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How do Price medalists’ scholarly impact change before and after their awards?

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Abstract

How a scholar's achievement and productivity may change by the award of an academic prize is a topic of a long-term interest in research fields such as scientometrics. Numerous studies have explored the impact of receiving a Nobel Prize, a Turing Award, and other international awards on laureates' scholarly performance, but relatively less attention has been paid to the impact of Derek John de Solla Price Medal on its recipients. This paper adopts the methodology of Structural Variation Analysis (SVA) to evaluate how Price medalists' research are impacted, if any, in terms of citation, h-index, and structural variation patterns in underlying collaborative networks. Moreover, we compare the SVA metrics with other indicators such as composite scores and Highly Cited Researchers (HCR). Our results show that: a Price Medal award may not necessarily boost the medalist’s scholarly potential, actual academic impact and collaboration patterns in a degree that is statistically significant. But the SVA method is a better indicator to evaluate the Price Medalist, especially in five-year time windows.

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Notes

  1. https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/.

  2. Michael J. Moravcsik, the prize-winner of 1985, whose record in WOS was only one paper. We considered his h-index and sum of times cited per years may be low on WOS. So we analyze the dataset except him.

  3. Download from http://cluster.cis.drexel.edu/~cchen/citespace/download/.

  4. Judit Bar-Ilan, who contributed greatly with original research to the development of the Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, Webometrics, Hirsch Index and Altmetrics, passed away in 2019 after an extremely courageous fight for life (Peritz, 2019).

  5. Download from https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/1#file-bade950e-3343-43e7-896b-fb2069ba3481.

  6. Download from https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2019/.

References

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China(Grant No. 20BTQ085), By Dr. Yang Zhang and The Soft Science Project of Science and Technology Program of Guangdong Province(CN), 2019B101001024, By Dr. Jianhua Hou

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Correspondence to Yang Zhang.

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Appendices

Appendix A: Variable name illustration

Variable name

Annotation

\(\Delta M\)

Modularity change rate

AY

The award year of laureates

PV

The peak value year of \(\Delta M\)

X

Difference between the award year and peak value year

Category A

Scholar whose award year is before the peak value year

Category B

Scholar whose award year is after the peak value year

Category C

Scholar whose award year is the peak value year

Type ①

Scholar with monotonically increasing trend of \(\Delta M\) value

Type ②

Scholar with monotonically decreasing trend of \(\Delta M\) value

Type ③

Scholar has no \(\Delta M\) value or the value was zero after medal reception

Type ④

Scholar with fluctuating \(\Delta M\) value

PN

The year of peak number of co-authors

\(\Delta Y\)

Difference between the award year and the year of peak number of co-authors

Appendix B: The 100 scholars with the highest \(\Delta M\) value during 2014–2018 

Ranking

Name (Award Year)

M score

Ranking

Name

M score

Ranking

Name

M score

1

Thelwall M (2015)

113.62

35

Lariviere V

20.65

69

Tang Li

16.01

2

Mingers J

70.17

36

Jafarzadeh H

20.64

70

Choi S

15.66

3

Abramo G

51.03

37

Barnes C

20.48

71

Echeverry-Correa J D

15.2

4

Zitt M (2009)

48.71

38

Lee L

20.2

72

Wang J

15.13

5

Serenko A

48.39

39

Biggiero L

20.16

73

Hidalgo C

15.03

6

Guan J

46.98

40

Akoglu L

20.07

74

Olijnyk Nicholas V

14.89

7

Bornmann L (2019)

44.09

40

Tan Hui Xuan

20.07

75

Zhu Q

14.87

8

Ebadi A

40.94

42

Amjad T

20.01

76

Gonzalez-Teruel A

14.82

9

Haustein S

40.3

43

Lee H

19.73

77

Billah Syed Masum

14.73

10

Leydesdorff L (2003)

39.09

44

Jeong S

19.65

78

Luis Ortega Jose

14.59

11

Zupic I

36.83

44

Park J

19.65

79

Wang F

14.58

12

Yan E

34.19

46

Ke Q

18.93

80

Landini F

14.36

13

Huang M

33.59

47

Behnert C

18.61

81

Nykl M

14.24

14

Fairclough R

33

48

Schraven Daan F J

18.23

82

Kousha K

14.09

15

Cimenler O

30.7

49

Wood J

18.15

82

Ozcinar H

14.09

16

Zhu Y

30.62

50

Liu X

18.03

84

Shema H

13.8

17

Gallivan M

29.99

51

Bertsimas D

17.68

85

Shoup Jo Ann

13.76

18

Sriwannawit P

27.19

52

Costas R

17.54

86

Cabanac G

13.75

19

Bordons M

26.48

53

Mutschke P

17.49

87

Gorraiz J

13.74

20

Kim Y

26.14

54

Zhao D

17.36

88

Bhattacharya S

13.67

21

Armando Ronda-pupo Guillermo

25.96

55

Taba Seyedamir Tavakoli

17.32

89

Ferligoj A

13.64

22

Song Min

25.46

56

Fetscherin M

17.24

90

Ghiasi G

13.55

23

Park I

23.99

57

Zuccala A

17.07

90

Koseoglu Mehmet Ali

13.55

24

Rotolo D

22.98

58

Badar K

16.83

92

Nakamura H

13.37

25

Kraker P

22.46

59

Olmeda-Gomez C

16.51

93

Harzing A

13.31

25

Yang G

22.46

60

Gleich David F

16.43

94

Hwang Y

13.04

27

Das Gollapalli Sujatha

22.4

61

Zhu X

16.39

94

Yang S

13.04

28

Mohammadi E

22.37

62

Kim J

16.35

96

Bikard M

13.01

29

Demarest B

22.18

63

Fiala D

16.33

97

Yan B

12.9

30

Wagner Caroline S

21.99

64

Fang Hui

16.16

98

Wang M

12.83

31

Ravi K

21.85

64

Payumo Jane G

16.16

99

Martinez-Camara E

12.82

32

Alvarez R

21.83

66

Abrizah A

16.12

100

Liao Chien Hsiang

12.57

33

Wolfram D

21.74

67

Hoehle H

16.1

101

……

……

34

Moed Henk F (1999)

20.9

68

Katchanov Yurij L

16.06

102

……

……

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Hou, J., Zheng, B., Zhang, Y. et al. How do Price medalists’ scholarly impact change before and after their awards?. Scientometrics 126, 5945–5981 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-03979-y

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