Mapping the Literature in Forensic Sciences: A Bibliometric Study of North-American Journals from 1980 to 2005

Abstract

The present study was designed to describe the evolution of forensic literature in North-American journals over more than 25 years. From 1980 to 2005, the number of articles per year and the average number of authors per article have both increased almost twofold, while the relative contribution of other countries in comparison to the United States has increased from 19.2% to 61.0%. The contributions to the forensic literature of anthropology and biology/DNA have significantly increased, while the contribution of questioned documents and ballistics decreased. Finally, the number of studies using the scientific method has significantly increased through the years, passing from 10.5% to 40.7%. This better knowledge of our body of literature as a whole could help us assess our strengths and weaknesses, and help us to position ourselves on literature ethical issues.

A Scientometric Analysis of Global Forensic Science Research Publications

“…DNA Fingerprinting is one of the recently developing fields of study in forensic science. This is in conformity with the findings of Sauvageau (2009) and also with the findings of Jeyasekar and Saravanan (2013) discussed in the review of literature that the literature related to DNA Technology.…”

From Abstract to Publication: The Fate of Research Presented at an Annual Forensic Meeting

“…In the last 25 years, the average number of authors per article has doubled in North‐American forensic science (23). This significant augmentation in the average number of authors per article is not specific to our field.…”

“…In fact, this seems to be a generalized trend in science, as demonstrated by Shaban (24) in a study of authorship in prestigious journals from 1950 to 2005: the number of authors per article increased over time in a linear fashion while the number of single‐author articles decreased. Several authors have discussed the ethical issues related to this situation, with particular attention toward the problem of gift and ghost authorship (23,25–27).…”

“…International collaboration has been proven to be an efficient mean to advance research and to enhance publication capacity (3,23,33). In keeping with the latter, a high rate of subsequent publication for abstracts presented in an international collaboration setting was noticed in this study (37.0% compared to 14% for USA‐only authors).…”

Scientometric analysis of the forensic science literature for fibre as an evidence type: Access and data availability

“…The application of a scientometric approach to the scientific literature offers more objectivity than a traditional literature review [ 13 ]. Scientometric analysis is beginning to be progressively implemented in forensic science to present an overall analysis of the literature, initially by Sauvageau et al [ 14 ] followed by Jesubright and Saravanan [ 15 ] and more recently for example by Raghunath [ 16 ], Sobreira et al [ 17 ], Zolotenkova et al [ 18 ], Liu [ 19 ] and Jones [ 20 ].…”