The patterns of, and interrelationships among quality, collaboration, citations, and self-citations of cancer research were investigated using samples of 1974 papers representing three quality levels. The three samples were: a Random Sample of 315 research papers; a Second-Order Quality Sample consisting of 276 papers listed as additional references in the Yearbook of Cancer; and a First-Order Quality Sample of 279 papers that were fully abstracted in the Yearbook. Selections for the Yearbook of Cancer are based on quality and are currently made by 174 distinguished cancer researchers. / The term Collaborative Index was coined to describe the average number of authors per paper for a given set of papers and was used as a quantitative measure of collaboration. Collaborative or Authorship Level describes, for a given paper, the number of authors. Diachronous citations for each paper were obtained for the first five years following publication from the 1974 through 1978 volumes of the Science Citation Index. / The Collaborative Index for cancer was estimated to be 2.98--the highest reported for any specialty. Moreover, cancer research was found to be highly cited. The United States, Britain, Australia, France, Sweden, Canada, Japan, Denmark, Italy and West Germany account for 90 percent of all quality papers and 86 percent of the Random Sample papers. / Many hypotheses were tested using chi-square, correlation, F and t tests as appropriate. The major findings follow. / Bibliometric studies of any subject must be based on a representative bibliography of that subject and not on a selection of journals, no matter the status of the journals. / As quality increases, the extent of literature scatter among journals, and among countries decreases. / The quantity and quality of cancer research productivity of a given country are highly correlated. Countries which produce the most, also produce the best. / The greater the Collaborative Index of a set of papers, the higher is its proportion of quality papers. / A variety of data analyzed with a variety of statistical tests showed that the citations received by a set of cancer research papers increase with the quality of the set. Moreover, quality and rates of annual and continuous uncitedness were found to be negatively associated. / The relationship between citations and collaborative levels depends on the quality of the papers considered. For high quality papers, both gross citations and net citations (self-citations excluded) increase significantly as number of co-authors increases but the increase is not significant for other papers. / Cancer research conducted in the U.S. is not more collaborative than cancer research done elsewhere. / The run-of-the-mill paper based on work done in the U.S. is more frequently cited than similar papers based on work done elsewhere. However, if only high quality papers are considered, the citation rates are about the same whether or not the work was done in the U.S. / Cancer publications in English are more frequently cited than those in other languages but the latter have higher self-citation rates. / The proportion of self-citations to total citations declines with quality of papers. / Self-citation rates and mean self-citations per paper decline with age of papers. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 2809. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980. / The higher the total citations, the lower the rate of self-citations. / The relationship between self-citation rates and collaborative levels, and between the latter and mean self-citations depend on the quality of the papers considered. / Suggested indexing terms for the dissertation are Sociology of Science; Science of Science; Medical Informatics; Bibliometrics; Cancer Research; Quality; Collaboration; Collaborative Index; Citation Analysis; Self-Citations; and Uncitedness.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74211 |
| Contributors | LAWANI, STEPHEN MAJEBI., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 412 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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