bibliometric analysis of researchers’ competencies through

University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska - Lincoln

DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

3-29-2021

Bibliometric Analysis of Researchers’ Competencies through Web Bibliometric Analysis of Researchers’ Competencies through Web

of Science of Science

Muhammad Abbas Ganaee International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan, [email protected]

Shamshad Ahmed University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan, [email protected]

Muhammad Ajmal Khan Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia, [email protected]

Ayesha Gulzar University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac

Part of the Scholarly Communication Commons, and the Scholarly Publishing Commons

Ganaee, Muhammad Abbas; Ahmed, Shamshad; Khan, Muhammad Ajmal; and Gulzar, Ayesha, "Bibliometric Analysis of Researchers’ Competencies through Web of Science" (2021). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 5371. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/5371

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraries

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu%2Flibphilprac%2F5371&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://network.bepress.com/hgg/discipline/1272?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu%2Flibphilprac%2F5371&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

http://network.bepress.com/hgg/discipline/1273?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu%2Flibphilprac%2F5371&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/5371?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu%2Flibphilprac%2F5371&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

1

Library Philosophy & Practice (e-journal) 2021

Bibliometric Analysis of Researchers’ Competencies through Web of Science

by

Muhammad Abbas Ganaee1

Shamshad Ahmed2

Muhammad Ajmal Khan3

Ayesha Gulzar4 1 Principal Librarian, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan

2Associate Professor, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan 3Head, Library Quality and Academic Accreditation, Deanship of Library Affairs, Imam

Abdulrahman bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia 4M.Phil Scholar, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan

Abstract Universities and institutes of higher education produce researchers and scholars who can find

the solutions to the problems in their fields of studies. Researchers belonging to any academic

discipline should have certain competencies and skills to conduct a valuable research. This study

uses the Bibliometric method to investigate the literature published on researchers’

competencies, not limited to any specific subject. The query to search literature on research

competencies was run on Web of Science and 5,716 results were analyzed. A comparison of

pattern of publications and citations year wise was presented from 1905 to 2020. The study

reveals that most of the publications were from USA. Similar results were found in the top ten

highest research producing institutions which included five American and two Canadian

universities. Keywords analysis shows the emergence of ‘research ethics’ and ‘academic

writing’ as two major areas in research competencies.

Keywords: Bibliometric; research competencies; research skills; research ethics; writing

competencies; critical thinking competencies; retrieval competencies; publishing competencies.

Introduction Universities and institutes of higher education produce researchers and scholars who can find the

solutions to the problems in their fields of studies. Being a part of the society, these researchers

locate research problems and try to find logical answers to these problems not only for academic

purposes but also to provide expert opinion to various issues emerged in the society. Academic

institutes contribute considerably in innovation processes and research in their localities (Fritsch

& Schwirten, 1999), to create competence-based individuals for mastering knowledge, abilities

and skills in practice (Gureeva, Korolkova, Novozhilova, Shovgenina, & Mityagina, 2015).

Universities have emerged as research institutes and play leading role to find solutions to society

problems, as during recent pandemic of COVID-19 “Fudan University in Shanghai, University

of Melbourne and University of Oxford are the top 3 institutions” whose efforts can be seen to

prepare a vaccine for COVID-19 (Radanliev, De Roure, & Walton, 2020).

Researchers and scholars have strong responsibilities on their shoulders to get them

equipped with the competencies and skills to find answers to societies questions and issues.

Researchers belonging to any academic discipline should have certain competencies and skills to

conduct a valuable research. The main purpose of universities is to prepare the student as a

Bibliometric analysis of researchers’ competencies

2


skilled researcher who “has acquired the knowledge and skills of conducting and

disseminating his or her research in a particular field of research” (Meerah et al., 2012).

Producing such researchers has been the focus of most of the research programs. Conducting

research is the core requirement to get university degree i.e., PhD, MS/Mphil or BS and students

use research competencies not only for their theses but also for preparing class assignments and

to complete tasks given by teachers. Students should have a rational knowledge of research

procedures (Murdoch-Eaton et al., 2010) for creating effective research. Getting expertise of

research competencies in creating next generation of researchers and scholars which in turn help

them to play their vital role in addressing the problems faced by society.

Previously, the competence of a person was considered as personal characteristics which

could be judged in terms of quality of a person’s character and abilities. These days, skill-

oriented behavior is termed as competence which could be observed through quantitative ways.

Mahmood (2003) defined “a competency is having the capacity, skills and knowledge to produce

desirable outcomes”. The Council of Europe described “the set of knowledge and skills that

enable an employee to orient easily in a working field and to solve problems that are linked with

their professional role” (Webber, 1999).

