Paul Donner

Paul Donner

Research Area Research System and Science Dynamics
Researcher
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studied Library and Information Science (LIS) at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2012 he graduated with a Master of Arts in LIS with a thesis in the field of bibliometrics. He is working for iFQ since August 2013.

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Academic research fields

Bibliometrics, Information visualization

Projects

List of projects

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Paths, Spaces, and Networks: On the interaction between physical, virtual and cognitive mobility in knowledge production (InterMo)
Competence Network for Bibliometrics
Publications

List of publications

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Drawbacks of Normalization by Percentile Ranks in Citation Impact Studies.

Donner, P. (2022).
Drawbacks of Normalization by Percentile Ranks in Citation Impact Studies. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 20(2), 75-93.
Abstract

This paper discusses drawbacks of the percentile rank method for citation impact normalization which have hitherto been neglected in the bibliometrics literature. The transformation of citation counts to percentile ranks changes ratio scale data into ordinal scale data, for which the notions of the ratio between two values and of the magnitude of a difference between two values are not defined – a substantial loss of information. This distorts citation data particularly severely because the differences between citation counts adjacent in order in publication sets are greater for more highly cited publications and because highly cited publications are more scarce than non-highly cited ones. [...]

Algorithmic identification of Ph.D. thesis-related publications: a proof-of-concept study.

Donner, P. (2022).
Algorithmic identification of Ph.D. thesis-related publications: a proof-of-concept study. Scientometrics (online first).
Abstract

In this study we propose and evaluate a method to automatically identify the journal publications that are related to a Ph.D. thesis using bibliographical data of both items. We build a manually curated ground truth dataset from German cumulative doctoral theses that explicitly list the included publications, which we match with records in the Scopus database. We then test supervised classification methods on the task of identifying the correct associated publications among high numbers of potential candidates using features of the thesis and publication records. The results indicate that this approach results in good match quality in general and with the best results attained by the “random forest” classification algorithm.

Citation analysis of Ph.D. theses with data from Scopus and Google Books.

Donner, P. (2021).
Citation analysis of Ph.D. theses with data from Scopus and Google Books. Scientometrics, 126, 9431-9456. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04173-w
Abstract

This study investigates the potential of citation analysis of Ph.D. theses to obtain valid and useful early career performance indicators at the level of university departments. For German theses from 1996 to 2018 the suitability of citation data from Scopus and Google Books is studied and found to be sufficient to obtain quantitative estimates of early career researchers’ performance at departmental level in terms of scientific recognition and use of their dissertations as reflected in citations. Scopus and Google Books citations complement each other and have little overlap. Individual theses’ citation counts are much higher for those awarded a dissertation award than others. Departmental level estimates of citation impact agree ...

Identifying constitutive articles of cumulative dissertation theses by bilingual text similarity. Evaluation of similarity methods on a new short text task.

Donner, P. (2021).
Identifying constitutive articles of cumulative dissertation theses by bilingual text similarity. Evaluation of similarity methods on a new short text task. Quantitative Science Studies, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00152
Abstract

Cumulative dissertations are doctoral theses comprised of multiple published articles. For studies of publication activity and citation impact of early career researchers it is important to identify these articles and link them to their associated theses. Using a new benchmark data set, this paper reports on experiments of measuring the bilingual textual similarity between, on the one hand, titles and keywords of doctoral theses, and, on the other hand, articles’ titles and abstracts. The tested methods are cosine similarity and L1 distance in the Vector Space Model (VSM) as baselines, the language-indifferent methods Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and trigram similarity, and the language-aware methods fastText and Random Indexing (RI)...

Bibliometrische Standardberichte für wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen und deren Einsatz an Bibliotheken.

Stahlschmidt, S., Donner, P., & Jahn, N. (2021).
Bibliometrische Standardberichte für wissenschaftliche Einrichtungen und deren Einsatz an Bibliotheken. b.i.t. online, 24(3), 269-276.

Validation of the Astro dataset clustering solutions with external data.

Donner, P. (2020).
Validation of the Astro dataset clustering solutions with external data. Scientometrics, 126, 1619–1645. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03780-3
Abstract

We conduct an independent cluster validation study on published clustering solutions of a research testbed corpus, the Astro dataset of publication records from astronomy and astrophysics. We extend the dataset by collecting external validation data serving as proxies for the latent structure of the corpus. Specifically, we collect (1) grant funding information related to the publications, (2) data on topical special issues, (3) on specific journals’ internal topic classifications and (4) usage data from the main online bibliographic database of the discipline. The latter three types of data are newly introduced for the purpose of clustering validation and the rationale for using them for this task is set out.

The implicit preference of bibliometrics for basic research.

Donner, P., & Schmoch, U. (2020).
The implicit preference of bibliometrics for basic research. Scientometrics, 124, 1411-1419. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03516-3
Abstract

By individually associating articles to basic or applied research, it is shown that basic articles are cited more frequently than applied ones. Dividing the subject categories of the Web of Science into a basic and an applied part, the mean field-normalization rate is referred to the applied or basic part depending on the research orientation of the paper analysed. By this approach, a distinct difference of the citations for the applied and basic parts of most subject categories is found. However, differences of the citation scores of applied and basic research organisations are found as well, but are less clear. The explanation is that applied and basic research organisations generally publish a mix of basic and applied articles. [...]

