Bibliometric Analysis Asia-Pacific Research Area ... - JuSER

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3.4 Discipline-Specific Profiles of the Publication Output and its Perception
This section compares the discipline-specific publication behaviour of the South-East Asian
countries as well as the perception of these publications. In contrast to the preceding chapters,
the benchmark here is a global reference. All research articles and reviews published in 2007
are the basis of this analysis.
Not all disciplines are equally represented in the Science Citation Index. As illustrated by the
graphic below, around one third of all publications in the database are in the area of medicine,
while only around 4 % of the publications are in mathematics.
Number of "research articles" and "reviews" published in
Web of Science in 2007
(total number of "research articles"and "reviews " published in 2007 in WoS: 853,497)
Medicine
Biology and biotechnology
Chemistry
Physics
Engineering
Geosciences
Materials science
Agricultural science
Mathematics
Information and computer …
Nanotechnology
Energy
Multidisciplinary journals
59,291
53,064
35,883
33,495
22,851
10,973
10,246
8,938
142,667
118,267
116,663
92,090
289,765
Figure 102: Distribution of the document types “research article” and “review” in terms of publications in
the Web of Science in individual disciplines.
The unequal publication distribution is due to the fact that the disciplines have different
communication behaviour. For this reason, sound bibliometric analyses must be conducted on a
discipline-by-discipline basis. The global reference excludes possible distortions that could be
implicit in another benchmark (e.g. comparisons with Germany).
The following network diagrams illustrate the share of publications published by a particular
country in a particular discipline in 2007 as research articles and reviews in the journals
included in the Web of Science in relation to the entire database. For example, in 2007, China
published 20 % of the global output included in the Web of Science in the subject category
“chemistry”. It should be noted that the percentage values cannot be added up because the
sum of all countries is more than 100 % due to co-publications.
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