A substantial number of studies (D. Abbott, 2015, 2019; L. E. Abbott, Andes, Pattani, &

Mabrouk, 2020; Adedokun, Bessenbacher, Parker, Kirkham, & Burgess, 2013; Agricola, Prins,

van der Schaaf, & van Tartwijk, 2018) are available on research competencies and skills in

general, in medical field (P. Abbott, Reath, Rosenkranz, Usherwood, & Hu, 2014; Abougergi,

Wright, Landis, & Howell, 2011; Acosta, Cuzme, & Galvez, 2019; Aguayo-Gonzalez, Leyva-

Moral, San Rafael, Fernandez, & Gomez-Ibanez, 2020; Ahn et al., 2020), research ethics

(Abdulrahman & Nair, 2017; Abu Tarboush, Alkayed, Alzoubi, & Al-Delaimy, 2020; Adams-

Hutcheson, 2017; Adams et al., 2017; Adesanya, 2020) and in academic writing (Abraham,

2015; Agosto-Riera & Mateo-Girona, 2015; Ahmed; Al Sharoufi, 2013). For instance, research

competencies and skills involve getting proficiency like “formulating appropriate research

questions, designing and running methodologically sound studies, gaining ethics approval,

collecting and analysing data, and sharing results” (Lander, Seeho, & Foster, 2019). Similarly,

‘Writing up the research’ is significant in these competencies due to globalization of academia

has pushed the scholars to publish their research works in well reputed international journals.

Academic writing requires the understanding of IMRAD (introduction, methods, results and

discussion) structure (Sollaci & Pereira, 2004) and is formal and concise, uses technical language

and its targeted audience is educated professional community (Candlin & Hyland, 2014).

Further, research ethics deals with the moral aspects during conduction of research and

the ethical behavior, conduct and approach of the researchers. Ensuring quality and informed

consent, taking care of privacy and minimizing harm are important components of research

ethics (Brown, Spiro, & Quinton, 2020). Effective searching competencies required the in-depth

understanding to locate relevant information in the ever expanding landscape of Internet,

knowing various internet tools, knowing searching techniques, cognitive ability to coordinate

searches, and the skills to perform the searches well (Laxman, 2010).

Research could be cost-effective by learning the interdisciplinary research training hence

scientists, clinicians, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members can play their part in this

endeavor by conducting research with fellows from other disciplines (Stone, Cohen, & Pincus,

2017). An appropriated educated professional with experiential background ensures the research

competencies to its students and provide mentoring during professional education (Hymel,

2005). Conducting research is mandatory for students to earn academic degrees hence institutes


3


of higher education employ different models to increase the research competencies of university

graduates and their performance in producing valuable research. A teaching and learning

approach which is research-based could help a lot for developing research competencies of the

students (Wannapiroon, 2014).

Due to scarcity of bibliometric analysis on research competencies, it is of interest to

evaluate the concepts of researchers to gain better understanding on the subject. Bibliometric

analysis is quantitative way to examine the trends in published research on a particular subject. It

is an important instrument to analyze the research work and provides evidences for work done so

far on a topic. By using mathematical methods, patterns of development of a particular body of

literature like publication and authorship can be identified (Reitz, 2020). In the current study

literature published on competencies are restricted to; knowledge of the subject, critical thinking,

writing, retrieval, research and publishing competencies as well as research ethics. This study

presents a computable statistical analysis of the publications on research competencies, and also

portrays conceptual maps that integrate and correlate the knowledge of existing publications.

The study presented with the intention to get a review of literature on research

competencies. Additionally, the study was carried out for the following objectives:

1. To identify the literature on the research competencies produced by researchers of different

subject areas.

2. To explore the research trends and citations of research work during different years

3. To identify different concepts and keywords used in the literature on research competencies

4. To identity the top countries that produces the literature on research competencies and

collaboration within various countries

5. To identify the top journals that have published research works on research competencies

Methodology This study uses the Bibliometric method to investigate the literature published on research

competencies of researchers, not limited to any specific subject. This method is used to examine

studies in scientific and applied sciences (Ellegaard & Wallin, 2015). In bibliometric analysis

mathematical/ statistical methods are used to find trends and patterns of publications, citations,

authorship, co-authorship and collaboration between regions and organizations in published

articles, conferences papers and scholarly documents (Durisin, Calabretta, & Parmeggiani,

2010). This provides opportunity to researchers to evaluate the published literature without

contacting its authors (Garfield & Merton, 1979).

Database Selection

Many online available database services provide bibliographic information of published research

including articles, reference papers, review articles like Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, Google

scholar, MELINE, PubMed. This study uses WOS which have resources on science, social

sciences, arts and humanities. WOS was selected for this study as it is believed to be most

powerful, reliable and trusted database among professionals and researchers (Saleem, Khattak,

Ur Rehman, & Ashiq, 2021). WOS also published Journal Citation Reports (JCR) annually

including impact factor journals indicating the quality of journals.

