An Analytical Respond To Stanford Annual Report

The ISC scientometrics Department responded to the news published in PLOS BIOLOGY by  https://doi.org/ 10.1371 / journal.pbio.3000918).

December, 1st, 2020

This article is the result of research on data extracted from the Scopus database, during which a list of authors in various subject areas is presented. This list includes the names of the authors who are among the top 100,000 authors in terms of composite citation index score. Also, authors have been added to this list who are not among the top 100,000 authors, but in terms of citation impact, they are among the 2% of authors in their field of study. Thus, this list contains about one hundred and sixty thousand authors in total.

This list is essentially an update to the list that the same authors published in an article in the same journal in 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384).

The composite citation index is a collection of six citation indexes that Stanford University researchers have introduced and calculated in their research. A composite citation index is a set of six separate citation indices, all calculated in a mathematical formula using a logarithm. However, it should be noted that this is a citation index presented by several researchers in a research paper and its effectiveness and accuracy need to be examined and verified.

The formula used to calculate the composite citation index (c score) suggests that the effect of some indicators, such as the self-citation rate, which can manipulate indexes in citation loops, is neutralized.

In addition, scientometric research in the Islamic World Science Citation Database (ISC) shows that some authors systematically increase the totality of their citations by using methods such as self-citation and are among the top authors. For example, in an article published in 2020, ISC researchers surveyed a group of authors who use very high and abnormal self-citation rates to produce hot papers (https://doi.org /10.1007/s11192-020-03749-2).

Interestingly, these same authors are among the top authors in the list provided by Stanford University researchers and have a high composite index score. Stanford University's list of authors includes more than 2,100 authors with a self-citation rate of 40% or higher, some of whom have a high composite score. Also, one of the major drawbacks of data mining is the carelessness in separating the names of people, so that in several cases, people with the same name have their articles and citations collected together.

In addition, it should be noted that the main reference for evaluating, identifying and announcing top authors and institutions in various scientific fields are international citation databases and scientometrics. For example, Clariot Analytics publishes a list of the world's most cited authors each year. In recent years, the site has removed a number of authors from its annual list due to anomalies in the high self-citation rate.

Also, the Basic Science Indicators Database (ESI) continuously announces the list of the world's top 1% of authors. The Islamic World Science Citation Database (ISC) announces the normalized list of the top 1% of Iranian authors to the relevant universities every year after correcting the errors in the ESI list using statistical methods and scientometric analysis. To this end, the ISC database has developed and published a specific and standard method for identifying and introducing top Iranian researchers.

Accordingly, the reports published in the country and the list of names of highly cited authors are not approved by the Islamic World Science Citation Database.