Bibliometric Analysis

& 

Visualization Tools

        Bibliometrics is the statistical analysis of books, articles, and other publications. This approach measures the productivity and impact of authors or researchers, offering insights into their contributions to a field. It also plays a crucial role in determining journal impact factors, which assess the influence and quality of academic journals. Furthermore, bibliometric data can be visualized to explore and comprehend the relationships between publications, providing a clearer understanding of scholarly communication and research trends.

Bibliometric analysis techniques are broadly classified into two categories:

    1. Performance analysis evaluates the contributions of various research entities, such as authors, institutions, or countries.

    2. Science mapping examines the relationships and connections between these research entities, providing insights into collaboration patterns and thematic developments.

Bibliometrics Analysis and Visualization Tools

This blog post will examine various bibliometric analysis tools that can enhance your research and provide valuable insights.

1.BibExcel (homepage.univie.ac.at/juan.gorraiz/bibexcel/)

BibExcel is designed to assist a user in analyzing bibliographic data or any data of a textual nature formatted similarly. The idea is to generate data files that can be imported to Excel or any program that takes tabbed data records for further processing. Developed at Umeå University in Sweden, BibExcel is a flexible bibliometric processing tool designed to prepare data for analysis. Although it lacks visualization features, BibExcel enables users to process bibliographic data from prominent sources such as Web of Science and Scopus. It supports various analyses, including citation counts, co-authorship patterns, and bibliographic coupling.

2.  Bibliometrix (R Package)

This free and open-source software for data science, scientific research, and technical communication is an integrated development environment (IDE) for R.  Given its integration with R, Bibliometrix allows for high flexibility and reproducibility in data analysis, making it ideal for researchers who need in-depth control over data processing and statistical analyses.

3.  Biblioshiny (https://www.bibliometrix.org/home/index.php/layout/biblioshiny)

Biblioshiny is a web-based graphical interface designed for Bibliometrix, which is aimed at making bibliometric analysis accessible to users without programming expertise. With its intuitive interface, Biblioshiny allows researchers to perform analyses like collaboration networks and thematic evolution without requiring coding knowledge. It is particularly well-suited for exploratory data analysis and initial bibliometric studies. It works under the R Studio package.

4.  HistCite

HistCite is a software package used for bibliometric analysis and information visualization. It was developed by Eugene Garfield. It was created to assist researchers in visualizing the historical progression of scientific fields by producing "historiographs," which are chronological maps depicting citation relationships among documents in a specific dataset. HistCite has been discontinued and is no longer officially supported by Clarivate

5. ScientoPy (https://www.scientopy.com/en/)

ScientoPy is an open-source Python-based scientometric analysis tool. ScientoPy's straightforward design and integration with Python libraries for data manipulation make it an accessible tool for Python users seeking to analyze bibliometric data with ease.

6.  Sci2 Tool (https://sci2.cns.iu.edu/user/index.php)

The Science of Science (Sci2) Tool is a modular toolset specifically designed for the study of science. It supports the temporal, geospatial, topical, and network analysis and visualization of scholarly datasets at the micro (individual), meso (local), and macro (global) levels. Sci2 is well-suited for multi-dimensional bibliometric studies and supports comprehensive analysis of large datasets.

7. PoP (Publish or Perish) (https://harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish)

Publish or Perish is a software tool that collects and analyzes academic citations. It gathers raw citation data from various sources such as crossref and Google Scholar, processes the information, and provides a range of citation metrics, such as the total number of papers, overall citations, and the h-index. This is not well suited for the complex analysis of data.

8. VOSviewer (https://www.vosviewer.com/)

VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks may for instance include journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they can be constructed based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature.

9. BiblioMagika (https://bibliomagika.com/)

biblioMagika® is an Excel-based tool designed for conducting bibliometric analysis, focusing on assessing publication productivity and evaluating scholarly impact. It offers a range of calculations including total publications (TP), contributing authors (NCA), cited publications (NCP), total citations (TC), average citations per publication (C/P), average citations per cited publication (C/CP), h-index, g-index, m-index, citations sum within the h-core, cumulative total publication, and more. This analysis can be performed across various parameters such as publication year, source titles, authors, affiliations, and countries.

10. Pajek

Pajek is a network analysis tool that is particularly effective for analyzing and visualizing large-scale bibliometric networks. Initially created for social network analysis, Pajek has been successfully applied in bibliometrics for tasks like citation analysis, co-authorship networks, and clustering. Its strength lies in its ability to manage large datasets efficiently, utilizing advanced algorithms to reveal network structures.

11. Gephi (https://gephi.org/)

Gephi is an open-source network exploration and manipulation software. Developed modules can import, visualize, spatialize, filter, manipulate, and export all types of networks. The visualization module uses a special 3D render engine to render real-time graphs.  Gephi allows researchers to dynamically explore complex networks, such as citation and co-authorship networks. It offers a high degree of customization, enabling users to modify layouts, colors, and clustering algorithms, making it an excellent tool for examining relationships within large bibliometric datasets.

