How the scientific community responded to the COVID-19 pandemic: A subject-level time-trend bibliometric analysis

Background COVID-19 has triggered an avalanche of research publications, the various aspects of which need to be assessed. The objective of this study is to determine the scientific community’s response patterns to COVID-19 through a bibliometric analysis of the time-trends, global contribution, international collaboration, open-access provision, science domains of focus, and the behavior of journals. Methods The bibliographic records on COVID-19 literature were retrieved from both PubMed and Scopus. The period for searching was set from November 1, 2019, to April 15, 2021. The bibliographic data were coupled with COVID-19 incidence to explore possible association, as well as World Bank indicators and classification of economies. Results A total of 159132 records were included in the study. Following the escalation of incidences of COVID-19 in late 2020 and early 2021, the monthly publication count made a new peak in March 2021 at 20505. Overall, 125155 (78.6%) were national, 22548 (14.2%) were bi-national, and 11429 (7.2%) were multi-national. Low-income countries with 928 (66.8%) international publications had the highest percentage of international. The open-access provision decreased from 85.5% in February 2020 to 62.0% in April 2021. As many as 82841 (70.8%) publications were related to health sciences, followed by life sciences 27031 (23.1%), social sciences 20291 (17.3%), and physical sciences 15141 (12.9%). The top three medical subjects in publications were general internal medicine, public health, and infectious diseases with 28.9%, 18.3%, and 12.6% of medical publications, respectively. Conclusions The association between the incidence and publication count indicated the scientific community’s interest in the ongoing situation and timely response to it. Only one-fifth of publications resulted from international collaboration, which might lead to redundancy without adding significant value. Our study underscores the necessity of policies for attraction of international collaboration and direction of vital funds toward domains of higher priority.

Do authors play fair or manipulate Google Scholar h-index?

PurposeThe study's main purpose is to scrutinize Google Scholar profiles and find the answer to the question, “Do authors play fair or manipulate Google Scholar Bibliometric Indicators like h-index and i10-index?”Design/methodology/approachThe authors scrutinized the Google Scholar profiles of the top 50 library and science researchers claiming authorship of 21,022 publications. The bibliographic information of all the 21,022 publications like authorship and subject details were verified to identify accuracy, discrepancies and manipulation in their authorship claims. The actual and fabricated entries of all the authors along with their citations were recorded in the Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for further analyses and interpretation using simple arithmetic calculations.FindingsThe results show that the h-index of authors obtained from the Google Scholar should not be approved at its face value as the variations exist in the publication count and citations, which ultimately affect their h-index and i10 index. The results reveal that the majority of the authors have variations in publication count (58%), citations (58%), h-index (42%) and i10-index (54%). The magnitude of variation in the number of publications, citations, h-index and i10-index is very high, especially for the top-ranked authors.Research limitations/implicationsThe scope of the study is strictly restricted to the faculty members of library and information science and cannot be generalized across disciplines. Further, the scope of the study is limited to Google Scholar and caution needs to be taken to extend results to other databases like Web of Science and Scopus.Practical implicationsThe study has practical implications for authors, publishers, and academic institutions. Authors must stop the unethical research practices; publishers must adopt techniques to overcome the problem and academic institutions need to take precautions before hiring, recruiting, promoting and allocating resources to the candidates on the face value of the Google Scholar h-index. Besides, Google needs to work on the weak areas of Google Scholar to improve its efficacy.Originality/valueThe study brings to light the new ways of manipulating bibliometric indicators like h-index, and i10-index provided by Google Scholar using false authorship claims.

Structured inequalities and authors’ positionalities in academic publishing: The case of Philippine international migration scholarship

This article examines structured inequalities and authors’ positionalities in the academic publishing field. It uses Bourdieu’s insights in explaining the reproduction of publishing inequality and mobility through cultural capital and habitus modification. The article elaborates ‘positionality’ to constitute structure and agency through position and positioning, and situates academics in varying positionalities (insider, outsider, hybrid) in the global publishing field. Focusing on Filipino international migration scholarship, the article examines 392 journal articles from 1989 to 2018, and tracks the first authors’ ethnicity, institutional affiliation, and university where they received their PhD. The findings show that authors institutionally affiliated in the Global North (insiders) dominate the field (publication count and citations), while homeland-based Filipino scholars are in the periphery (outsiders). With their insider-leaning hybrid positionality, overseas Filipino scholars in the Global North accrue network-mediated benefits. They have respectable representation in publication count and are the most frequently cited authors. Positionality is examined as cultural capital accumulation and adoption of the dominant habitus that enable academics to shift positionality from outsider to insider and derive benefits in research and publishing. The article contributes to the literature on positionality-based inequalities in knowledge production and a periphery standpoint in the discourse on academic publishing inequality.

Publish-or-Perish Propagates Scientific Malpractice and Neglect

Globally, there is an increase in academic interest. Student enrollment in universities are skyrocketing, suggesting an increased need to hold academic degrees. However, the mass increase in awarded PhDs with the stagnant number of faculty positions is causing a major strain in the academic hiring process. The result of this disparity is a necessary shift from holistically considering each scientist to briefly considering a subset of applicant metrics, for example publication counts. The increased emphasis of publication count metrics in hiring has led to the expression publish-or-perish. The publish-or-perish architecture shifts the focus of scientists away from meticulous scientific practices and contributions to society in order to ensure that they are outputting as many publications as possible. I here consider how the increased strain on the academic architecture is detrimental for faculty applicants and how it is propagating scientific malpractice and neglect.

A formula to estimate a researcher’s impact by prioritizing highly cited publications

Here we suggest a new index to estimate the scientific impact of an individual researcher, namely the S-index. This index has been designed to emphasize highly cited, truly important works and to be minimally affected by poorly cited ones, without setting any arbitrary threshold. The first property makes it advantageous over the h-index, which does not discriminate between highly and moderately cited articles, while the second property - over the total number of citations, preventing the possibility of overclocking an index by publishing many trivial articles. Contrary to the h-index, which has an upper limit of the total number of publications regardless of their citation numbers, the S-index is not limited by the publication count. This allows scientists having few but very influential works to receive appropriate and respectable index values, which is impossible with the h-index. Moreover, only 10 most cited publications of an individual are typically required to calculate an S-index to 99% accuracy. Collectively, the S-index is principally different from the existing scientometric indicators and should facilitate better recognition of prominent researchers.