A validation of coauthorship credit models with empirical data from the contributions of PhD candidates.

Donner, P. (2020).
A validation of coauthorship credit models with empirical data from the contributions of PhD candidates. Quantitative Science Studies, 1 (2), 551-564.
Abstract

A perennial problem in bibliometrics is the appropriate distribution of authorship credit for coauthored publications. Several credit allocation methods and formulas have been introduced, but there has been little empirical validation as to which method best reflects the typical contributions of coauthors. This paper presents a validation of credit allocation methods using a new data set of author-provided percentage contribution figures obtained from the coauthored publications in cumulative PhD theses by authors from three countries that contain contribution statements. [...]

Comparing institutional-level bibliometric research performance indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems.

Donner, P., Rimmert, C., & van Eck, N.J. (2020).
Comparing institutional-level bibliometric research performance indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems. Quantitative Science Studies, Volume 1 Issue 1, MIT Press, 150-170.
Abstract

The present study is an evaluation of three frequently used institution name disambiguation systems. The Web of Science normalized institution names and Organization Enhanced system and the Scopus Affiliation ID system are tested against a complete, independent institution disambiguation system for a sample of German public sector research organizations. The independent system is used as the gold standard in the evaluations that we perform. We study the coverage of the disambiguation systems and, in particular, the differences in a number of commonly used bibliometric indicators. The key finding is that for the sample institutions, the studied systems provide bibliometric indicator values that have only a limited accuracy. [...]

Different but similar. A comparison of performance monitoring in the UK, Australia and Germany.

Hinze, S., Butler, L., Donner, P., & McAllister, I. (2019).
Different but similar. A comparison of performance monitoring in the UK, Australia and Germany. In Glänzel, W., Moed, H., Schmoch, U., & Thelwall, M. (Hrsg.), Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators (S. 465-484). Basel: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3

Comparing institutional-level bibliometric indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems. Benchmarking Web of Science and Scopus platform tools against a gold-standard data set for Germany.

Donner, P., Rimmert, C., & van Eck, N. J. (2019).
Comparing institutional-level bibliometric indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems. Benchmarking Web of Science and Scopus platform tools against a gold-standard data set for Germany. In Catalano, G., Daraio, C., Gregori, M., Moed, H. F., & Ruocco, G (Hrsg.) Proceedings of the 17th Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics (ISSI 2019), Vol. 1, (S. 306-315). Edizioni Efesto. ISBN 978-88-3381-118-5.

Supplementing citations to PhD theses with citations from Google.

Donner, P. (2018).
Supplementing citations to PhD theses with citations from Google. In R. Costas, T. Franssen & A. Yegros-Yegros, Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (465-471). Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden, Netherlands.

Portfolio Evaluation FWF International Programmes. Final report.

Degelsegger-Marquéz, A., Wagner, I., Kroop, S., Rigby, J., Cox, D., Hinze, S., ... & Adams, J. (2018).
Portfolio Evaluation FWF International Programmes. Final report.

Effect of publication month on citation impact.

Donner, P. (2018).
Effect of publication month on citation impact. Journal of Informetrics, 12(1), 330-343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2018.01.012

Document type assignment accuracy in the journal citation index data of Web of Science.

Donner, P. (2017).
Document type assignment accuracy in the journal citation index data of Web of Science. Scientometrics, 113(1), 219-236.
Abstract

This article reports the results of a study of the correctness of document type assignments in the commercial citation index database Web of Science (SCIE, SSCI, AHCI collections). The document type assignments for publication records are compared to those given on the official journal websites or in the publication full-texts for a random sample of 791 Web of Science records across the four document type categories articles, letters, reviews and others, according to the definitions of WoS. The proportion of incorrect assignments across document types and its influence on document specific normalized citations scores are analysed. It is found that document type data is correct in 94% of records. [...]

Presentations

List of presentations & conferences

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Clustering for science classification: semantic document vectors and the role of discipline-specific classifications.

Donner, P. (2023, November).
Clustering for science classification: semantic document vectors and the role of discipline-specific classifications. Vortrag auf dem Workshop Netzwerktreffen Kompetenznetzwerk Bibliometrie.
Abstract

In this talk, the interaction of algorithmic classification, semantic document vector representations, and discipline specific classification systems of science will be discussed, primarily conceptually, but including some preliminary empirical results of recent research. For science studies, a fine-grained, article-level, comprehensive classification (or taxonomic) system is highly desirable. Existing systems do not suffice because they are either on a journal level (WoS SCs, Scopus ASJC, Science Metrix Journal Classification) or discipline-specific (e.g. MeSH, MSC, PACS, JEL Classification, ...). Algorithmic, data-based solutions have been introduced that can provide such solutions, namely document clustering algorithms. [...]

Mit externen Klassifikationsdaten in der KB-Datenbank arbeiten.

