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Geographical distance in bibliometric relations within epistemic communities

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Abstract

Scientists collaborate increasingly on a global scale. Does this trend also hold for other bibliometric relations such as direct citations, cocitations and shared references? This study examines citation-based relations in publications published in the journal Scientometrics from 1981 to 2010. Different measures of Mean Geographical Distance (MGD) are tested. If we take all citation links into consideration, there is no indication of MGD increase, but when we look at maximum distances of each relation, a weak tendency of increasing MGD could be observed. One major factor behind the lack of growth of mean distances is the form of the distribution of citation links over distances. Our data suggest that the interactions might grow simultaneously for both short and long distances.

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Notes

  1. The number of shared references between two publications is equal to the bibliographic coupling strength for the two publications (Kessler 1963).

  2. The following query was used: SO = (SCIENTOMETRICS) AND PY = 1978–2010 AND Document Types = (Article OR Proceedings Paper).

  3. For the max approach, regardless of bibliometric relation, if there is more than one maximum distance, it is possible that the distances are associated with different pairs of countries. Therefore, in cases with more than one maximum distance, one of the distances was randomly selected, together with its associated pair of countries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of e-Resources, University Library, Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Per Ahlgren

  2. Department of Sociology, Inforsk, Umeå University, SE 901 87, Umeå, Sweden

    Olle Persson

  3. Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, PO Box 905, 2300 AX, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Robert Tijssen

Authors
  1. Per Ahlgren
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  2. Olle Persson
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  3. Robert Tijssen
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Correspondence to Per Ahlgren.

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Ahlgren, P., Persson, O. & Tijssen, R. Geographical distance in bibliometric relations within epistemic communities. Scientometrics 95, 771–784 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0819-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0819-1

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