Search Query


4


The query used to get a quick understanding of the publications on research competencies of the

title (TI) field of the WOS. Following syntax was used to search for finding the literature:

TI=("research competenc*" OR "research skil*" OR "research techniqu*" OR

"academic writing" OR "searching techniqu*" OR "Searching skills" OR "research

ethics") OR AK=("research competenc*" OR "research skil*" OR "research techniqu*"

OR "academic writing" OR "searching techniqu*" OR "searching skills" OR "research

ethics")

Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria

The Web of Science Core Collection produced 5,718 records by running the above query (on

date December 08, 2020). The search was conducted on SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI,

CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, ESCI, CCR-EXPANDED and IC indices of WOS. No time limit was opted

in searching the above query so all records till 8 December 2020 were included in the

downloaded search results. For downloaded data, duplication of records was checked by

importing the dataset into EndNote and two duplicate records were found whose WOS accession

numbers were noted. The query was run again on WOS by excluding the duplicate records which

produced 5,716 results in the final query (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Flow chart of data extraction and duplication checking process

Types of documents excluded during searing were letter, note, correction addition,

meeting abstract, book chapter, reprint, editorial material, discussion, retracted publication, news

item, software review, retraction, book review, correction and bibliography.

Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer and Biblioshiny were used to examine the data records in

this study. VOSviewer (Kawuki, Yu, & Musa, 2020; Martynov, Klima-Frysch, & Schoenberger,

2020; Merigó, Pedrycz, Weber, & de la Sotta, 2018; Xie, Zhang, Wu, & Lv, 2020) and

Biblioshiny (Homolak, Kodvanj, & Virag, 2020; Janik, Ryszko, & Szafraniec, 2020) are popular

softwares used by many researchers for bibliometric analysis.

Data analysis

Publications and citations trend


5


Graphs in Figure 2 shows the distribution of documents published in a year, total citations

received and average citations per documents in a specific year. The data was from 1905 to 2020

and a total of 5716 documents were retrieved while 11056 author-keywords were counted

altogether. First year of publication of a document was 1905, when only one document was

found. It was the year 1977 when first time 10 documents in a year were existed. During the last

decade of previous century, around 26 documents were found on average each year, with around

130 citations each year.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

5000

19

05

19

31

19

40

19

52

19

56

19

61

19

66

19

70

19

74

19

78

19

82

19

86

19

90

19

94

19

98

20

02

20

06

20

10

20

14

20

18

Tota

l Pu

blic

atio

ns

/ A

vera

ge c

itat

ion

s p

er

Do

cum

en

t

Tota

l Cit

atio

ns

Total Citations Total Publications Average citations per Document

Figure 2 Pattern of publications and citations year wise

Number of total publications kept on rising from the start of current century and first time

in the year 2011 total publications crossed the 200 mark. The graph shows number of

publications has a steady growth in the last decade, although number of publication has fallen in

2020, this might be for the reason that some publications yet to be accumulated in the

bibliographic database. The line graph reveals the highest number of citations per documents was

received in 2004 when 78 documents a total number of 3820 citations were located. The graph

shows an increasing trend in the number of publications and total citations from year 2000

onwards but the average citation per document per year shows a decline as enormous number of

research work is being produced and published.

International collaboration and contribution

The highest number of research works was produced by the authors from USA, showing with

bigger circle in the map. Figure 3 shows the map of countries, which was generated by limiting

countries with minimum of 5 publications. Out of 140 countries of the data downloaded from

WOS, 80 countries met the criteria of minimum publications. The map showed 76 countries with

largest set of connected items skipping Kuwait, Slovenia, Belarus and Bolivia which had week

connections in the network. Lines between the circles showed the relation between two

countries, how often they appear together. England is the second highest productive country,

followed by Canada shown by green circle just behind and partially overlapped by England.


6


Figure 3 Collaboration network among the countries based on the number of publications

Top ten high-research- producing institutions

The top 10 institutions in respect to highly producing research publications on research

competencies are shown in Table 1, with their research impact. It can be observed from the table

that five institutes were American in the list and by including two Canadian institutes, 70%

universities were belonged to North American region. All the institutes have publications more

than 50 on their credit except University of Sydney which has 49 publications. Although the

most productive university is University of Pennsylvania, USA with 88 publications but

University of Melbourne, Australia has the higher citation impact value of 23.25, which is the

ratio between total citations and total publications. University of Sydney, Australia has the

lowest citations impact of 9.84 with 49 publications. It has been observed that most of the

research work by University of Pennsylvania was on research ethics, although works on other

aspects of research like research collaboration, research techniques etc. were also found.