Donner, P. (2023, November).
Mit externen Klassifikationsdaten in der KB-Datenbank arbeiten. Vortrag auf dem Workshop Netzwerktreffen Kompetenznetzwerk Bibliometrie.

Towards a validated bibliometric measure of topic mobility in science. A knowledge space approach.

Donner, P. (2023, November).
Towards a validated bibliometric measure of topic mobility in science. A knowledge space approach. Vortrag auf dem Kolloquium zu Themen der Hochschulforschung, INCHER, Universität Kassel, Kassel.

Can Researchers' Cognitive Mobility be Measured with Scientific Document Embeddings? A Work in Progress Report.

Donner, P. (2022, November).
Can Researchers' Cognitive Mobility be Measured with Scientific Document Embeddings? A Work in Progress Report. Vortrag auf dem Workshop Cognitive Mobility in the Sciences: Social, Technological and Cultural Dynamics, DZHW.

Grundlagenforschung und angewandte Forschung im deutschen Wissenschaftssystem. Zur Nutzung von 'Research Level'-Daten in der KB-Infrastruktur.

Donner, P. (2022, Oktober).
Grundlagenforschung und angewandte Forschung im deutschen Wissenschaftssystem. Zur Nutzung von 'Research Level'-Daten in der KB-Infrastruktur. Vortrag im Rahmen des Netzwerktreffen des Kompetenznetzwerks Bibliometrie.

Results of the bibliometric monitoring pilot study for the Berlin University Alliance.

Stephen, D., & Donner, P. (2022, März).
Results of the bibliometric monitoring pilot study for the Berlin University Alliance. Vortrag im Rahmen des Kolloquiums Berlin University Alliance auf dem Kolloquium Objective 3 - Advancing Research Quality and Value of the Berlin University Alliance.

Institution coding in the KB.

Donner, P. (2022, Januar).
Institution coding in the KB. Vortrag auf dem Workshop OST-DZW Joint Seminar, Paris.

Vergleich bibliometrischer Indikatoren basierend auf verschiedenen Institutionenbereinigungen.

Donner, P. in Zusammenarbeit mit Rimmert, C., & van Eck, N.J. (2020, März).
Vergleich bibliometrischer Indikatoren basierend auf verschiedenen Institutionenbereinigungen. Vortrag auf dem Workshop " Leistungsmessung im Hochschulbereich " , Technische Universtität Dresden, Project PEER-UP, 05.-06.03.2020, Dresden.

Comparing institutional-level bibliometric indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems. Benchmarking Web of Science and Scopus platform tools against a gold-standard data set for Germany.

Donner, P., Rimmert, C., & van Eck, N. J. (2019, September).
Comparing institutional-level bibliometric indicator values based on different affiliation disambiguation systems. Benchmarking Web of Science and Scopus platform tools against a gold-standard data set for Germany. Vortrag auf der 17th International Conference on Scientometrics & Informetrics, September 2-5, 2019, Rome, Italy.

Exploration des Leistungsbereiches wissenschaftliche Nachwuchsförderung.

Donner, P. (2019, Juni).
Exploration des Leistungsbereiches wissenschaftliche Nachwuchsförderung. Vortrag im Rahmen des Workshops " Facetten der Leistungsmessung an deutschen Universitäten: Verfahren, Indikatorik, Wirkungen " des Projekts " Leistungsmessung und -beurteilung für Universitäten. Indikatoren und ihre Interdepenzen in Forschung und Lehre " ; Hannover.

Supplementing citations to PhD theses with citations from Google.

Donner, P. (2018, September).
Supplementing citations to PhD theses with citations from Google. Vortrag auf der 23rd International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators (STI 2018): " Science, Technology and Innovation indicators in transition " , 12.-14.09.2018, Leiden, Niederlande.

Google Books as a data source for citation analysis.

Donner, P. (2018, August).
Google Books as a data source for citation analysis. Vortrag im Workshop " Scientometrics - Promises, Challenges and Limitations " . National Taiwan University, Department of Library and Information Science, Taipei, Taiwan.

Effect of publication month on citation impact.

Donner, P. (2017, Oktober).
Effect of publication month on citation impact. Vortrag auf der 16th International Conference on Scientometrics & Informetrics (ISSI), 16.-20.10.2017, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.

Effect of publication month on citation impact.

Donner, P. (2017, Oktober).
Effect of publication month on citation impact. Vortrag am Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Taipei, Taiwan.
Abstract

A standard procedure in citation analysis is that all papers published in one year are assessed at the same later point in time, implicitly treating all publications as if they were published at the exact same date. This leads to systematic bias in favor of early-months publications and against late-months publications. This contribution analyses the size of this distortion on a large body of publications from all disciplines over citation windows of up to 15 years. It is found that early-month publications enjoy a substantial citation advantage, which arises from citations received in the first three years after publication. [...]

Improving bibliometric indicators with better data and methods. An overview and recent progress on selected problems.

Donner, P. (2017, Oktober).
Improving bibliometric indicators with better data and methods. An overview and recent progress on selected problems. Vortrag an der National Taiwan University, Department of Library and Information Science, Taipei, Taiwan.