Artículos

In the field of communication research, there is a substantial collection of scientific texts that have contributed to the analysis of a complex and ever-evolving human phenomenon. Although this literature has been extensively explored, there is one specialty that has yet to receive adequate attention: the scientific production focused on the study of electoral campaigns, which play a crucial role in democratic regimes, particularly in periods of polarisation and declining trust. This article aims to present a specific bibliometric analysis of scientific studies on electoral campaigns published in the most influential Spanish scientific communication journals over the past decade (2012–2022), as well as emerging trends in this field. The sample includes 274 articles published during the last decade that address electoral campaigns from a communicative perspective. Using quantitative bibliometric analysis techniques, a range of variables has been examined, including publication dates, language, authorship and institutional affiliations, keywords, geographical scope, year and country of the elections studied, topics covered, citations received, and methods used. The results reveal a preference for quantitative techniques, especially content analysis, in this scientific production. Additionally, it is observed that articles are predominantly authored by individuals affiliated with public universities, and in recent years, there has been a significant increase in the analysis of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in the context of electoral campaigns.

Today, academics and researchers constantly strive to achieve more in their respective fields. Their achievements are measured mainly by how many publications they have within publication venues and their work’s recognition (impact), which is usually determined through its citations, subsequently affecting how funding and awards are obtained. To assess the importance academics place on citations when evaluating scientists for recruitment or promotion, the authors of surveyed faculty members from the top 10 ranked universities globally. Their findings indicate that the majority of faculty members take citation counts into account when assessing candidates, which is reflected at a local and national level. The availability of huge curated bibliographic databases such as Elsevier Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) over the past twenty years has led decision-makers involved in promotions, funding, and strategic direction to increasingly request data related to individual studies or scholars (such as scientific articles, PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members) as well as groups of individuals and articles (such as journals, universities, institutions, and companies) to support their decisions. Publication practices in the fields of social sciences and humanities differ from those used for most natural science publications. Consequently, their research output is often inadequately represented in the aforementioned journal-based databases typically used for bibliometric analysis. This issue is particularly pronounced for non-English journals, which are notably underrepresented, as well as for conference papers, books, and edited volumes. An alternative to the more traditional journal-based systems of WoS and Scopus is Google Scholar (hereafter referred to as GS), which is one of the most comprehensive databases currently available. Several works, e.g., have analyzed the relative coverage between Google Scholar and Scopus. As soon as scientists realized that a significant proportion of their evaluation was based on these purely quantitative methods, some started to take advantage of the system. At first, the prevalence of plagiarism was sparse. However, many members of the academic community soon began consistently striving to optimize their performance through two key approaches: (a) increasing the number of papers they have authored and (b) increasing their impact, i.e., the number of citations received by these papers. While it is of course acceptable for a scientist to increase their productivity and the quality of their research impact to attract more citations, several malpractices started making their appearance in the academic landscape. Some malpractices used to optimize authorship include buying authorship and generating large authorship lists by merging and splitting articles. Some of the malpractices used to optimize impact include the use of excessive self-citations, citation circles, and coercive citations, as well as uploading fake documents, editorial grouping, and using Generative AI tools. Most of these malpractices are easily achievable in Google Scholar since it is editable by the end user, but some, such as self-citations, citation circles, and coercive citations, are also a problem for curated bibliographic databases. Additionally, quality control issues in Google Scholar exacerbate the situation. In the remainder of this editorial, we will briefly describe the mechanisms behind these malpractices and provide some ideas for reducing the problem.

Citation rankings have emerged as a popular approach to ranking the scholarly impact of law faculties. This paper develops a statistical approach for inferring faculty quality from citation counts and determining when differences among law schools are significant. Statistical tests demonstrate that the distribution of citations within faculties closely follows the lognormal distribution, subject to small adjustments. This suggests a simple test for comparing faculties: whether they could be drawn from lognormal distributions with the same log mean. Under this approach, the geometric mean of citations is the most efficient measure for summarizing faculty quality. Using citation data collected from HeinOnline, this article provides a citation ranking for 195 law schools in the United States. Most differences between peer schools are statistically insignificant, and confidence intervals on citation ranks are extremely wide. Except for the highest-ranked faculties, citation rankings provide little information on the relative quality of faculties.