Table 1 Top ten most highly productive organizations

Affiliations and Countries TP TC Citations Impact

University of Pennsylvania, USA 88 1288 14.64

University of Oxford, UK 82 1479 18.04

University of Toronto, Canada 77 1646 21.38

McGill University, Canada 73 1090 14.93

University of Washington, USA 67 1434 21.4

Johns Hopkins University, USA 64 1415 22.1

National Institutes of Health, USA 91 1554 17.08

University of Michigan, USA 53 846 15.96

University of Melbourne, Australia 51 1186 23.25


7


University of Sydney, Australia 49 487 9.94 TP=total publications, TC=total citations

Keyword analysis

As seen from Figure 4, two big clusters around the nodes can easily be observed and size of the

nodes represents the occurrences of the keywords appeared in the publications, i.e., ‘research

ethics’ and ‘academic writing’ and the former makes strong relation with most of the keyword in

the visualization map. These two clusters are placed at distance to each other shows two different

points of opinion on ‘research skills’, which lies in the space between these two nodes. This

visualization map shows the overall concepts associated with the research competencies of

researchers.

Figure 4 Co-occurrence network of the most frequent keywords

Note: (A minimum occurrence of 10 was applied for keywords provided by authors and 268

words met the criteria of this threshold out of 10683 keywords. The total strength of the co-

occurrence links is calculated with other keywords. In the figure, keywords having the greatest

total link strength are shown.)

The third bigger cluster is of ‘informed consent’, although the keyword is not visible in

the map, has 440 appearances in the searched literature. It is shown in sky blue color, partially

hidden under the ‘research ethics’ node and overlapped by it, which indicates a strong relation

with it. Hence informed consent appeared as a strong component of research ethics, as appeared

in the searched literature, although it has no relation with second big cluster of ‘academic

writing’. This cluster is very close to another keyword ‘clinical trials’ indicates the studies have

been conducted in the field of medical science.

Authorship pattern

The figure 5 shows the authorship pattern for the publications explored in the study. The highest

number of authors for a publication is 50 persons. There was one publication found with 19, 20,

21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31 and 50 authors each. The single authorship has the highest number of

publications, i.e., 1976 and other top authorship patterns were 1469 publications with two


8


authors, 886 publications with three authors and 503 publications with four authors. The sum of

first two top publications, i.e., with one and two authors is more the 1.5 times of the aggregate of

all other publications examined in this study.

Figure 5 Authorship pattern

International and national collaborations

Corresponding author is the principal author of the publication who does all the communication

of submitting the article, response to revisions of article etc., with the publisher of the journal.

International collaboration of corresponding author is shown in the Figure 6, with single country

publication (SCP) indicates the intra-country collaboration and multiple country publications

(MCP) are inter-country publications.

Figure 6 Corresponding author’s country


9


Although, USA has the highest number of total publications and also highest inter-

country publications (n=155), but the Netherlands (34%) has the highest ratio of inter-country

collaboration (MCP) calculated on total publications, followed by Switzerland (31%) and

Norway (26%). For the USA, 90% of articles were contributed by domestic authors represented

as percentage of single country publication (SCP) where as MCP was 10%. For Iran, only 4%

corresponding authors found a chance to have international collaboration for their publications

with the least MCP ratio. China is the top most Asian country, with the highest number of

publications and MCP ration (17%).

Collective number of total publications of North American countries, i.e., USA and

Canada is higher than the total number of publications of other eight countries for the top ten

highly productive countries.

Table 2 Top 15 journals with highest number of publications

Sources TP TC CPP IF* PY

Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics 211 1941 9 1.253 2006

Journal of Medical Ethics 131 1599 12 2.021 1992

Journal of English for Academic Purposes 105 1500 14 1.893 2010

Science and Engineering Ethics 100 665 7 2.787 1998

BMC Medical Ethics 93 901 10 2.451 2010

Developing World Bioethics 89 741 8 1.431 2006

Bioethics 82 833 10 1.799 2000

American Journal of Bioethics 67 1971 29 7.647 2003

Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance 62 315 5 1.458 2008

Ethics & Behavior 55 754 14 1.120 1995

English for Specific Purposes 43 979 23 2.612 2001

Higher Education Research & Development 39 330 8 2.129 2008

Journal of Second Language Writing 39 1120 29 3.077 2002

Social Science & Medicine 38 1474 39 3.616 1991

Nursing Ethics 36 417 12 2.597 1999

Note: (* Figures for Impact factor was provided from the Journal Citation Report 2020, Web of

Science)

Top highly influential journals

Analysis was carried out of top journals that published the articles on searched query. The list

was generated by using a threshold value of minimum of 34 documents published by a source, to

create a list limited to 15 journals. Journals in the list are ranked according to the total

publications (TP) by the source. American Journal of Bioethics secured more citations than the

journal ranked first (Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics) in the list,

although it has two third less publications than it, also its highest impact factor (7.647) is another

indicator of getting more citations by its publications. Social Science & Medicine has the highest

value of citations per publications (CPP=39) is also the only journal in the list with higher value

of CPP than it total publications (TP=38). The last five journals in the list (English for Specific

Purposes, Higher Education Research & Development, Journal of Second Language Writing,

Social Science & Medicine and Nursing Ethics) have less than 50 publications but all have an

impact factor more than two.


