Informal Collaborations in Chemistry Research: A Scientometric Analysis of Acknowledgements and Their Correlation with Citation Rates

Objective: The purpose of this research was to investigate the types of informalcollaborations within the acknowledgments section of articles in the field of chemistry.Method: This research is a quantitative study employing a scientometric approach andbased on data mining techniques, utilizing library research and descriptive methods. Thestatistical population of the study consists of open-access research articles from the Webof Science database. The Stanford Named Entity Recognizer software was used for datamining and extraction of the acknowledgments section of the articles.Results: The research findings indicated that acknowledgments in chemistry articles,based on Hyland's three-level model of acknowledgment text structure, are dedicated toacts of thanking, acts of reflection, and acts of informing, respectively. Furthermore, theChinese Academy of Sciences, the University of California, Berkeley, and theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were the organizations and universities thatreceived the most acknowledgments. The citation rate is higher in articles thatacknowledge more than two individuals (the average number of acknowledgedindividuals) compared to other articles. In addition, there was a significant relationshipbetween the number of individuals acknowledged in an article and the number of citationsthe article received.Conclusions: Considering that acknowledgments can impact citation rates, raisingawareness among individuals and persuading them of the importance of citation inshaping personal and institutional identity and branding can be effective byinstitutionalizing a sense of loyalty and gratitude. Moreover, perhaps one reason for theweak correlation between citation rates and acknowledgments is the lack of consistencyin the names of individuals and organizations, as well as the location of acknowledgmentsin most articles, which is at the end of the article.