Abstract
This study assesses the growth, the patterns of development and the complexity of research in the field of ecology from 1976 to 1993 in Spain and the five Spanish speaking countries of the Caribbean. Using as a yardstick of research and development in that field, the dissertation titles were counted for each region. The total length, the key words per title were recorded and analysed statistically. Results show that the growth of research in ecology is greater in Spain and peaked earlier than in the Caribbean countries. However, the titles in the latter region were more complex than those in Spain.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes and references
J. Warner, Quantitative and qualitative assessment of the impact of linguistic theory on information science,Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42 (1991) No. 1, 64–71.
A. M. Sandoval, Sobre investigaciòn y la producciòn bibliogràfica en Amèrica Latina,Revista Española de Documentaciòn Cientìfica, 5 (1982) No. 4, 347–361.
N. Narváez-Bethelemot, M. Almada de Asencio, J. M. Russell, Intellectual, scientific collaboration: Cooperation between Latin America and Spain, as seen from different databases,Journal of Information Science, 19 (1993) 389–394;M. J. Martin et al., Les Scientifiques sont-ils ouverts à la cooperation internationale?La Recherche, 206 (1989) 116–118; andM. T. Fernández et al., Cooperative research projects between the Spanish National Research Council and Latin American institutions,Scientometrics, 23 (1992) 137–148.
D. Nal-Jakobovits, L. A. Jakobovits, Teaching the analysis of titles: Dependent and independent variables in research articles,Research Strategies, 5 (1987) 164–171.
R. A. V. Diener, Informational dynamics of journal article titles,Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 35 (1984) No. 4, 222–227.
J. J. Tocatlian, Are titles of chemical papers becoming more informative?Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 21 (1970) 345–350.
P. R. Bird, M. A. Knight, Word count statistics of the titles of scientific papers,The Information Scientist, 9 (1975) No. 2, 67–69.
A. B. Buxton, A. J. Meadows, The variation in the information content of research papers with time and discipline,Journal of Documentation, 33 (1977) No. 1, 46–52.
C. Balog, Information content of titles of papers in an agricultural journal,Journal of Research Communication Studies, 2 (1981) No. 4, 263–270.
A. White, N. R. Hernandez, Increasing field complexity revealed article title analysis,Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences, 42 (1991) No. 10, 731–734.
J. B. Wood, The growth of scholarship: An outline bibliometric comparison dissertations in sciences and humanities,Scientometrics, 13 (1988) 53–62.
R. T. Bottle, C. I. Preibish, The proposed KWIC index for psychology: experimental test of its effectiveness,Journal of the American for Information Science, 21 (1970) 427–433.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rodríguez, K., Moreiro, J.A. The growth and development of research in the field of ecology. Scientometrics 35, 59–70 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02018233
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02018233