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ISMTE / Elsevier’s International Center for the Study of Research (ICSR) Lab and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) bibliometric data analysis

Published onFeb 08, 2022
ISMTE / Elsevier’s International Center for the Study of Research (ICSR) Lab and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) bibliometric data analysis

Introduction

This case study examines how Elsevier, one of the world’s leading information and analytics science and health

publishers, has handled the issue of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bibliometrics based on millions of published sources. Elsevier publishes 2,650 digitalized journals, while its article output represents 18% of global output (Fast facts, 1). 

To help researchers analyze research output, Elsevier’s International Center for the Study of Research (ICRS) Lab (www.elsevier.com/icsr/icsrlab) opened in March 2020 (Legal Monitor Worldwide, 2020). The Lab provides free access to data and Python computational analyses to academic and industry professionals for the study of research based on large-scale datasets from the Scopus and PlumX databases.  

Scopus is Elsevier’s abstract and citation database containing over 17 million author profiles and over 82 million items (www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus). PlumX, on the other hand, describes how users interact with published research content online via citations, usage, captures, mentions, and social media posts (About PlumX). 

For the purposes of their project, researchers can work individually or in groups. Each research team has to include at least one academic since the objective of the lab is non-commercial. A research proposal application is required. After approval from the Lab, the researchers have access to the data and the Lab technicians help present the data visually via Python coding, graphs, charts, etc. Machine learning may also be used.  

Applicants base their research on the following ICSR Lab research topics (www.elsevier.com/icsr/research-themes):  

  • Impact of research: Understanding the broad impacts of research, and public engagement with research; 

  • Inclusivity: Developing frameworks for assessing and monitoring the inclusivity and diversity of the research enterprise; 

  • Open Science: Measuring the prevalence and impact of open science practices and initiatives such as research data and method sharing, reproducibility, and open access to research outputs; 

  • Research careers: Understanding careers in research and beyond, with particular attention to collaboration and mobility; 

  • Research globalisation: Studying the research capacity and participation of nations in the global research enterprise, with a particular focus on the Global South; 

  • Research practices: Observing current practices in research performance, especially the use of metrics and indicators used in research evaluation; 

  • Sustainability: Evaluating the progress of research towards a sustainable future, with particular focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

Dr. Andrew Plume, ICSR President and ICSR Advisory Board Chair, purports that the above-mentioned research topics are a key to resolving pressing societal issues facing the world today: “Research is never truly finished until it finds an appropriate application to real-world problems” (www.elsevier.com/icsr/research-themes). Thus, applicants are encouraged to engage in DEI topics on globalization, the Global South, inclusivity, diversity or mobility in research in order to better understand global research trends and embrace other cultures’ methods of research.  

Issues 

Elsevier, thanks to access to international sources from the Scopus and PlumX databases, needed to track how published material could assist with the above-mentioned research topics. The issues of region of publication, language of publication, and author gender could point to current DEI profile trends and directions of regional and global research.  

Goals 

The goals of the current case study are to see how Elsevier’s ICSR Lab can track the published data according to region of publication, language of publication, and author gender. These data will help analyze geographic, linguistic, and gender diversity patterns in the publication output on various topics.   

Parameters 

For the current case study, we examine the question of DEI in terms of how the ICSR Lab helps researchers analyze data on published research on DEI topics. We take into consideration the language of publication, author gender, country of publication, and other factors. The data analysis can show current cultural trends in publishing and offer directions as to future improvements in research output. Regarding the question of author gender representation, Kumsal Bayazit, Elsevier’s CEO, explains how important Elsevier’s mission and promotion of gender diversity/inclusion in research are: 

At Elsevier, our mission is to advance science and to improve healthcare outcomes through quality information and analytics. The only way we, and others, can make a lasting impact on the societal challenges of our times is by harnessing the full contribution of all stakeholders in the global research and healthcare community. Promoting gender diversity and inclusion in research through an evidence-based, measurable approach is an important part of this ongoing effort. We have been applying this approach to achieve a better balance of gender participation in research and are increasingly focusing on how gender is factored into research” (The researcher journey, 4). 

The ICSR Lab employs Python/Pyspark, SQL, Scala, and R professionals who perform coding on the researchers’ selected sources from Scopus/PlumX. The programmers use general search codes, such as ASJC identifiers, institution IDs, EIDs, year of publication, subject area, ISSN, keywords, citation count, and others. 

