Study On The Relationships Between The Number Of SCI Editorial Board Members,Research Output,and Discipline Level Of University

The editorial board members of Science Citation Index(SCI)journals are considered to be the gatekeepers of international academic journals,and they play an important role in the evaluation system of international research output.On the one hand,these board members play an important role in controlling academic discourses,making decisions to publish journal articles.On the other hand,they are usually eminent researchers in their academic fields,therefore,they may produce a substantial amount of high impact research for their universities based on their high level research abilities.As such,SCI editorial board members may directly or indirectly affect the international influence of a university's research output and the discipline level of the university.SCI editorial board members may be an important factor affecting the building of world-class universities and universities disciplinary development.Therefore,studing the relationships between the number of SCI editorial board members,research output,and discipline level of university are of academic and pratical significance.In this study,we created three SCI editorial board member databases for three subject areas(chemistry,computer science,and economics).For these three databases,we selected 1,387,1,573,and 984 universities for the chemistry,computer science,and economic subject,respectively.We used these sample universities to explore the relationships between the number of SCI editorial board members employed to these universities and the research output(as measured by the number of articles,total number of citations,citations per paper,and h-index)of these universities.We conducted grouped statistics according to the different data segments based on the number of editorial board members so as to accurately analyze the correlation relationship between the number of board members within the given ranges and the research output of universities.Using the quantile regression method,we investigated the variation of the correlation relationship between the number of editorial board members and the research output across the entire conditional research output distribution.At the same time,in this study,we explored the causal relationship between the number of editorial board members and the research output of universities.For computer science,we used a small sample of cross-sectional data to validate the hypothesized causal mechanism.For chemistry,we used time-series data and the Granger causality test to explore the nature of the causal relationship between the number of editorial board members and the number of articles of universities,and we discussed the causal relationship between the number of editorial board members and the research output of universities by combining micro case studies and the results of interviews with some editorial board members.Moreover,we focused on the top 200 universities according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities(ARWU)for the three respective disciplines,and conducted empirical tests on the correlation between the number of editorial board members and various scientometric indicators that indicate university discipline level of these universities in the three disciplines.The conclusions of the paper are as follows:First,there are significant positive and relatively high correlations between the number of SCI editorial board members and the number of articles,total number of citations,and h-index of universities in chemistry,computer science,and economics;there are also significant positive but relatively low correlations between the number of SCI editorial board members and the citations per paper(which more reflects the quality of research output)of universities in chemistry,computer science,and economics.This conclusion is first reflected in the results of the ordinary least squares regression,and is also confirmed by the results of the grouped statistics and quantile regression.Second,the grouped statistical analysis and quantile regression analysis characterize the correlation between the number of SCI editorial board members and the research output of universities in detail,and reveal more valuable information.The results of the grouped statistical analysis show that in chemistry,computer science and economics,the degrees of correlation between the number of editorial board members and the number of articles,total number of citations,and h-index tend to be consistent at the different data segments based on the number of editorial board members.However,the degrees of correlation between the number of editorial board members and citations per paper are different at the different data segments based on the number of editorial board members.The results of the quantile regression show that,with the exception of a few indicators in certain disciplines,a phenomenon is observed between the number of editorial board members and the research output of universities in the three disciplines: The coefficient of the number of editorial board members on the indicators of research output is greater(smaller)when the university is at the higher(lower)quantile of the conditional distribution of research output.We have also presented further discussions on this phenomenon.Third,there are significant positive correlations between the number of SCI editorial board members of the top 200 universities in chemistry,computer science,and economy(according to the ARWU)and the scientometric indicators that indicate discipline level of these universities;however,the degrees of correlation are different.In the three disciplines,the number of editorial board members have relatively high correlations with the total number of citations,h-index,and the ARWU subject ranking score.The correlations between the number of editorial board members,and the number of articles and HiCi researchers(Highly Cited Reseachers)are different in the three disciplines.While the number of editorial board members have relatively low correlations with the citations per paper and the percentage of papers published in the top 20% of journals in the three disciplines.In addition,for each of the three disciplines,the top 200 universities in the ARWU subject ranking were divided into the top 1-100 and top 101-200.We found that the characteristics of the correlational results after grouping were consistent with the corresponding characteristics before grouping.Fourth,the Granger causality test results show that the causal relationship between the number of editorial board members and the number of articles of some top universities in chemistry is not obvious.Combining the interviews of some SCI editorial board members and the results of some case studies,the analysis of the causal mechanism between the number of editorial board members and the research output of universities show that,from the perspective that the editorial board members control academic discourse and thus may influence the research output produced by a university,although the academic discourse of editorial board members may have an influence on the research output of a university,the influence is small.Furthermore,from the perspective that editorial board members are elected because of their high level of research output,the greater the quantity and quality of research produced by a university,the more likely it is that that university will have a higher number of editorial board members.Moreover,editorial board members are able to contribute a certain amount of high quality research output to the university due to their own high level of research output.Therefore,from this perspective,there is mutual causality between the number of editorial board members and the research output of universities.In other words,the causal relationship between the number of editorial board members of the universities and their research output may attribute more to their editorial board members' high level of research output,and less to the academic discourse controlled by these editorial board members.This study has three main innovative points.First,we employed citations per paper and h-index to study the correlation between the number of SCI editorial board members and the quality of research output of universities in chemistry,computer science,and economics.Most previous studies used the number of articles as an indicator of a university's research output and analyzed the correlation between this number and the number of editorial board members,but failed to take into consideration the indicators related to the quality of research output,e.g.,the total number of citations.Citations per paper and h-index have not been investigated in similar studies at the institutional level in the existing literature.Second,by employing grouped statistics and quantile regression method and using a large sample size,we characterized the correlation between the number of SCI editorial board members and the research output of universities in chemistry,computer science and economics in detail.This can help us provide a more complete picture of the relationship between the number of editorial board members and the research output of universities in the three disciplines studied.Third,based on Granger causality test method,email interviews and case validation of small sample,we explored the causal relationship between the number of SCI editorial board members and the research output of universities to a certain degree.