Study of the acknowledgments section in a sample of the Revista Española de Documentación Científica and Scientometrics: evolution and authorities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/redc.2021.4.1822Keywords:
acknowledgments, papers, scientific journals, scientific evaluation, Revista Española de Documentación Científica, ScientometricsAbstract
This work analyses the acknowledgments to authorities (people and institutions) included in scientific articles of two scientific journals, Revista Española de Documentación Científica (REDC) and Scientometrics, to follow the evolution of these acknowledgments during twenty one years in alternating periods of four years (1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018), and also, to study its relationship with scientific authorship / citation, and with the funding patterns of Science. 1354 articles are analysed, 717 of which contain acknowledgments that provide a total of 2127 mentions. The main results indicate that, although there is a greater tradition of including acknowledgments in its articles in Scientometrics, the Spanish journal achieves a much higher Variation Rate in 2018 compared to 1998, which indicates a very positive evolution of the Spanish journal; they also reflect that the common practice in both journals consists more in mentioning people who have helped in the research, and not so much the institutions; and, finally, that there is a moderate positive correlation between the number of appearances of the authors in the acknowledgments and their h-index, so it would be possible to use the acknowledgments to measure scientific activity.
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Junta de Extremadura
Grant numbers GR18044
European Regional Development Fund
Grant numbers GR18044
