Acknowledgments in scientific publications: Presence in Spanish science and text patterns across disciplines

The acknowledgments in scientific publications are an important feature in the scholarly communication process. This research analyzes funding acknowledgment presence in scientific publications and introduces a novel approach for discovering text patterns by discipline in the acknowledgment section of papers. First, the presence of acknowledgments in 38,257 English-language papers published by Spanish researchers in 2010 is studied by subject area on the basis of the funding acknowledgment information available in the Web of Science database. Funding acknowledgments are present in two thirds of Spanish articles, with significant differences by subject area, number of authors, impact factor of journals, and, in one specific area, basic/applied nature of research. Second, the existence of specific acknowledgment patterns in English-language papers of Spanish researchers in 4 selected subject categories (cardiac and cardiovascular systems, economics, evolutionary biology, and statistics and probability) is explored through a combination of text mining and multivariate analyses. Peer interactive communication predominates in the more theoretical or social-oriented fields (statistics and probability, economics), whereas the recognition of technical assistance is more common in experimental research (evolutionary biology), and the mention of potential conflicts of interest emerges forcefully in the clinical field (cardiac and cardiovascular systems). The systematic inclusion of structured data about acknowledgments in journal articles and bibliographic databases would have a positive impact on the study of collaboration practices in science.