References

Bastian, M., Heymann, S., & Jacomy, M. (2009). Gephi: An Open Source Software for Exploring and Manipulating Networks. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 3(1), 361–362. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v3i1.13937

Aria, M., & Cuccurullo, C. (2017). bibliometrix : An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis. Journal of Informetrics, 11(4), 959–975. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.007

Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2009). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84(2), 523–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3

Library Guides: Bibliometrics: Tools and Software. (n.d.). https://liu.cwp.libguides.com/c.php?g=225325&p=4966525

Moral-Muñoz, J. A., Herrera-Viedma, E., Santisteban-Espejo, A., & Cobo, M. J. (2020). Software tools for conducting bibliometric analysis in science: An up-to-date review. El Profesional De La Informacion, 29(1). https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2020.ene.03

Preprint servers are online platforms where researchers can publish their manuscripts prior to undergoing peer review. This practice allows for the rapid dissemination of research findings, facilitating immediate access and feedback from the academic community.

Advantages of Preprint Servers

1. Rapid Dissemination of Research

One of the most significant advantages of preprint servers is the speed at which research can be shared. Traditional peer-reviewed journals often take months, if not years, to publish articles. In contrast, preprints can be made available within days, enabling researchers to share their findings promptly.

2. Open Access

Preprint servers are typically open access, meaning that anyone can read and download the papers for free. This promotes greater accessibility and democratizes access to scientific knowledge, which can be particularly beneficial for researchers in developing countries who may not have access to expensive journal subscriptions.

3. Early Feedback

By posting a preprint, authors can receive feedback from the broader scientific community before formal peer review. This can help improve the quality of the research, identify potential errors, and refine the manuscript.

4. Establishing Priority

Publishing on a preprint server allows researchers to establish priority for their discoveries. This can be crucial in fast-moving fields where multiple groups might be working on similar problems.

1. Lack of Peer Review

The primary criticism of preprint servers is the lack of formal peer review. While this allows for rapid dissemination, it also means that the research has not been vetted by experts in the field, which can raise concerns about the reliability and validity of the findings.

2. Potential for Information Overload

With the increasing popularity of preprint servers, there is a risk of information overload. Researchers and practitioners may find it challenging to keep up with the sheer volume of new papers being published, some of which may be of variable quality.

3. Ethical Concerns

There are also ethical considerations, particularly around the sharing of potentially sensitive or controversial findings. For example, preprints in the biomedical field may contain information that could influence clinical practice or public health before being properly validated.

Preprint servers can be categorized based on the disciplines they cover. Some of the main types include:

1. General Preprint Servers

These platforms cover a wide range of disciplines. Examples include:

• arXiv: One of the oldest and most well-known preprint servers, primarily for physics, mathematics, and computer science.
• OSF Preprints: Hosted by the Center for Open Science, this platform supports preprints across various disciplines.

2. Discipline-Specific Preprint Servers

These servers cater to specific fields of study. Examples include:

• bioRxiv: Focused on the biological sciences.
• medRxiv: Specializes in health sciences and clinical research.
• chemRxiv: Dedicated to the field of chemistry.
• PsyArXiv: For research in psychology.

3. Institutional Preprint Servers

Some universities and research institutions have established their own preprint servers to support their researchers. Examples include:

• MIT Press Direct Open: Supports preprints from researchers affiliated with MIT.
• CaltechAUTHORS: A repository for research outputs from the California Institute of Technology.

• IndiaRxiv (Preprints Repository Server for India)

• arXiv

Launched in 1991, arXiv is one of the pioneers in the preprint server landscape. It covers physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, and statistics. ArXiv has played a crucial role in shaping the preprint culture and continues to be a major platform for researchers in these fields.

• bioRxiv

Established in 2013, bioRxiv has quickly become a leading preprint server for the biological sciences. It allows researchers to share their work in areas such as genetics, neuroscience, and bioinformatics, facilitating rapid communication and collaboration.

• medRxiv

A relatively newer entrant, medRxiv was launched in 2019 and focuses on health sciences. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became a critical platform for disseminating preliminary findings related to the virus, treatments, and vaccines, demonstrating the potential impact of preprint servers in urgent public health situations.

• ChemRxiv

ChemRxiv (pronounced 'chem-archive') is a free submission, distribution, and archive service for unpublished preprints in chemistry and related areas.ChemRxiv gives researchers across a broad range of fields related to the chemical sciences the opportunity to share early results with colleagues and receive recommendations for improvement, ahead of formal peer review and publication.

• SSRN

(Social Science Research Network) is a preprint repository that allows authors to share their early research in a variety of disciplines, including social sciences, humanities, life sciences, and health sciences. SSRN's open-access preprint community provides services to academic schools and government institutions

• Research Square

Research Square is a multidisciplinary preprint and author services platform. You can share your work early in the form of a preprint, gain feedback from the community, and use our tools and services to improve your paper. You can also learn about breakthroughs in your field and find potential collaborators before publishing in a scholarly journal.

• TechRxiv

Preprint servers are reshaping the academic publishing landscape, offering both significant benefits and notable challenges. They provide a means for rapid dissemination and open access to research, fostering early feedback and establishing priority. However, the lack of peer review and the potential for information overload necessitate careful consideration. As the academic community continues to adapt to these platforms, finding a balance between speed and quality will be essential for the continued advancement of science.

Whether you're a researcher looking to share your latest findings or a reader seeking the latest developments in your field, preprint servers are an invaluable resource in the digital age of science.

References:

https://indiarxiv.wordpress.com/

https://arxiv.org/

https://www.biorxiv.org/

https://www.medrxiv.org/

https://www.researchsquare.com/

 Librarian (01) at Visva-Bharati Shantiniketan Central

 University. Last date: 16.05.2023

Visva-Bharati Shantiniketan
Central University