10


Table 3 Authors impact

Author TP TC h_index g_index m_index PY_start

van delden jjm 25 249 11 14 0.917 2009

sugarman j 23 809 11 23 1999

weijer c 23 294 9 17 0.375 1997

fisher cb 22 367 9 19 0.375 1997

hyland k 21 1544 15 21 0.789 2002

hyder aa 20 220 8 14 0.533 2006

miller fg 18 524 14 18 0.737 2002

parker m 17 287 9 16 0.750 2009

van der graaf r 17 154 7 12 0.583 2009

dubois jm 16 235 8 15 0.471 2004

kimmelman j 15 209 7 14 2007

pratt b 15 106 7 9 0.700 2011

taljaard m 14 141 7 11 0.500 2011

wassenaar d 14 198 8 14 0.700 2005

cho mk 13 696 11 13 0.846 2008

nebeker c 13 163 7 12 1.167 2015

bull s 12 250 8 12 0.889 2012

kim syh 12 242 8 12 0.444 2003

london aj 12 175 7 12 0.467 2006

ali j 11 93 6 9 0.667 2012 TP = total publication, TC = total citation

Authors’ impact

Authors’ impact is analyzed for top 20 authors and they were ranked according to total

publications (TP) in Table 3, with their h-index, g-index and m-index. Hirsch (2005) introduced

the h-index a way to measure the bibliometric impact of an author and defined it as, “a scientist

has index h if h of his or her Np papers have at least h citations each and the other (Np - h) papers

have fewer than h citations each”. In other words, to have an h-index of 5, an author has to have

5 highly cited publications, each receiving at least 5 citations. Egghe (2006) introduced the g-

index, another way to measure the author impact, which always the same or more than h-index

and is the highest rank where the sum of citations is larger than square of rank. Whereas, m-

index is the ratio of h-index and number of years since first publication. It measures author

impact and “avoids a bias towards more senior scientists with longer careers and more

publications in past, but now slowdown or stop publishing in recent past”(Khan, 2020).

The top most author in Table 3, van delden jjm (Johannes JM van Delden) is a Dutch

researcher from medical science and most of the research work covered the ethical aspect of

research like “Ethics in clinical trial regulation: ethically relevant issues from EMA inspection

reports” (Bernabe, van Thiel, Breekveldt, Gispen-de Wied, & van Delden, 2019), “The social

value of clinical research” (Habets, van Delden, & Bredenoord, 2014), “Participant selection for

preventive Regenerative Medicine trials: ethical challenges of selecting individuals at risk”

(Niemansburg, Habets, Dhert, van Delden, & Bredenoord, 2015) etc.


11


Figure 7 Three-factor analysis of the relationship among countries (left), authors (middle) and keywords (right)

The author hyland k (Ken Hyland) who got the highest citations for published articles

also got highest h-index value of 15, which indicates that author’s 15 top highly cited articles got

15 or more citations per article. Ken Hyland is a British Professor at the University of East

Anglia, United Kingdom, of Applied Linguistics in Education. He highlighted the academic

writing feature of research, like “Is academic writing becoming more informal?” (Hyland &

Jiang, 2017), “Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal” (Hyland & Tse, 2004) etc. in

his research work.

NEBEKER C who has low number of total publications (TP=13) than other top 15

authors in the Table 3, but succeeds to get the highest value (1.167) for m-index. It was due to

less number of years since first research publication, as 2015 was year of first publication for the

author and appeared to be youngest researcher in the table. So, m-index provides a chance to

young researchers to secure higher impact in publications when compared with inactive

researchers.

Three-factor analysis of countries, authors and keywords

The Figure 7 shows the relationship among countries, author and keywords on research

competencies research. Top authors shown in the figure, i.e., weijer c, taljaard m, sugarman j,

parker m and fisher cb had relationship with almost all author-keywords like research ethics,

research, informed consent etc except keywords academic writing, writing, academic, education

and institutional review board but had strong relationship with top three countries, i.e., USA,

Canada and United Kingdom.

Limitations of the study and Future Research Guidelines Firstly, in the current study the analyzed data was taken from the WOS core collection, although

no time limitation was applied while searching the available data from the beginning of research


12


works. Data was searched on a specific date, so there could be different search results when data

would be searched with same query from WOS. Secondly some type of documents which were

excluded while searching the WOS might include some useful information on research

competencies. These documents are letter, note, correction addition, meeting abstract, book

chapter, reprint, editorial material, discussion, retracted publication, news item, software review,

retraction, book review, correction and bibliography. Thirdly data from other renowned

databases were not included in this study, like Scopus, Google Scholar etc.

