以生態觀點探究期刊排名與學者投稿之關係：以圖資領域期刊為例

Abstract

本研究採用資訊計量與視覺化的方法，以圖資領域期刊為研究對象，將該領域內的期刊視為一個生態系，而作者投稿視為單一完整性資源交付的行為，以競爭的視角來觀看期刊排名的變化，並引用區位寬度與區位重疊度的概念分別量化期刊本身的作者多樣性以及該期刊與其他期刊的相對競爭性，進而瞭解整個期刊生態的競爭關係。 研究結果顯示，近十一年內由於新被JCR收錄的期刊有45%首年排名在前30名內，因而引起30名後期刊排名的劇烈變化，呈現豐富的競爭生態。研究中觀察到作者投稿選擇確有其差異存在，在長期投稿的期刊分布變異性上，有的作者偏好將稿件集中投稿在少數期刊上，有的作者則是偏好將稿件廣泛的投稿到多種期刊上。而集中型的投稿者又分別集中投稿在排名前面與後面的期刊中。調查期刊的區位寬度與區位重疊度之結果指出，期刊的區位寬度呈現常態分布，期刊平均每2.08年新增一倍的作者；而區位重疊度呈現負偏態分布，有72%的期刊其重疊度大多介於80%-100%之間，亦即大部分期刊的作者有相當高的比例也是其他期刊的作者，因此競爭關係激烈。將期刊競爭關係進行群集分析並視覺化後，可發現圖資期刊大致上可分為資訊科學、圖書館、資訊管理、以及醫學與健康等四個競爭子群，每個子群內呈現以匯流型期刊為主，外流型與中介型期刊為輔的結構。This study adopted ecological view to investigate the influence of authors’ paper submitting choices on the changes of ranks and statuses of library and information science journals. Two concepts, niche width and overlapping, were employed from organization ecology to quantify journals’ author diversity and overlapping with other journals respectively. Primary results exhibited LIS journals’ implicit competition relationship resulting from author’s submitting choices. Within the past eleven years, 45% of the new journals included in JCR ranked in top 30 in the first year, which caused dramatic changes to the ranking of the last 30 journals, demonstrating an affluent ecology of competition. The study has observed differences existed in the author’s submission choice. Some authors prefer to concentrate on submitting to very few journals while other authors prefer to widely submit their work. While the concentrated submitters concentrated on submitting in the top rankings and bottom rankings respectively. This study has introduced the niche breadth and the niche overlap to explain whether each journal can have countless authors submitting to its journals and also whether the authors in each journal overlaps with authors in other journals. The result shows that the niche breadth was normally distributed while the niche overlap had a negatively skewed distribution. The degree of overlap for 72% of the journals was between 80% -100%. In other words, there is relatively high proportion of authors that submitted to one journal would also submit to other journals. Therefore, the competition is fierce. In addition, this study visualized the directed competitive relationship resulting from journals’ overlapping relationship. The result of clustering analysis on the journals’ competitive network divided the LIS journals into four categories by their relative themes of information science, library, information management, and medical and health.