Geographical distance in bibliometric relations within epistemic communities

Authors:
Per Ahlgren;Olle Persson;Robert Tijssen
Affiliations:
Department of e-Resources, University Library, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden SE-106 91;Department of Sociology, Inforsk, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden SE 901 87;Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands 2300 AX
Venue:
Scientometrics
Year:
2013

Citing 2
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Toward a basic framework for webometrics

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology - Special issue: Webometrics
Institutional interactions: Exploring social, cognitive, and geographic relationships between institutions as demonstrated through citation networks

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

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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.