https://doi.org/10.4081/jlimnol.2021.2042
The use of the term ‘limnology’ and its scientometrics consequences for limnologists
Submitted: 10 June 2021
Accepted: 27 July 2021
Published: 30 July 2021
Accepted: 27 July 2021
Abstract Views: 1321
PDF: 256
Dataset: 0
Supplementary Table 1: 286
Supplementary Table 2: 88
HTML: 44
Dataset: 0
Supplementary Table 1: 286
Supplementary Table 2: 88
HTML: 44
Publisher's note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
Jargon is the specialised vocabulary of any science: it allows the creation of new terms to define concepts and it removes ambiguity from scientific communication. Yet, it may also hinder understanding for a broader audience. Given that the Journal of Limnology has jargon in its title, we here investigate the impact of the term ‘limnology’ on the way limnologists work, publish their research, and attract the interest of other scientists. We do so by comparing scientometric features of papers published from 1965 to 2020 that used the term ‘limnology’ against papers on similar topics but that used the term ‘lake ecology’ or ‘hydrobiology’, and to the marine counterpart of papers that used the term ‘oceanography’. We found that papers using the term limnology score worse than those of the other topics in terms of both publication output and scientific impact. Limnologists may need to use other terms in addition to ‘limnology’ to reach a broader scientific audience.
Abramo G, D’Angelo C, Di Costa F, 2010. Citations versus journal impact factor as proxy of quality: could the latter ever be preferable? Scientometrics 84:821-833.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0200-1
Adams DC, Bitetti MSD, Janson CH, Slobodkin LB, Valenzuela N, 1997. An ‘Audience effect’ for ecological terminology: use and misuse of Jargon. Oikos 80:632-636.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3546641
Ahlgren P, Colliander C, Sjögårde P, 2018. Exploring the relation between referencing practices and citation impact: a large-scale study based on Web of Science data. J. Ass. Inf. Sci. Tech. 69:728-743.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23986
Aksnes DW, Langfeldt L, Wouters P, 2019. Citations, citation indicators, and research quality: an overview of basic concepts and theories. SAGE Open, 9(1), 2158244019829575.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019829575
Anderson SC, Elsen PR, Hughes BB, Tonietto RK, Bletz MC, Gill DA, Holgerson MA, Kuebbing SE, McDonough MacKenzie C, Meek MH, Veríssimo D, 2021. Trends in ecology and conservation over eight decades. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 19:274-282.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2320
Ball P, 2017. It's not just you: science papers are getting harder to read. Nature. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2017.21751
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2017.21751
Barnett A, Doubleday Z, 2020. Meta-research: The growth of acronyms in the scientific literature. Elife 9:e60080.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60080
Benoit K, Watanabe K, Wang H, Nulty P, Obeng A, Müller S, Matsuo A, 2018. quanteda: An R package for the quantitative analysis of textual data. J. Open Source Soft. 3:774.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00774
Bertoni R., 2018. Laghi e scienza: introduzione alla limnologia. eBook, 256 pp. Downloaded at http://www.aiol.info/wp-content/uploads/Laghi-e-Scienza-100618.pdf
Bertoni R, Bertoni F, 2021. Preserving the heritage of limnology in Italy. J. Limnol. 80:2018.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4081/jlimnol.2021.2018
Bornmann L, Mutz R, 2015. Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references. J. Ass. Inf. Sci. Tech. 66:2215-2222.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23329
Bullock OM, Colón Amill D, Shulman HC, Dixon GN, 2019. Jargon as a barrier to effective science communication: Evidence from metacognition. Publ. Underst. Sci. 28:845-853.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662519865687
Castelvecchi D, 2015. Physics paper sets record with more than 5,000 authors. Nature News, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.17567
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.17567
Crawley MJ, 2012. The R Book. Wiley, Chichester, UK.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118448908
De Rond M, Miller AN, 2005. Publish or perish: bane or boon of academic life?. J. Manag. Inq. 14:321-329.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492605276850
Deng B, 2015. Papers with shorter titles get more citations. Nature. Available from: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18246
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.18246
Elango B, Rajendran P, 2012. Authorship trends and collaboration pattern in the marine sciences literature: a scientometric study. Int. J. Inform. Dissem. Tech. 2:166.
Evans JA, 2008. Electronic publication and the narrowing of science and scholarship. Science 321:395.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1150473
Falkenberg LJ, Tubb A, 2017. Undisciplined thinking facilitates accessible writing: A response to Doubleday and Connell. Trends Ecol. Evol. 32:894-895.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2017.09.009
Flesch R, 1948. A new readability yardstick. J. Appl. Psychol. 32:221-233.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0057532
Forel FA, 1892-1904. Le Léman: monographie limnologique. F. Rouge, Lausanne.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.124608
Fox CW, Paine CT, Sauterey B, 2016. Citations increase with manuscript length, author number, and references cited in ecology journals. Ecol. Evol. 6:7717-7726.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2505
Habibzadeh F, Yadollahie M, 2010. Are shorter article titles more attractive for citations? Crosssectional study of 22 scientific journals. Croatian Med. J. 51:165-170.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3325/cmj.2010.51.165
Hastie T, 2020. gam: Generalized Additive Models. R package version 1.20. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gam
Hortal J, Nabout JC, Calatayud J, Carneiro FM, Padial A, Santos AMC, Siqueira T, Bokma F, Bini LM, Ventura M, 2014. Perspectives on the use of lakes and ponds as model systems for macroecological research. J. Limnol. 73(s1):46-60.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4081/jlimnol.2014.887
Hirst R, 2003. Scientific jargon, good and bad. J. Tech. Wri. Commun. 33:201-229.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2190/J8JJ-4YD0-4R00-G5N0
Itescu Y, 2019. Are island‐like systems biologically similar to islands? A review of the evidence. Ecography 42:1298-1314.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.03951
Jaffe AB, Trajtenberg M, 2002. Patents, citations, and innovations: A window on the knowledge economy. MIT press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/5263.001.0001
Kumaresan R, Vinitha K, Kannan K, 2016. Journal of Aquatic Ecology (2005-2014): A Bibliometric Study. IALA-Journal 4:12-20.
