An evaluation based on highly cited publications in Taiwan

Bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers of a country can provide interesting insights concerning authors, institutions, collaboration patterns and even useful recommendations for future research policy. The purpose of this study is to conduct bibliometric analysis of highly cited papers from Taiwan. Data used in the study were extracted from the SCI-Expanded database of the Web of Science Core Collection of Thomson Reuters. Authorship, collaboration pattern and Y-index were reported. Results showed that highly cited papers might not have high citations in early years and may be published in journals with low impact factors. International collaboration was responsible for the increasing number of highly cited papers over the years. Institutions can be categorized into three phenotypes and majority of the institutions were characterized with high dependency and low leadership in the collaboration. The United States was the leading choice for international collaboration, while National Taiwan University was the leading choice of institutions for domestic collaboration. With a few exceptions, leading authors tended to be the corresponding author, rather than the first author as in previous studies. It is speculated that this phenomenon may be due to a pecking order among institutions, traditional Confucius values of seniority, and inequality in resource allocation by funding agencies. Providing more balanced research funding, increasing the number of Ph D students studying abroad, eliminating gift authorships, especially partners in a project but not in papers and increasing the emphasis on independent research may be needed to amend the observed patterns.