I am a Scientometrician. I studied the Bachelor's Degree in Information Science at the University of Extremadura (Spain) where I received the Award to the best academic record in 2007. After that I presented my BSc thesis receiving the Bachelor's Degree Extraordinary Award in 2011. I completed my PhD in Bibliometrics in 2012 at the University of Extremadura under the supervision of Prof Dr Vicente P. Guerrero Bote and developed within SCImago research group. Then in 2014 I received the Extraordinary PhD Award, a recognition to the best doctoral theses. I have led the Bibliometrics Service at the University of Leeds and I have been a Postdoctoral researcher in Scientometrics and Research analytics at the Tecnologico de Monterrey (Mexico) under the supervision of Professor in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Dr Francisco J. Cantú Ortiz. Before that I have had several research assistant positions in different institutions such as at BAC: Research Group on Bibliometrics of the Institució Centres de Recerca de Catalunya (iCERCA), at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and at the University of Malaga (Spain).

My main research line is citation analysis however I have produced articles focus on factors influencing research productivity, citation flows and mappings on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

I am the Chair of the LIS Bibliometrics committee, a group of bibliometrics professionals practitioners and scholars who actively support the bibliometrics international community. We organise the annual international LIS Bibliometrics conference. I am also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

I received, alongside the Responsible Research Metrics Group (RRMG), the Responsible Research and Innovation Award at the University of Leeds Research Culture Awards 2022. This award recognises the importance of responsible research practices, and rewards efforts to place research integrity at the core of our work, ensuring it’s trustworthy, ethical, honest, rigorous, respectful and accountable.

Winning project: Leading change in the responsible use of research metrics

For info about my author name: my name is Bárbara, and my middle name is Sandra. I am Spanish, and we have two surnames, so Lancho Barrantes is my surname. 

• Citation analysis
• Research collaboration
• Dark side of academic publishing and research integrity
• Panel/cross-sectional time series data and causal inference
• Mappings of scientific landscape and Horizon scanning
• Sustainable development goals
• Factors influencing scientific productivity
• Predatory publishing and questionable research practices

Active and collaborative learning and student-centered approach. Inclusive academic practice.

Investigating cutting-edge pedagogies, such as the pedagogy of gratitude, learning through wonder that inspires curiosity, inquiry, and discovery, and equity-oriented pedagogy that seeks out more equitable approaches to enhance learning for all.

My area of expertise is Bibliometrics and Scientometrics. I would be interested in supervising PhD/Master/Undergraduate students at any angle of Bibliometrics and Scientometrics and linking them with data analytics and data science. Some examples of specific potential topics (but are not limited to):

• Analyse and examine the relation between economic factors and the amount of scientific productivity within countries, academic institutions, geographic regions and subject areas.
• Examine the citation flows between countries or organisations that collaborate.
• Analysis of Scientific Research Collaborations (institutional, national, international)
• Research on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Bibliometric horizon scanning methodology for identifying emerging topics.
• Analyse the relationship between international collaborations and the mobility of researchers.
• Conduct gender analyses based on publication data, especially in the context of the SDGs.
• Creation and implementation of new scientometric indicators in open research infrastructures.
• Examine the open-access citation advantage.
• Analysis of predatory publishing as a threat to research integrity.
• Understand the research profiles of Higher Education Institutions and their connection with scientific productivity.
• Bibliometric mappings of countries, institutions, disciplines, etc.

These topics are general and can be more detailed once the students show an interest in any of them. I will consider any new proposals and discuss any ideas that come up.

In my papers, I analyse the citation increment among collaborating countries. I have also examined how citation patterns of disciplines and bibliographic database coverage may influence the citation flows between subject areas.

The impact of economic factors on countries' research productivity has been the subject of my recent publications. I used data from citation databases, UNESCO, and the OECD for this purpose. I confirmed the relationship between investment in research and scientific results using multiple linear regression.

As well as understanding the scientific contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), I focus my research on the mechanisms to interpret this data, since different databases can produce different results.