Research Handwriting: How Countries Sign Their Names in Science
A scientific paper is not just a collection of results: it's an imprint of research handwriting. Some scholars trace strict bibliometric lines, others add experimental flourishes, and still others inscribe content-analytic curlicues. Over 30 years, three top journals of library and information science accumulated 5281 such 'signatures' from 81 countries. In 1990, the average paper was a single-country autograph.