Wooding S, Wilcox-Jay K, Lewison G, Grant J "Co-author inclusion: A novel recursive algorithmic method for dealing with homonyms in bibliometric analysis " Scientometrics 66(1): 11-21 December 2005

[Eugene Garfield]

E-mail Addresses: wooding at rand.org


Title: Co-author inclusion: A novel recursive algorithmic method for
dealing with homonyms in bibliometric analysis

Author(s): Wooding S, Wilcox-Jay K, Lewison G, Grant J

Source: SCIENTOMETRICS 66 (1): 11-21 DEC 2005

Document Type: Article
Language: English
Cited References: 4      Times Cited: 0

Abstract:
Large scale bibliometric analysis is often hindered by the presence of
homonyms, or namesakes, of the researchers of interest in literature
databases. This makes it difficult to build up a true picture of a
researcher's publication record, as publications by another researcher with
the same name will be included in search results.

Using additional information such as title and author addresses, an expert
in the field can generally tell if a paper is by a researcher or a
namesake; however, manual checking is not practical in large scale studies.
Previously various methods have been used to address this problem, chiefly
based on filtering by subject, funding acknowledgement or author address.
Co-author inclusion is a novel algorithmic method based on co-authorship
for dealing with problems of homonyms in large bibliometric surveys. We
compared co-author inclusion and subject and funding based filter against
the manual assignment of papers by a subject expert (which we assumed to be
correct).

The subject and funding based filtering identifies only 75% as many papers
as assigned by manual scoring. By using co-author inclusion once we
increase this to 95%, two further rounds produces 99% as many papers as
manual filtering. Although the number of papers identified that were not
assigned to the PIs manually also increases, the absolute number is low:
rising from 0.2% papers with subject and funding filtering, to 3% papers
for three rounds of co-author inclusion.

Addresses: Wooding S (reprint author), RAND Europe, Westbrook Ctr, Milton
Rd, Cambridge, CB4 1YG England
RAND Europe, Westbrook Ctr, Cambridge, CB4 1YG England
City Univ London, Dept Informat Sci, London, EC1V 0HB England

E-mail Addresses: wooding at rand.org

Publisher: SPRINGER, VAN GODEWIJCKSTRAAT 30, 3311 GZ DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS
Subject Category: COMPUTER SCIENCE, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS;
INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE
IDS Number: 002HZ
ISSN: 0138-9130


Cited references :
HANNEY S
HLTH RES POLICY SYST 1 : 2003

 LEWISON G
Bibliometric methods for the evaluation of arthritis research
RHEUMATOLOGY 38 : 13 1999

 WOODING S
MG251ARC RAND EUR : 2004

 WOODING S
TR176ARC RAND EUR : 2004