do Gráfico de Zipf. Como os cientistas brasileiros são um pequeno sub-grupo no contexto da comunidade científica internacional, isto pode melhor explicar a dinâmica do índice de citação. Sendo assim, encontramos que a distribuição de lei de potência gradualmente truncada é a que melhor explica a distribuição do índice de citação com quase os mesmos valores dos parâmetros. Finalmente, discutimos o possível mecanismo por trás do índice de citação de cientistas e publicações científicas. / The number of times, a scientist or a scientific publication is cited in other scientific publication is now an important factor in his merit consideration. In the present work, we studied the statistical distribution of the citation index of scientific publications and scientists. We studied the scientific publication density versus citation. We find that Tsallis (Power Law) statistics can explain the entire distribution over eight orders of magnitude (10-4 to 104). We further confirm it through Zipf plot. Normally citation indices of highly cited scientists are available, which in turn give information only about the dynamics of the citation mechanism of this group. We studied the statistical distribution of the citation index of Brazilian and international physicists and chemists, through Zipf-plot technique. As Brazilian scientists are a small sub-group within the international scientific community, it can better explain the dynamics of citation index. We find that the gradually truncated power law distribution explain well distribution of citation index with almost same parameter values. We finally discuss possible mechanisms behind citation index of scientists and scientific publications.

Class of 2012 Abstract / Specific Aims: To explore whether publishing requirements for human-centered randomized control trials, particularly the CONSORT criteria, have any relationship to impact as measured by the Journal Citation Reports ™ Impact Factor. Methods: A worksheet was used to evaluate a methodically selected list of journals, including types of articles published, requirements of authors for human-focused randomized control trials, JCR Impact Factor and other JCR metrics for each specific journal title. A worksheet was filled out for each journal by each member of the research team and answers combined for consensus. Group means and SDs were calculated and the Student’s t-Test applied to values for selected journals. Main Results: 50 candidate pharmacy journals were identified and 41 met the criteria for publishing human-centered randomized control trials. Journals were grouped according to whether they required CONSORT or had other reporting requirements for human RCTs, or had no requirements for such studies. Few (6; 15%) pharmacy journals required authors to use CONSORT; and additional 15 (37%) journals provided as least some author guidelines similar to CONSORT. Pharmacy journals using CONSORT or other guidelines had a higher average impact factor (3.5; SD = 1.5) than did journals without guidelines (2.4; SD = 0.9; p = 0.007). Conclusions: There appears to be a statistical difference in average JCR metrics between journals which require specific RCT guidelines and those which do not. The use of reporting guidelines, such as CONSORT, by pharmacy journals is associated with increased impact as represented by JCR influence measures.

Online scientific publications are becoming more and more popular. The number of publications we can access almost instantaneously is rapidly increasing. This makes it more challenging for researchers to pursue a topic, review literature, track research history or follow research trends. Using online resources such as search engines and digital libraries is helpful to find scientific publications, however most of the time the user ends up with an overwhelming amount of linear results to go through. This thesis proposes an alternative system, which takes advantage of citation/reference relations between publications. This demonstrates better insight of the hierarchy distribution of publications around a given topic. We also utilize information visualization techniques to represent the publications as a network. Our system is designed to automatically retrieve publications from Google Scholar and visualize them as a 2-dimensional graph representation using the citation relations. In this, the nodes represent the documents while the links represent the citation/reference relations between them. Our visualization system provides a better view of publications, making it easier to identify the research flow, connect publications, and assess similarities/differences between them. It is an interactive web based system, which allows the users to get more information about any selected publication and calculate a similarity score between two selected publications. Traditionally, similar documents are found using Natural Language Processing (NLP), which compares documents based on matching their contents. In the proposed method, similar documents are found using the citation/reference relations which are iii represented by the relationship that was originally inputted by the authors. We propose a new path based metric for measuring the similarity scores between any pair of publications. This is based on both the number of paths and the length of each path. More paths and shorter lengths increase the similarity score. We compare our similarity score results with another similarity score from Scurtu’s Document Similarity [1] that uses the NLP method. We then use the average of the similarity scores collected from 15 users as a ground truth to validate the efficiency of our method. The results indicate that our Citation Network approach yielded better scores than Scurtu’s approach.

This diploma thesis deals with the design of an information system for sharing documents and bibliographical citations with the main emphasis put on using a cloud solution. The theoretical part explains the terms related to cloud computing and its application, the importance of citation and methods for the evaluation of information systems. Subsequent chapters of the theoretical part explain why citation is important and what methods are used for the assessment of an information system. The practical part provides an overview of the currently available solutions for developing an implemented information system. Moreover, an outline of the system illustrated via UML diagrams is included.

In this thesis, I draw attention to patterns at the intersection of (a) interpretations of science in two journals (Philosophy of Science, and Social Studies of Science) and (b) references to Wittgenstein's writings. Interpretations of science can be classed according to the degree to which they support a realist or social constructivist understanding of the entities described by current scientific theories. By tracing the intellectual traditions from which these interpretations emerged, I develop an abstracted classification of these positions. Since this classification does not meaningfully map onto the positions articulated by the writers sampled here (which is telling about intellectual histories generally), I develop a new, more promising scheme of classification. I find that Wittgenstein is appropriated more often in support of social constructivist views of science, but that reasons for this support are generally weak. Using a novel measure of content which I call "appeal-to-authority," I show that there is a significant difference between these journals in their use of Wittgenstein's writings. But there is a subtle methodological argument at work here as well. I show that methods of analysis which rely exclusively on intellectual histories, bibliometrics, and globablizing statements about the products of science suffer serious limitations. In short, this thesis reflexively shows that the methods upon which it is based allow room for considerable bias and manipulation, and thereby implicates many bodies of work built upon these methods. / Master of Science

Work zone crashes and fatalities have been decreasing since 1994. Yet, according to Fatality Analysis Reporting System, 667 people were killed in highway work zone crashes in 2009. As the United States’ infrastructure ages and new roads and highways are constructed less frequently, the need for repairs and alterations to the nation’s roadways is continually increasing. This growth ensures that work zones will be a vital piece of design focus in the near future. In order to continue the decreasing trend in work zone crashes, and reduce the still significant number of work zone fatalities, work zones need to continually be examined to identify opportunities for improved safety. This research explored the relationship between work zone related crashes and work zone design and setup. More specifically, existing literature and current standards, compiled with crash report form data in the UMass Safety Data Warehouse and field observations in Massachusetts were integrated to determine the causes and remedies for work zone related crashes. The research examined three critical areas: 1) causation of work zone related crashes in contrast to non-work zone related crashes along with variations of citations as a result of work zone crashes; 2) variations of the work zone definition and the impact on work zone involvement; and 3) analysis of conflict and event studies for small scale work zones to develop a methodology using surrogate measures to identify potential countermeasures leading to improved work zone safety. The results are expected to advance the current state of knowledge with regards to work zone design and setup, resulting in recommended actions for improved work zone analysis and design strategies.