For the purposes of this case study, the codes/database fields related to DEI data are taken from ICSR Lab’s “Databricks Dataset Documentation:” 

Region of publication: institution’s region, country number from ISO_3166, institution’s country code, 3-letter country code, correspondence country, meta source country (“the country in which the publication was published”) 

Language of publication: abstract language, title language, meta language (“the original language in which the publication appeared”) 

Author gender: author given name (gender data can be inferred based on language and country), preferred given name 

Regarding author first names, Baas et al. (383) argue: “In addition, Scopus’ availability of author first names historically, combined with author profiling, enables studies using author gender assignments. Good sources to consult on the topic are, “The gender gap in early-career transitions in the life sciences” (Lerchenmueller & Sorenson, 2018) and “Gender differences in research areas, methods and topics: Can people and thing orientations explain the results?” (Thelwall, Bailey, Tobin, & Bradshaw, 2019). 

The objective of the current case study is to group the data into clusters based on the results of these code searches. The findings can later be presented visually with the help of graphs, charts, and tables and be disseminated.  

Challenges 

One challenge of this study is the lack of information on additional DEI topics, such as age at the time of publication, disability status, religious affiliation or sexual orientation of the authors. Scopus, from which the bibliometric data are collected, offers limited data on these topics.   

Another challenge is the correct classification of author gender with Scopus since in certain languages, some first names overlap for both men and women. The name “Claude” is French is such an example. It even might be a family name. Due to that fact, gender classification via Scopus might not be 100% accurate.  

PlumX, on the other hand, is based entirely on online activity and this medium might exclude resources published before the digital age (prior to 1995); thus, restricting the comprehensiveness of the data. 

Outcomes 

Via basic Scopus searches, the authors of the current case study found several published works that were performed with the help of the Big Data services of the ICSR Lab.  

For the region of publication gender research output in Europe, we came across, “Mapping gender in the German research arena.” This article tackles the topic of gender equality in research in Germany as part of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal #5: “Gender equality”. 

As to language of publication, we found that, “Scopus coverage is multilingual and global: approximately 21% of titles in Scopus are published in languages other than English (or published in both English and another language). In addition, more than half of Scopus content originates from outside North America, representing many countries in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region” (The researcher journey, 87). The presence of many languages of publication prevents research comprehensibility. Data, in this case, are essential for finding topics already discussed by others in another language or region. In her interview for the same publication, Miyoko O. Watanabe, Deputy Executive Director, Office for Diversity and Inclusion, Japan Science and Technology Agency, stresses the fact that due to the complexity of languages and their interconnectedness, “data is our new language” (39). DEI data are an input of analysis that the ICSR Lab is trying to help scholars comprehend, present, and analyze. 

Regarding author gender on a global scale, we found the already discussed publication “The researcher journey through a gender lens: An examination of research participation, career progression and perceptions across the globe” very informative. It provides an analysis of research via a gender lens covering 20 years, 12 geographic areas, and 27 subject domains. 

Next steps 

In the future, more Scopus and PlumX DEI database fields would be helpful in providing better insight into bibliometrics – what the age of the scholars who published the research was, where this research was done, and how the research was disseminated. It is not always practical to know this information, however. The study of research in various fields via the Big Data services of the ISCR Lab provides a large-scale representation of trends on local and global levels which are measurable, easy to understand, and visual. The ICSR Lab’s research output datasets help answer a lot of DEI questions, but not all, due to data collection practicality reasons. It is still a good place to start one’s DEI bibliometrics study.  

 References 

  1. About PlumX Metrics. plumanalytics.com/learn/about-metrics/. Accessed on 19 Aug. 2021. 

  2. Baas, J., Schotten, M., Plume, A., Côté, G., & Karimi, R. (2020). Scopus as a curated, high-quality bibliometric data source for academic research in quantitative science studies. Quantitative Science Studies, 1(1), 377–386. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00019 

  3. Elsevier’s International Center for the Study of Research Launches ICSR Lab. (2020, March 17). Legal Monitor Worldwide. 

  4. (2021). Fast facts about Elsevier. www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1095953/Fast-Facts.pdf. Accessed on 19 Aug. 2021. 

  5. ICSR Lab. Databricks Dataset documentation. 

  6. Jayabalasingham, B. (2020). The researcher journey through a gender lens: An examination of research participation, career progression and perceptions across the globe. https://doi-org.corvette.salemstate.edu/10.17632/WW6G4T2R32.1 

  7. Mapping gender in the German research arena. (2015). 

  8. Scopus. www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus. Accessed on 19 Aug. 2021. 

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