This study uses a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to examine the relationships between the International Commercial Terms (Incoterms®), logistics, and legal issues in the context of international trade. By examining a dataset of 290 documents published from 1973 to 2023 in various academic databases such as Web of Science, Google Scholar, Science Direct, among others, the research aims to identify trends, key issues, and potential future directions in this interdisciplinary field. The analysis reveals a significant increase in publications since 2010, with a focus on topics such as legal and contractual issues, supply chain management, risk mitigation, and the evolution of Incoterms® rules. Co-occurrence analysis emphasizes six distinct clusters, ranging from international trade dynamics and transaction costs to regulatory frameworks and risk management. The abstract content analysis further highlights the interconnectedness of legal, logistical and implementation issues. The study also identifies the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Korea as the most important countries contributing to the field. It is concluded that Incoterms® and its multidisciplinary essence generates a greater interest in the international trade, not only because of its incidence in diverse fields of management; but also, because these rules are updated to regulate better the business transactions. The findings provide valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, and show the importance of considering the multifaceted nature of Incoterms® research and its impact on global trade practices.

Government procurement, being the largest business sector worldwide, faces significant challenges in terms of corruption, lack of transparency, and accountability. This study performs a bibliometric analysis to quantify and evaluate the scientific production on ethics in government procurement, identifying trends and associations between key terms over time. Using the Scopus database, 236 relevant documents dating from 1983 to 2024 were extracted, revealing a predominance of research articles and increasing attention to the topic, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings indicate the importance of sustainable and responsible practices, as well as the potential of technological innovation, such as blockchain implementation and electronic contracting, to improve the integrity and efficiency of government procurement.

The main objective of this article was to conduct a bibliometric study of publications on omission neglect published in indexed journals (national and international) between 1988 and 2016. Thus, the focus of analysis is the theme neglect of omission linked to consumer behavior, Using the resource of bibliometric laws, the software SciMAT and IRAMUTEQ, 55 articles were identified, of which only 15 correspond to 80% of the citations identified in the researched platforms, and the article entitled ‘Effects of Word-of-Mouth and Herr, Kardes and Kim’s (1991) Product-Attribute Information on Persuasion: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Perspective (1991), with 2459 citations, and although in a universe of 68 identified authors, only nine authors are highly productive (96,88% of publications), including Herr, Kardes and Kim.

In response to the need to modernize the public machine in the face of the backward processes used by administrative managements that hindered the unfolding of their actions, the Public Administration began to adopt integrity programs as instruments of control and results. The primary function of integrity programs is to orient and guide the behavior of public officials so as to align them with the public interest, thereby promoting improvement and transparency in public management. In this sense, this study uses the concepts of bibliometrics as a tool to analyze the scientific publications developed between 2013 and 2022, based on the publication of Law 12.846/13. The searches for articles were conducted with the terms “Integrity Programs”, “Compliance” and “Public Administration” using the Web of Science and Scopus platforms, resulting in a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the studies directed to the keywords that were searched.

Objective: The research analyzes, through an epistemological-historical perspective, statements that enable the metric discourse among authors in the context of a political economy of scientific production. More specifically, that speech that allows measuring and establishing a type of ranking among the authors. To propose that the notion of bio-bibliography, more than the general notion of bibliography, is directly linked to this discursive conformation. The research is focused on scientific authorship. Method: The methodological procedure adopted is defined by theoretical exploration applied to scientific literature. Greater relevance is given to the statements produced in the field of knowledge of Library and Information Science (LIS), although not restricted to this. The discursive unit, which allows describing, measuring and classifying scientific authors, is formed from the heterogeneous relationship between statements that deal with the notions of author and measurement. Therefore, we deal with these statements as events that build this knowledge. Result: The exploration demonstrates that measurement and classification ideas among authors were already possible in the early 20th century. However, from a historical perspective, we can assess some epistemic changes that influenced this practice. The quantitative character is present in the two discursive models studied. However, the formation of quantified objects differs. In the first case, there is a concern to measure the superiority of one author over the other on the discursive surface about them, a singular kind of moral order (a vertical ethos for establishing behavior patterns). In a second step, which we call the epistemic turn, we have that authorial productivity is the most relevant factor to classify scientific authorship. Thus, in capitalism, the work is converted into a product and the author into a producer. Conclusions: The notion of measure and author has long been present in the macro discourse of the bibliography, as a discourse of knowledge. However, we can say that these relationships are not static over time. Biobibliographical discourse supports the classifying practice between subjects. It went from a biographical pole to an episteme of the individual’s bibliographic production, crossed by metrical issues. If bibliometric is only possible by structuring a bibliographic practice, evaluation by the production criterion for subjects, endowed with the author function, also runs through a bio-biblical logic, being able to support a “bio-bibliometric” notion.