Analysis of publication trends of biodiversity data papers

doi:10.17520/biods.2016325

Abstract

Abstract:

In recent years, there have been more and more appeals for sharing of biodiversity data. ‘Biodiversity data paper’ has been proposed as a reward mechanism for sharing data by individual scientists. Some data journals dedicated to publishing data papers have been founded. In this paper, we analyze the number of articles, coverage of biological groups, article views, and citations of two representative data journals (Biodiversity Data Journal and Scientific Data). Results show that the number of articles in both data journals has been steadily increasing. Biodiversity data papers cover a wide range of biological groups in Animalia, Plantae and Fungi. The article views and citations also show encouraging performance. These results indicate that data papers are being accepted by more and more researchers. Analysis of author regions of biodiversity data papers indicates a disequilibrium in the data sharing culture among different geographical regions. We suggest Chinese researchers and journals in related fields pay more attention to biodiversity data papers and trends of data sharing policies, as well as improving data sharing practices.

Key words: data sharing, data journal, open science, ecology, bibliometrics

Junjie Li, Xiaolei Huang. Analysis of publication trends of biodiversity data papers[J]. Biodiv Sci, 2016, 24(12): 1317-1324.

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URL: https://www.biodiversity-science.net/EN/10.17520/biods.2016325

https://www.biodiversity-science.net/EN/Y2016/V24/I12/1317

Figures/Tables 5

Fig. 1 Time-series trends of article numbers of two data journals, Biodiversity Data Journal (a) and Scientific Data (b)

Fig. 2 The coverage of biological groups in Biodiversity Data Journal papers: (a) All groups; (b) Insecta.

Fig. 3 Article numbers published by authors from different countries or regions. The 31 countries or regions with five and more articles are shown, and 38 countries or regions with articles less than five are not shown.

Table 1 The citation numbers of Scientific Data papers. ‘Article numbers’ in this table means the numbers of articles within certain citation ranges

CrossRef引用量 CrossRef citations	文章数量 Article numbers	Scopus引用量 Scopus citations	文章数量 Article numbers
0-5	77	0-5	53
5-10	10	5-10	14
10-15	4	10-15	5
15-20	4	15-20	2
20-25	1	20-25	2
25-30	2	25-30	1

Fig. 4 The unique view numbers of four types of articles (Taxonomic Paper, Data Paper, General Article, Software Description) in Biodiversity Data Journal (a) and Data Descriptor articles in Scientific Data (b)

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