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Finding leading scholars in mobile phone behavior: a mixed-method analysis of an emerging interdisciplinary field

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Abstract

Finding leading scholars in a field effectively and efficiently is important and challenging in the science of science research. The present study focused on a specific field of mobile phone behavior as a prototypical case to demonstrate at a microscopic level the real-world complexity of how to find leading scholars in a newly emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of research scientifically. It used a novel mixed method combining content analysis and bibliometric analysis to identify and verify leading scholars in the field effectively and efficiently. The major findings of the study include that (1) a total of 390 leading scholars in the field have been identified based on explicit recognition by 260 authors of 102 chapters of an encyclopedia of mobile phone behavior; (2) overall, peer recognition evidence of the identified 390 leading scholars and bibliometric evidence of the three indicators for verifying leader scholars are relatively consistent; (3) among the four categories of the 390 leading scholars, the dominant one is the 273 scholars who receive only one peer recognition but have strong bibliometric evidence, potentially due to the nature of either an emerging filed or an interdisciplinary field; and (4) the highest-cited citations could be considered the best bibliometric indicators for verifying leading scholars effectively and efficiently. Implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed.

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  1. University at Albany, Albany, USA

    Zheng Yan, Wenqian Robertson, Yaosheng Lou, Tom W. Robertson & Sung Yong Park

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This is to confirm that this work is original and has not been published elsewhere, nor is it currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. My coauthors and I do not have any conflicts of interests to disclose.

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Yan, Z., Robertson, W., Lou, Y. et al. Finding leading scholars in mobile phone behavior: a mixed-method analysis of an emerging interdisciplinary field. Scientometrics 126, 9499–9517 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04184-7

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