Lei L, Yan S, 2016. Readability and citations in information science: evidence from abstracts and articles of four journals (2003–2012). Scientometrics 108:1155-1169.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2036-9
Leimu R, Koricheva J, 2005a. Does scientific collaboration increase the impact of ecological articles?. BioScience 55:438-443.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0438:DSCITI]2.0.CO;2
Leimu R, Koricheva J, 2005b. What determines the citation frequency of ecological papers?. Trends Ecol. Evol. 20:28-32.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2004.10.010
Lenth RV, 2020. emmeans: estimated marginal means, aka least-squares means. R package version 1.5.3. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans
Letchford A, Moat HS, Preis T, 2015. The advantage of short paper titles. Royal Society Open Science 2:150266.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150266
Lüdecke D, Makowski D, Waggoner P, Patil I, 2020. Assessment of regression models performance. CRAN. Available from https://easystats.github.io/performance/
Mabe MA, Amin M, 2002. Dr Jekyll and Dr Hyde: author‐reader asymmetries in scholarly publishing. In Aslib Proceedings 54:149-157.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530210441692
Mammola S, Fontaneto D, Martínez A, Chichorro F, 2021. Impact of the reference list features on the number of citations. Scientometrics 126:785-799.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03759-0
Martínez A, Mammola S, 2021. Specialized terminology reduces the number of citations of scientific papers. Proc. R. Soc. B. 288:20202581.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.2581
McCannon BC, 2019. Readability and research impact. Econom. Lett. 180:76-79.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2019.02.017
Montgomery SL, 1989. The cult of jargon: reflections on language in science. Sci. Cult. 1:42-77.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09505438909526248
Nation I, 2006. How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? Canad. Mod. Lang. Rev. 63:59-82.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.63.1.59
Neuwirth E, 2014. RColorBrewer: ColorBrewer palettes. R package version 1.1-2. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=RColorBrewer
Nieminen P, Carpenter J, Rucker G, Schumacher M, 2006. The relationship between quality of research and citation frequency. BMC Med. Res. Meth. 6:42.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-6-42
Orwell G, 1946. Politics and the English language. Horizon 13:252-265.
Plavén-Sigray P, Matheson GJ, Schiffler BC, Thompson WH, 2017. The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time. Elife 6:e27725.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27725
Poncet P, 2019. bazar: miscellaneous basic functions. R package version 1.0.11. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=bazar
R Core Team, 2020. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/
Regalado A, 1995. Multiauthor papers on the rise. Science 268:25-26.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7701334
Ryan JN, 1985. The secret language of science or, radicals in the classroom. Am. Biol. Teach. 47:91-91.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/4447957
Tahamtan I, Afshar AS, Ahamdzadeh K, 2016. Factors affecting number of citations: a comprehensive review of the literature. Scientometrics 107:1195-1225.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-1889-2
Todd P, Ladle R, 2008. Citations: poor practices by authors reduce their value. Nature 451:244.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/451244b
van Rij J, Wieling M, Baayen R, van Rijn H, 2020. itsadug: Interpreting Time Series and Autocorrelated Data Using GAMMs. R package version 2.4.
Vincent WF, Bertola C, 2014. Lake physics to ecosystem services: Forel and the origins of limnology. Limnol. Oceanogr. e-Lect. 4:1-47.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4319/lol.2014.wvincent.cbertola.8
Wickham H, 2016. ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis. Springer-Verlag New York.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24277-4_9
Wickham H, 2020. tidyr: tidy messy data. R package version 1.1.2. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tidyr
Wickham H, François R, Henry L, Müller K, 2021. dplyr: A grammar of data manipulation. R package version 1.0.3. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6876-6_1
Wood SN, 2017. Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R (2nd edition). Chapman and Hall/CRC.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315370279
Yitzhaki M, 2002. Relation of the title length of a journal article to the length of the article. Scientometrics 54:435-447.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016038617639
Zeng A, Shen Z, Zhou J, Wu J, Fan Y, Wang Y, Stanley HE, 2017. The science of science: From the perspective of complex systems. Phys. Rep. 714:1-73.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2017.10.001
Zukswert JM, Barker MK, McDonnell L, 2019. Identifying troublesome jargon in biology: Discrepancies between student performance and perceived understanding. CBE—Life Sci. Ed. 18:ar6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-07-0118
How to Cite
Fontaneto, Diego, Alejandro Martínez, Stefano Mammola, and Aldo Marchetto. 2021. “The Use of the Term ‘limnology’ and Its Scientometrics Consequences for Limnologists”. Journal of Limnology 80 (3). https://doi.org/10.4081/jlimnol.2021.2042.
Copyright (c) 2021 The Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
List of Cited By :