Conclusions This study was conducted to get an overview of the research work published regarding research

competencies possessed by researchers belonging to any field of study. These research

competencies assure the quality of research and authenticate the ability of researchers to conduct

valuable research. This study conducted the bibliometric analysis of publications from the start

of previous century till the date of searching the WOS (i.e., December 08, 2020) on researchers’

competencies.

There was a rapid boost in the number of publications on the researchers’ competencies

since the start of first decade of twentieth century and the trend continued with higher rate during

the last decade especially during last five years. Authors with highest number of publications

examined in this study were from USA, followed by authors from United Kingdom and Canada.

Authorship patterns revealed that the single-author publications are very famous as the

highest number of publications, i.e., 1976 were contributed by sole authors (figure 5). Frequency

of author-provided keywords revealed that the high focus areas were ‘research ethics’ and

‘academic writing’. Top journals which published works on research competencies are inclined

to ethical consideration of research including Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research

Ethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of English for Academic Purposes and Science and

Engineering Ethics. With regard to highly productive organizations, top ten were American,

Canadian and Australian institutes.

This research had contributed in reviewing the growing body of knowledge on

researchers’ competencies. The study analyzed 5716 articles, early access articles, proceedings

papers and review articles from 2258 sources, searched and downloaded from WOS.

References

Abbott, D. (2015). "How to Fail Your Research Degree" A Serious Game for Research Students

in Higher Education. In S. Gobel, M. Ma, J. B. Hauge, M. F. Oliveira, J. Wiemeyer & V.

Wendel (Eds.), Serious Games, Jcsg 2015 (Vol. 9090, pp. 179-185). Berlin: Springer-

Verlag Berlin.

Abbott, D. (2019). Game-based learning for postgraduates: an empirical study of an educational

game to teach research skills. [Article]. Higher Education Pedagogies, 4(1), 80-104. doi:

10.1080/23752696.2019.1629825

Abbott, L. E., Andes, A., Pattani, A. C., & Mabrouk, P. A. (2020). Authorship Not Taught and

Not Caught in Undergraduate Research Experiences at a Research University. [Article].

Science and Engineering Ethics, 26(5), 2555-2599. doi: 10.1007/s11948-020-00220-6

Abbott, P., Reath, J., Rosenkranz, S., Usherwood, T., & Hu, W. D. (2014). Increasing GP

supervisor research skills - enhancing clinical practice and teaching. [Article]. Australian

Family Physician, 43(5), 327-330.


13


Abdulrahman, M., & Nair, S. C. (2017). Overall Assessment of Human Research and Ethics

Committees in the United Arab Emirates. [Article]. Journal of Empirical Research on

Human Research Ethics, 12(2), 71-78. doi: 10.1177/1556264617697522

Abougergi, M. S., Wright, S. M., Landis, R., & Howell, E. E. (2011). Research in Progress

Conference for Hospitalists Provides Valuable Peer Mentoring. [Article]. Journal of

Hospital Medicine, 6(1), 43-46. doi: 10.1002/jhm.865

Abraham, A. (2015). Action researching power in an ESL and academic writing classroom.

[Article]. Qualitative Research Journal, 15(2), 155-165. doi: 10.1108/qrj-12-2014-0068

Abu Tarboush, N., Alkayed, Z., Alzoubi, K. H., & Al-Delaimy, W. K. (2020). The understanding

of research ethics at health sciences schools in Jordan: a cross-sectional study. [Article].

Bmc Medical Education, 20(1). doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02040-5

Acosta, R. A. M., Cuzme, D. V. T., & Galvez, A. P. R. (2019). THE RESEARCH SKILLS IN

THE DENTISTRY CAREER. [Article]. Revista Conrado, 15(69), 201-208.

Adams-Hutcheson, G. (2017). Mobilising research ethics: Two examples from Aotearoa New

Zealand. [Article]. New Zealand Geographer, 73(2), 87-96. doi: 10.1111/nzg.12154

Adams, P., Prakobtham, S., Limpattaracharoen, C., Suebtrakul, S., Vutikes, P., Khusmith, S., . . .

Kaewkungwal, J. (2017). Ethical issues of informed consent in malaria research

proposals submitted to a research ethics committee in Thailand: a retrospective document

review. [Article]. Bmc Medical Ethics, 18. doi: 10.1186/s12910-017-0210-0

Adedokun, O. A., Bessenbacher, A. B., Parker, L. C., Kirkham, L. L., & Burgess, W. D. (2013).

