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The simplex simulation as a tool to reveal publication strategies and citation factors

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Abstract

Scientists’ evaluations are commonly made by h-index calculated from citation levels of published papers. Although single index way is simple, synthetic, rapid and popular, it remains limited by the facts that it doesn’t use the whole of published papers, does not consider structural variables and lacks some level of relativization. Integrative and functional evaluation ways need to be developed in bibliometric field by linking output states (citation frequencies, h-values) to input structural variables of publications. This analytic aspect completes the traditional scoring way by highlighting functional publication strategies and upstream citation factors. This helps to set global qualitative evaluations of scientists. For that purpose, a simplex-based simulation approach was developed to analyze variation trends between structural (production and cooperation) variables of papers belonging to different classes. Simplex approach explored compositional variations between and within papers’ classes by iterative combination and averaging processes to calculate smoothed barycentric profiles from which multidirectional and multiscale trends were highlighted between structural variables. Illustrative study concerned an empirical dataset of 1435 papers representing the totality of publications of 16 Tunisian biologists affiliated to three universities of Tunis and distinguished by direction positions, research prizes and/or development of new approaches. The 1435 papers were classified into six groups by combining three ordinal h-index ranges with two citation levels (< h, ≥ h). Graphical analyses of smoothed data highlighted multidirectional and multiscale trajectories between production (figures, tables, pages) and cooperation (authors, affiliations, countries) variables providing key information on publication strategies and citation factors of papers associated with different groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut National des Sciences Appliquées et de Technologie, University of Carthage, Carthage, Tunisia

    Asma Hammami

  2. Laboratory of BioInformatics, BioMathematics and BioStatistics (BIMS), Pasteur Institute of Tunis, University of Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia

    Nabil Semmar

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  1. Asma Hammami
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Correspondence to Nabil Semmar.

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Hammami, A., Semmar, N. The simplex simulation as a tool to reveal publication strategies and citation factors. Scientometrics 127, 319–350 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04198-1

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