IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v80y2009i2d10.1007_s11192-009-0073-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A geostatistical analysis of geostatistics

Author

Listed:
  • Tomislav Hengl

    (University of Amsterdam)

  • Budiman Minasny

    (The University of Sydney)

  • Michael Gould

    (Michael Gould Associates)

Abstract

The bibliometric indices of the scientific field of geostatistics were analyzed using statistical and spatial data analysis. The publications and their citation statistics were obtained from the Web of Science (4000 most relevant), Scopus (2000 most relevant) and Google Scholar (5389). The focus was on the analysis of the citation rate (CR), i.e. number of citations an author or a library item receives on average per year. This was the main criterion used to analyze global trends in geostatistics and to extract the Top 25 most-cited lists of the research articles and books in geostatistics. It was discovered that the average citation rate for geostatisticians has stabilized since 1999, while the authors’ n-index seems to have declined ever since. One reason for this may be because there are more and more young authors with a lower n-index. We also found that the number of publications an author publishes explains only 60% of the variation in the citation statistics and that this number progressively declines for an author with a lower number of publications. Once the geographic location is attached to a selection of articles, an isotropic Gaussian kernel smoother weighted by the CR can be used to map scientific excellence around the world. This revealed clusters of scientific excellence around locations such as Wageningen, London, Utrecht, Hampshire, UK, Norwich, Paris, Louvain, Barcelona, and Zürich (Europe); Stanford, Ann Arbor, Tucson, Corvallis, Seattle, Boulder, Montreal, Baltimore, Durham, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles (North America); and Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Santiago (Chile), Taipei, and Beijing (other continents). Further correlation with socio-economic variables showed that the spatial distribution of CRs in geostatistics is independent of the night light image (which represents economic activity) and population density. This study demonstrates that the commercial scientific indexing companies could enhance their service by assigning the geographical location to library items to allow spatial exploration and analysis of bibliometric indices.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomislav Hengl & Budiman Minasny & Michael Gould, 2009. "A geostatistical analysis of geostatistics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 491-514, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:80:y:2009:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-009-0073-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-009-0073-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-009-0073-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-009-0073-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pablo D. Batista & Mônica G. Campiteli & Osame Kinouchi, 2006. "Is it possible to compare researchers with different scientific interests?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 68(1), pages 179-189, July.
    2. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "Which h-index? — A comparison of WoS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 74(2), pages 257-271, February.
    3. Jim Giles, 2005. "Start your engines," Nature, Nature, vol. 438(7068), pages 554-555, December.
    4. Kayvan Kousha & Mike Thelwall, 2007. "Google Scholar citations and Google Web/URL citations: A multi‐discipline exploratory analysis," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(7), pages 1055-1065, May.
    5. Feng Zhou & Huai-Cheng Guo & Yuh-Shan Ho & Chao-Zhong Wu, 2007. "Scientometric analysis of geostatistics using multivariate methods," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(3), pages 265-279, December.
    6. Doll, Christopher N.H. & Muller, Jan-Peter & Morley, Jeremy G., 2006. "Mapping regional economic activity from night-time light satellite imagery," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 75-92, April.
    7. Budiman Minasny & Alfred E. Hartemink & Alex McBratney, 2007. "Soil science and the h index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(3), pages 257-264, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Csomós, György & Tóth, Géza, 2016. "Exploring the position of cities in global corporate research and development: A bibliometric analysis by two different geographical approaches," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 516-532.
    2. Copiello, Sergio, 2019. "Peer and neighborhood effects: Citation analysis using a spatial autoregressive model and pseudo-spatial data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 238-254.
    3. Richard S.J. Tol, 2013. "Measuring catch-up growth in malnourished populations," Working Paper Series 6013, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    4. Tol, Richard S.J., 2013. "Identifying excellent researchers: A new approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 803-810.
    5. Javier X Leon & Gerard B M Heuvelink & Stuart R Phinn, 2014. "Incorporating DEM Uncertainty in Coastal Inundation Mapping," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(9), pages 1-12, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parul Khurana & Kiran Sharma, 2022. "Impact of h-index on author’s rankings: an improvement to the h-index for lower-ranked authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4483-4498, August.
    2. Basma Albanna & Julia Handl & Richard Heeks, 2021. "Publication outperformance among global South researchers: An analysis of individual-level and publication-level predictors of positive deviance," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8375-8431, October.
    3. Sergio Copiello, 2019. "The open access citation premium may depend on the openness and inclusiveness of the indexing database, but the relationship is controversial because it is ambiguous where the open access boundary lie," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(2), pages 995-1018, November.
    4. Fiorenzo Franceschini & Domenico Maisano, 2011. "Bibliometric positioning of scientific manufacturing journals: a comparative analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(2), pages 463-485, February.
    5. Chao Lu & Ying Ding & Chengzhi Zhang, 2017. "Understanding the impact change of a highly cited article: a content-based citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(2), pages 927-945, August.
    6. Ausloos, M., 2015. "Assessing the true role of coauthors in the h-index measure of an author scientific impact," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 422(C), pages 136-142.
    7. Kuan, Chung-Huei & Huang, Mu-Hsuan & Chen, Dar-Zen, 2013. "Cross-field evaluation of publications of research institutes using their contributions to the fields’ MVPs determined by h-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 455-468.
    8. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2010. "Citations to the “Introduction to informetrics” indexed by WOS, Scopus and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(3), pages 495-506, March.
    9. J. W. Fedderke, 2013. "The objectivity of national research foundation peer review in South Africa assessed against bibliometric indexes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(2), pages 177-206, November.
    10. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner & Schier, Hermann & Rahm, Erhard & Thor, Andreas & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2009. "Convergent validity of bibliometric Google Scholar data in the field of chemistry—Citation counts for papers that were accepted by Angewandte Chemie International Edition or rejected but published els," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 27-35.
    11. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    12. Mathieu Ouimet & Pierre-Olivier Bédard & François Gélineau, 2011. "Are the h-index and some of its alternatives discriminatory of epistemological beliefs and methodological preferences of faculty members? The case of social scientists in Quebec," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 91-106, July.
    13. Antonio Abatemarco & Roberto Dell'Anno, 2012. "Italian Reform of the academic recruitment system. An appraisal of ANVUR and CUN benchmarks for assessing candidates and commissioners," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 441-480.
    14. Gad Saad, 2010. "Applying the h-index in exploring bibliometric properties of elite marketing scholars," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(2), pages 423-433, May.
    15. Marc P. Hauer & Xavier C. R. Hofmann & Tobias D. Krafft & Katharina A. Zweig, 2020. "Quantitative analysis of automatic performance evaluation systems based on the h-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 735-751, May.
    16. Massimo Franceschet, 2010. "A comparison of bibliometric indicators for computer science scholars and journals on Web of Science and Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 83(1), pages 243-258, April.
    17. Christopher McCarty & James W. Jawitz & Allison Hopkins & Alex Goldman, 2013. "Predicting author h-index using characteristics of the co-author network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 96(2), pages 467-483, August.
    18. Yannick Berker, 2018. "Golden-ratio as a substitute to geometric and harmonic counting to determine multi-author publication credit," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 839-857, March.
    19. Zhang, Lin & Thijs, Bart & Glänzel, Wolfgang, 2011. "The diffusion of H-related literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 583-593.
    20. Judit Bar-Ilan, 2008. "The h-index of h-index and of other informetric topics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 75(3), pages 591-605, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:80:y:2009:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-009-0073-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.