A Bibliometric Analysis of the Dynamic Alteration of Research Activity at Hiroshima University in the Natural Science Fields <NOTES>

A bibliometric analysis of research papers written by academic staff at Hiroshima University was performed. The number of articles and their total citation counts were extracted from Thomson Reuter's Web of Science database. Using the 22 scientific field categories defined in Thomson Reuter's Essential Science Indicators, the percentage of articles and the percentage of citation counts for Hiroshima University, relative to the total world-wide and in Japan, was investigated. The total number of articles published world-wide has increased, while the number of articles published in Japan, and by academics from Hiroshima University, has not. The percentage of Japanese articles and the percentage of articles from Hiroshima University, relative to the number published world-wide, increased during the period 1990-1999, and decreased during the years 2000-2009. Despite this decline, the number of articles by academics at Hiroshima University, as a percentage of the total number of Japanese articles, remained constant at ~2%. For the 22 scientific fields, the percentage of the number of articles and citation counts during five-year periods from 1990 were investigated. A comparison of the research fields was also made for the following universities: Hiroshima University, University of Tsukuba, Okayama University, and Kobe University. It appears a similar trend has occurred in Japan and at the Hiroshima University. Hiroshima University is the epitome of Japanese research activity and all scientific fields were well-represented. The percentage of the total number of articles correlated with the percentage of total citation counts