Shamsi Amrollah, Silva Rafaela Carolina, Wang Ting, Raju N Vasantha, Santos-d'Amorim Karen
Independent Researcher, Bushehr, Iran.
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação, Universidade Estadual Paulista "Júlio de Mesquita Filho" (UNESP), Marília, Brazil.
Scientometrics. 2022;127(10):5989-6009. doi: 10.1007/s11192-022-04494-4. Epub 2022 Aug 12.
Publications without authorship information have been indexed as anonymous in the Web of Science database over the years. However, discussions on this subject have not been sufficiently addressed in the scholarly literature. Since bibliometrics studies are widely used for bibliometricians, scientific disciplines, science policy, and management, missing significant data as authorship metadata characterizes a gray zone that directly impacts these three components, and by extension, for bibliometrics and scientometrics. With a data collection performed at Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), 1,420,842 documents under "anonymous" authorship from 1900 to 2021 were retrieved, which accounted for 1.5% of the total documents indexed in the WoSCC. The publication data such as yearly growth of research publications, document type, language, productive research areas, and other bibliometric indicators were analyzed. The findings showed that in absolute numbers, a considerable growth of anonymous publications between 1996 and 2009, and there was a downward trend after that. However, this increase has not been proportional to the growth in the total number of publications indexed in the WoSCC. Articles, editorial materials, and news items were the top three document types among the WoSCC-indexed publications as anonymous. This study also finds two main scenarios of indexing publications as anonymous. The first is associated with the historical context of scholarly communication and practices that persist. The second is characterized by indexing persistent problems. This study suggests minimizing the error in databases, enabling an error-free indexing system and accurate bibliometrics studies.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11192-022-04494-4.
多年来，没有作者信息的出版物在科学网数据库中被索引为匿名。然而，学术文献中对这一主题的讨论尚未得到充分探讨。由于文献计量学研究广泛应用于文献计量学家、科学学科、科学政策和管理领域，作为作者元数据的重要数据缺失构成了一个灰色地带，直接影响这三个方面，进而影响文献计量学和科学计量学。通过在科学网核心合集（WoSCC）进行数据收集，检索到1900年至2021年期间1420842篇“匿名”作者的文献，占WoSCC索引文献总数的1.5%。分析了研究出版物的年度增长、文献类型、语言、高产研究领域等出版数据以及其他文献计量指标。研究结果表明，从绝对数量来看，1996年至2009年间匿名出版物有相当大的增长，之后呈下降趋势。然而，这种增长与WoSCC索引的出版物总数的增长不成比例。文章、编辑材料和新闻报道是WoSCC索引的匿名出版物中排名前三的文献类型。本研究还发现了将出版物索引为匿名的两种主要情况。第一种与持续存在的学术交流和实践的历史背景有关。第二种的特点是索引存在持续性问题。本研究建议尽量减少数据库中的错误，建立一个无错误的索引系统和准确的文献计量学研究。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s11192-022-04494-4获取的补充材料。
