Abstract

ESCORCIA-OTALORA, Tatiana Alexandra  and  POUTOU-PINALES, Raúl Alberto. Bibliometric analysis of original papers published in the journal Universitas Scientiarum (1987-2007). Univ. Sci. [online]. 2008, vol.13, n.3, pp.236-244. ISSN 0122-7483.

The bibliometric behavior of the journal was evaluated and several actions were defined to improve its quality, through the increase of the Price, the Burton-Kebler and the productivity indices. Volumes 1 to 12 comprising original articles (31.37%), thesis abstracts (46.88%), other documents (14.50%), reviews (1.85%), opinion articles (2.36%), brief communications (1.18%), and letters to the editor (0,51%) were considered, totalling 593 manuscripts, 1099 authors and 5202 references. The Collaboration (IC), Productivity (IP), Price (IO), Obsolescence, Isolation (IA) and Self-Citation (SCR) indices were calculated; the percentage, distribution and type of articles, the number of authors, the average number of references, and inconsistencies of the bibliography were also evaluated. The IC, IP, IO, IA and SCR were 2.95, 2.27, 13.88, 26.6 and 8.15% respectively; the Burton-Kebler analysis reported an annual aging between 91.47 and 95.26% which means an actualization loss between 4.73 and 8.58%. Most of the mentioned references were between 4 and 5 years old, although the total range is higher than 50. The IC and the IP do not reflect the reality of the thematic areas. The relation of the abstracts of degree works and thesis in relation to original articles and reviews was of 1.49 and 25.27 times respectively. We conclude that there is a necessity to increase the IO, the h and to control the IA among others, and therefore we propose to control the age of the references and the self-citation as well as the permanent classification of documents by thematic areas, and the elimination of the abstracts of degree works and thesis or otherwise to maintain a minimum constant number of original articles and reviews per published issue.

Keywords : bibliometric analysis; price index; isolation index; Burton and Kebler index; productivity index; collaboration index.

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