Geographic characteristics of the growth of informetrics literature 1987-2008

Recent studies have concluded that American contributions to science literature have been in relative decline, whereas contributions from other parts of the world such as the European Union and Asia have increased. Is the same true for the areas of bibliometrics, informetrics and scientometrics? This study investigates the growth and geographic distribution of metrics research for the period 1987–2008. Similar to studies of other disciplines or science in general, the findings reveal that the United States continues to dominate, but there has been a recent relative decline in North American contributions overall. European and Asian contributions have grown substantially. National and institutional collaborations that contribute to this growth do not necessarily follow close geographic proximity, although European nations have been more active with international collaborations overall, both within Europe and elsewhere.

[1]  Concepción S. Wilson,et al.  The Literature of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, and Informetrics , 2001, Scientometrics.

[2]  Robert D. Shelton,et al.  The US-EU race for leadership of science and technology: Qualitative and quantitative indicators , 2004, Scientometrics.

[3]  D. King.  The scientific impact of nations , 2004, Nature.

[4]  van Eck Nees Jan,et al.  How to normalize cooccurrence data An analysis of some well-known similarity measures , 2009 .

[5]  Koenraad Debackere,et al.  ‘Triad’ or ‘tetrad’? On global changes in a dynamic world , 2008, Scientometrics.

[6]  Nees Jan van Eck,et al.  How to normalize cooccurrence data? An analysis of some well-known similarity measures , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[7]  Robert D. Shelton,et al.  Relations between national research investment and publication output: Application to an American Paradox , 2008, Scientometrics.

[8]  P. Zhou,et al.  The Emergence of China as a Leading Nation in Science. Research Policy, 35(1), 2006, 83-104. , 2006, 0911.3421.

[9]  R. D. Shelton,et al.  The Race for World Leadership of Science and Technology: Status and Forecasts , 2010 .

[10]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Is the United States losing ground in science? A global perspective on the world science system , 2009, Scientometrics.

[11]  Henk F. Moed,et al.  Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research , 2005 .

[12]  Ronald Rousseau,et al.  Evaluation of Research Performance and Scientometric Indicators in China , 2004 .

[13]  Wolfgang Glänzel,et al.  National characteristics in international scientific co-authorship relations , 2004, Scientometrics.

[14]  Ludo Waltman,et al.  Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping , 2009, Scientometrics.

[15]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Is the European Union Becoming a Single Publication System? , 2000, Scientometrics.

[16]  Mike Thelwall,et al.  Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social Sciences , 2009, Introduction to Webometrics.

[17]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Co-occurrence matrices and their applications in information science: Extending ACA to the Web environment , 2006 .

[18]  Elena Maceviciute.  Review of: Thelwall, Michael. Introduction to webometrics: quantitative web research for the social sciences. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool, 2009 , 2010, Inf. Res..

[19]  Robert D. Shelton,et al.  Do new SCI journals have a different national bias? , 2009, Scientometrics.

[20]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Macro-level indicators of the relations between research funding and research output , 2009, J. Informetrics.

[21]  Loet Leydesdorff,et al.  Mapping the geography of science: Distribution patterns and networks of relations among cities and institutes , 2010, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..