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Analysis of institutional authors

Corcho O.AuthorBadenes-Olmedo C.AuthorYedro-Martínez FAuthor

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March 7, 2022
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Article

Data Quality Barriers for Transparency in Public Procurement

Publicated to: Information (Switzerland). 13 (2): 99- - 2022-02-01 13(2), DOI: 10.3390/info13020099

Authors:

Soylu, A; Corcho, O; Elvesaeter, B; Badenes-Olmedo, C; Yedro-Martinez, F; Kovacic, M; Posinkovic, M; Medvescek, M; Makgill, I; Taggart, C; Simperl, E; Lech, TC; Roman, D
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Affiliations

Govt Slovenia, Minist Publ Adm, Ljubljana 1000, Slovenia - Author
Jozef Stefan Inst, Ctr Knowledge Transfer Informat Technol, Ljubljana 1000, Slovenia - Author
Jozef Stefan Institute - Author
King's College London - Author
Kings Coll London, Dept Informat, London WC2R 2LS, England - Author
Ministry for Public Administration - Author
OpenCorp Ltd, London N3 1LF, England - Author
OpenCorporates Ltd - Author
OpenOpps Ltd - Author
OpenOpps Ltd, London SW1P 2PD, England - Author
OsloMet Oslo Metropolitan Univ, Dept Comp Sci, N-0166 Oslo, Norway - Author
OsloMet – storbyuniversitetet - Author
SINTEF AS, Software & Serv Innovat, N-0373 Oslo, Norway - Author
SINTEF Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research - Author
Univ Politecn Madrid, Dept Artificial Intelligence, Madrid 28040, Spain - Author
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid - Author
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Abstract

Governments need to be accountable and transparent for their public spending decisions in order to prevent losses through fraud and corruption as well as to build healthy and sustainable economies. Open data act as a major instrument in this respect by enabling public administrations, service providers, data journalists, transparency activists, and regular citizens to identify fraud or uncompetitive markets through connecting related, heterogeneous, and originally unconnected data sources. To this end, in this article, we present our experience in the case of Slovenia, where we successfully applied a number of anomaly detection techniques over a set of open disparate data sets integrated into a Knowledge Graph, including procurement, company, and spending data, through a linked data-based platform called TheyBuyForYou. We then report a set of guidelines for publishing high quality procurement data for better procurement analytics, since our experience has shown us that there are significant shortcomings in the quality of data being published. This article contributes to enhanced policy making by guiding public administrations at local, regional, and national levels on how to improve the way they publish and use procurement-related data; developing technologies and solutions that buyers in the public and private sectors can use and adapt to become more transparent, make markets more competitive, and reduce waste and fraud; and providing a Knowledge Graph, which is a data resource that is designed to facilitate integration across multiple data silos by showing how it adds context and domain knowledge to machine-learning-based procurement analytics.
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Keywords

anomaly detectiondata integrationfraud and corruptionknowledge graphlinked open dataAnomaly detectionData integrationFraud and corruptionKnowledge graphLinked open dataOntologyPublic procurement

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Information (Switzerland) due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2022, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q2 (Segundo Cuartil), in the category Information Systems.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations provided by WoS (ESI, Clarivate), it yields a value for the citation normalization relative to the expected citation rate of: 1.86. This indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 13, 2025)

This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:

  • Weighted Average of Normalized Impact by the Scopus agency: 1.9 (source consulted: FECYT Mar 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2026-04-25, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 16
  • Scopus: 24
  • Google Scholar: 17
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Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2026-04-25:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 164.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 162 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 17.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 1 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions in news outlets: 1 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.
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Leadership analysis of institutional authors

This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: Norway; Slovenia; United Kingdom.

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