Research skills and STEM undergraduate research students' aspirations for research

careers: Mediating effects of research self-efficacy. [Article]. Journal of Research in

Science Teaching, 50(8), 940-951. doi: 10.1002/tea.21102

Adesanya, A. A. (2020). A proposed research misconduct policy for universities and

postgraduate colleges in developing countries. [Article]. Nigerian Postgraduate Medical

Journal, 27(3), 250-258. doi: 10.4103/npmj.npmj_51_20

Agosto-Riera, S. E., & Mateo-Girona, M. T. (2015). Teaching academic writing at Spanish

universities: analysis of relevant experiences and practices. [Article]. Cultura Y

Educacion, 27(3), 629-648. doi: 10.1080/11356405.2015.1072355

Agricola, B. T., Prins, F. J., van der Schaaf, M. F., & van Tartwijk, J. (2018). Teachers' diagnosis

of students' research skills during the mentoring of the undergraduate thesis. [Article].

Mentoring & Tutoring, 26(5), 542-562. doi: 10.1080/13611267.2018.1561015

Aguayo-Gonzalez, M., Leyva-Moral, J. M., San Rafael, S., Fernandez, M. I., & Gomez-Ibanez,

R. (2020). Graduated nurses' experiences with baccalaureate thesis writing: A qualitative

study. [Article]. Nursing & Health Sciences, 22(3), 563-569. doi: 10.1111/nhs.12693

Ahmed, R. Peer review in academic writing: Different perspectives from instructors and

students. [Review; Early Access]. Tesol Journal. doi: 10.1002/tesj.537

Ahn, S., Jeong, G. H., Shin, H. S., Kim, J. I., Kim, Y., Song, J. E., . . . Kim, M. H. (2020).

Nursing Faculties' Knowledge of and Attitudes Toward Research Ethics According to

Demographic Characteristics and Institutional Environment in Korea. [Article]. Sage

Open, 10(1). doi: 10.1177/2158244020914543

Al Sharoufi, H. (2013). ACADEMIC WRITING WIZARD: A NEW WEB-BASED

APPLICATION FOR TEACHING ACADEMIC WRITING USING LEXICAL

COHESIVE TRIO. In A. Lesenciuc, D. Nagy, A. Codreanu, V. Borcan & R. M.

Levonian (Eds.), Redefining Community in Intercultural Context - Rcic' 13 (Vol. 2, pp.

173-181). Brasov: Editura Acad Fortelor Aeriene Henri Coanda.


14


Bernabe, R., van Thiel, G., Breekveldt, N. S., Gispen-de Wied, C. C., & van Delden, J. J. M.

(2019). Ethics in clinical trial regulation: ethically relevant issues from EMA inspection

reports. [Article]. Current Medical Research and Opinion, 35(4), 637-645. doi:

10.1080/03007995.2018.1528214

Brown, C., Spiro, J., & Quinton, S. (2020). The role of research ethics committees: Friend or foe

in educational research? An exploratory study. British Educational Research Journal,

46(4), 747-769. doi: 10.1002/berj.3654

Candlin, C. N., & Hyland, K. (2014). Writing: Texts, processes and practices: Routledge.

Durisin, B., Calabretta, G., & Parmeggiani, V. (2010). The Intellectual Structure of Product

Innovation Research: A Bibliometric Study of the Journal of Product Innovation

Management, 1984–2004. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 27(3), 437-451.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5885.2010.00726.x

Egghe, L. (2006). Theory and practise of the g-index. Scientometrics, 69(1), 131-152.

Ellegaard, O., & Wallin, J. A. (2015). The bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: How

great is the impact? Scientometrics, 105(3), 1809-1831. doi: 10.1007/s11192-015-1645-z

Fritsch, M., & Schwirten, C. (1999). Enterprise-University Co-operation and the Role of Public

Research Institutions in Regional Innovation Systems. Industry and Innovation, 6(1), 69-

83. doi: 10.1080/13662719900000005

Garfield, E., & Merton, R. K. (1979). Citation indexing: Its theory and application in science,

technology, and humanities (Vol. 8). New York: Wiley

Gureeva, A., Korolkova, S., Novozhilova, A., Shovgenina, E., & Mityagina, V. (2015). Creating

Information Retrieval Competence of Future Translators: An Integrative Approach.

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(6 S5), 78-78. doi:

10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p78

Habets, M., van Delden, J. J. M., & Bredenoord, A. L. (2014). The social value of clinical

research. [Article]. Bmc Medical Ethics, 15. doi: 10.1186/1472-6939-15-66

Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output. Proceedings

of the National academy of Sciences, 102(46), 16569-16572.

Homolak, J., Kodvanj, I., & Virag, D. (2020). Preliminary analysis of COVID-19 academic

information patterns: a call for open science in the times of closed borders.

Scientometrics, 124(3), 2687-2701. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03587-2

Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. (2017). Is academic writing becoming more informal? [Article]. English

for Specific Purposes, 45, 40-51. doi: 10.1016/j.esp.2016.09.001

Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2004). Metadiscourse in academic writing: A reappraisal. [Article].

