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International alignment and scientific regard as macro-indicators for international comparisons of publications

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Abstract

Many international comparisons of the publication performance at themacro level are based on direct counts of citation frequencies in the ScienceCitation Index. However, these comparisons may reveal a significant negativelanguage bias for non-English-speaking countries, or other selection biases,which can be illustrated by the relation between research budgets of scientificinstitutions and SCI publications. Against this background, a two-dimensionalrepresentation, specifying for the international alignment of the nationalpublications and the journal-standardized citation impact, proves to be amore appropriate indicator base to assess the citation performance of countriessuch as Germany. In the light of a ten countries' benchmark, time seriesof these indicators for the nineties show a considerable impact of the Germanunification with a recent trend towards an adaptation of publication behaviourin East Germany towards the Western patterns.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI), Karlsruhe, (Germany)

    Hariolf Grupp, Ulrich Schmoch & Sybelle Hinze

  2. Institute for Economic Policy Research (IWW), Karlsruhe University, (Germany)

    Hariolf Grupp

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  1. Hariolf Grupp
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  2. Ulrich Schmoch
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  3. Sybelle Hinze
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Grupp, H., Schmoch, U. & Hinze, S. International alignment and scientific regard as macro-indicators for international comparisons of publications. Scientometrics 51, 359–380 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012703117727

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