مصورسازی روندها و موضوعات داغ حوزه بهره‌وری علمی نویسندگان

Purpose: One of the most important scientific components is the scientific productivity of authors. This concept, which does not have a clear definition in the literature, has been investigated in various researches. Also, the review of the literature shows the dispersion of the subject in this field. From the individual and personality characteristics of the authors to the role of environmental and social issues on scientific productivity, attention has been paid in this field. It is not known, correctly, what is the emphasis of the related literature? And which are the trends and the hot topics of this field? So, the main goal of the present study was to investigate and illustrate trends and hot topics that pertain to authors’ scientific productivity.
Methodology: The current research is practical in terms of purpose and has been carried out with a scientometric approach by knowledge mapping. For this purpose, 6482 publications from 2000 to 2022 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database and analyzed by CiteSpace Software (Advanced version). Consistent with the goal of the study, keyword co-occurrence (for finding the clusters), betweenness centrality (for finding the research frontiers) and citation burstness (for finding the most important works and hot topics and key words in a specific period) indicators, and clustering were identified. Finally, the historical developments and milestones of this field were analyzed (by timeline view).
Findings: Findings showed that out of the data extracted, 11 clusters with a density of 0.0438 and a harmonic mean of 0.4938 were identified - which indicates weak interconnections in the network. The most important of them were “h-Index” (size=284), “gender” (size=244) and “research effects” (size=202) clusters. Other clusters of authors’ scientific productivity were “technology transfer”, “social work education”, “social network analysis”, “academic promotion”, “incentive structure”, “references”, “teamwork” and “scientometric analysis” according to their sizes. Hirsch’s work in 2005 with a value of 0.27 held the highest betweenness centrality. An analysis of works citation burstness suggested that the works of the scientific productivity domain had gone through two citation burstness periods: the first period is the presentation and evaluation of the “h-Index” (from 2000 to 2012) and the second period is the evaluation and development of “existing tools” to assess authors’ scientific productivity (from 2012 to 2022). The hot topics under study are “evaluating academic communities” (2000-2002), “authors’ ranking indicators” (2002-2018) and “knowledge exchange” (2018-2022). The subject of “knowledge exchange”, which is a new issue, concentrates on international interactions and communications and also the social and economic effects of the literature (besides their scientific effects). The history of authors’ scientific productivity began from the rule of works’ creators’ scientific productivity, developed by Lotka (1926) and continued with the introduction of “citations” as one of the most important evaluation criteria for authors’ scientific productivity, developed by Garfield (1955). Besides Hirsch’s work (2005), other approaches, including “mapping of science” softwares and “gender inequalities”, were used to form the historical developments of scientific productivity.
Conclusion: According to the findings of the present research, the H-index is still the most important index for evaluating the scientific productivity of authors. This index, which claims to simultaneously measure the impact and quantity of scientific productivity of authors - despite some flaws - is a consensus of the scientific community and simply shows that with the increase in the number of works, the probability of receiving citations increases, and as a result, productivity Science increases. Since the scientific productivity of authors, researchers, and faculty members of universities is critical for employment, it is essential to promote the academic and scientific positions for employment processes. The findings of this study may offer help for both experts and all researchers.