Applied Linguistics, 25(2), 156-177. doi: 10.1093/applin/25.2.156

Hymel, G. M. (2005). Integrating research competencies in massage therapy education. Journal

of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 9(1), 43-51.

Janik, A., Ryszko, A., & Szafraniec, M. (2020). Scientific landscape of smart and sustainable

cities literature: A bibliometric analysis. Sustainability, 12(3), 779. doi:

10.3390/su12030779

Kawuki, J., Yu, X., & Musa, T. H. (2020). Bibliometric Analysis of Ebola Research Indexed in

Web of Science and Scopus (2010-2020). BioMed research international, 2020, 1-12.

doi: 10.1155/2020/5476567

Khan, N. (2020). Citation Indices: A Review. [REVIEW ARTICLE]. J Pak Dent Assoc, 29(2),

87-93. doi: 10.25301/JPDA.292.87


15


Lander, J., Seeho, S., & Foster, K. (2019). Learning Practical Research Skills Using An

Academic Paper Framework – An Innovative, Integrated Approach. Health Professions

Education, 5(2), 136-145. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hpe.2018.06.002

Laxman, K. (2010). A conceptual framework mapping the application of information search

strategies to well and ill-structured problem solving. Computers & Education, 55(2), 513-

526. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.014

Mahmood, K. (2003). A comparison between needed competencies of academic librarians and

LIS curricula in Pakistan. The Electronic Library, 21(2), 99-109. doi:

10.1108/02640470310462434

Martynov, I., Klima-Frysch, J., & Schoenberger, J. (2020). A scientometric analysis of

neuroblastoma research. BMC Cancer, 20, 1-10.

Meerah, T. S. M., Osman, K., Zakaria, E., Ikhsan, Z. H., Krish, P., Lian, D. K. C., & Mahmod,

D. (2012). Developing an Instrument to Measure Research Skills. Procedia - Social and

Behavioral Sciences, 60, 630-636. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.09.434

Merigó, J. M., Pedrycz, W., Weber, R., & de la Sotta, C. (2018). Fifty years of Information

Sciences: A bibliometric overview. Information Sciences, 432, 245-268. doi:

10.1016/j.ins.2017.11.054

Murdoch-Eaton, D., Drewery, S., Elton, S., Emmerson, C., Marshall, M., Smith, J. A., . . .

Whittle, S. (2010). What Do Medical Students Understand By Research And Research

Skills? Identifying Research Opportunities Within Undergraduate Projects. Medical

Teacher, 32(3), e152-e160. doi: 10.3109/01421591003657493

Niemansburg, S. L., Habets, M., Dhert, W. J. A., van Delden, J. J. M., & Bredenoord, A. L.

(2015). Participant selection for preventive Regenerative Medicine trials: ethical

challenges of selecting individuals at risk. [Article]. Journal of Medical Ethics, 41(11),

914-916. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2014-102625

Radanliev, P., De Roure, D., & Walton, R. (2020). Data mining and analysis of scientific

research data records on Covid-19 mortality, immunity, and vaccine development - In the

first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical

Research & Reviews, 14(5), 1121-1132. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsx.2020.06.063

Reitz, J. M. (2020). ODLIS-Online dictionary for library and information science Retrieved 27

December 2020, 2020, from https://products.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_b.aspx

Saleem, F., Khattak, A., Ur Rehman, S., & Ashiq, M. (2021). Bibliometric Analysis of Green

Marketing Research from 1977 to 2020. Publications, 9(1), 1.

Sollaci, L. B., & Pereira, M. G. (2004). The introduction, methods, results, and discussion

(IMRAD) structure: a fifty-year survey. Journal of the Medical Library Association :

JMLA, 92(3), 364-367.

Stone, P. W., Cohen, C., & Pincus, H. A. (2017). Comparative and cost-effectiveness research:

Competencies, opportunities, and training for nurse scientists. Nursing outlook, 65(6),

711-717. doi: 10.1016/j.outlook.2017.04.002

Wannapiroon, P. (2014). Development of Research-based Blended Learning Model to Enhance

Graduate Students’ Research Competency and Critical Thinking Skills. Procedia - Social

and Behavioral Sciences, 136, 486-490. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.361

Webber, S. (1999). Competencies for Information Professionals. Bulletin of the American

Society for Information Science and Technology, 26(1), 28-29. doi:

https://doi.org/10.1002/bult.140


16


Xie, H., Zhang, Y., Wu, Z., & Lv, T. (2020). A Bibliometric Analysis on Land Degradation:

Current Status, Development, and Future Directions. Land, 9(1), 28. doi:

10.3390/land9010028

Corresponding author

Muhammad Abbas Ganaee can be contacted at: [email protected]

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0691-0473

mailto:[email protected]

bibliometric analysis of researchers’ competencies through

Documents