Environmental impact assessment in Hong Kong: a comparison study and lessons learnt

Abstract

Although many studies in developed countries on the practice of EIA have been conducted, there is a lack of similar attention in Hong Kong. This gap in knowledge is addressed in this study which summarises and records the current practice and lessons learned from priority projects. In the case of Hong Kong, this lack of understanding is important, since a significant number of infrastructure projects with applications pending for environmental approvals were delayed, awaiting the court ruling of the judicial review. In this research, the EIA system and practices in Hong Kong were comprehensively reviewed by a comparison study between Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Then field work of interviews with professionals and focus group meetings with Green Groups were conducted to seek opinions of interviewees and members about the mechanism of EIA. Recommendations on aspects of EIA systems are provided at the end of the paper.     

Assessing stem cell research productivity

Honour Index (HoI), a method to evaluate research performance within different research fields, was derived from the impact factor (IF). It can be used to rate and compare different categories of journals. HoI was used in this study to determine the scientific productivity of stem cell research in the Asian Four Dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) from 1981 to 2001. The methodology applied in this study represents a synthesis of universal indicator studies and bibliometric analyses of subfields at the micro-level. We discuss several comparisons, and conclude the developmental trend in stem cell research for two decades. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

International mobility of researchers in robotics,computer vision and electron devices: A quantitative and comparative analysis

We investigated author information in scientific articles by approximately 7,000 researchers for a quantitative analysis of researchers’ international mobility. From top journals, we traced the movements of more than 2,200 researchers in the research domains of robotics, computer vision and electron devices. We categorized countries’ characteristics for the balance between the inflow and the outflow of researchers moving internationally. Flow patterns of international mobility confirm that the United States, China and India exhibit the greatest global flows of researchers, with Singapore and Hong Kong attracting remarkable numbers of researchers from other countries. International mobility focusing on institutions reveals that universities in Singapore receive as many foreign researchers as do research universities in the United States. Furthermore, firms and international collaborative research institutes act as alternative receivers to the universities in the electron devices research domain.     

Characteristics of research in China assessed with Essential Science Indicators

To provide an overview of the characteristics of research in China, a bibliometric evaluation of highly cited papers with high-level representation was conducted during the period from 1999 to 2009 based on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database. A comprehensive assessment covered overall performance, journals, subject categories, internationally collaborative countries, national inter-institutionally collaborative institutions, and most-cited papers in 22 scientific fields. China saw a strong growth in scientific publications in the last decade, to some extent due to increasing research and development expenditure. China has been more active in ESI fields of chemistry and physics, but more excellent in materials science, engineering and mathematics. Most publications were concerned with the common Science Citation Index subject categories of multidisciplinary chemistry, multidisciplinary materials and science, and physical chemistry. About one half China’s ESC papers were internationally collaborative and the eight major industrialized countries (the USA, Germany, the UK, Japan, France, Canada, Russia, and Italy) played a prominent role in scientific collaboration with China, especially the USA. The Chinese Academy of Sciences took the leading position of institutions with many branches. The “985 Project” stimulated the most productive institutions for academic research with a huge funding injection and the universities in Hong Kong showed good scientific performance. The citation impact of internationally collaborative papers differed among fields and international collaborations made positive contributions to academic research in China.     

Growing scientific collaboration between Hong Kong and Mainland China since the handover: a 20-year bibliometric analysis

The handover of Hong Kong launched a new era for Hong Kong and Mainland China, featuring an increasingly closer relationship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the performance and dynamics of scientific collaboration between Hong Kong and Mainland China over the past 20 years since the handover. Bibliometric analysis of scientific output, research area distribution, document type and collaborative mainland province were conducted based on publication data from the science citation index expanded database. The results showed that the number of HK-Mainland collaborative publications grew rapidly, contributing to the scientific output of Hong Kong, with the percentage share increasing to more than half in 2016. Research area analysis suggested the occurrence of gradually deepening and widespread communication between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Of fifty research areas in Hong Kong, more than half of scientific publications were completed via collaboration with the mainland in 2017. The mainland provinces that collaborated with Hong Kong showed a widening geographic scope and a simultaneous increase in collaborative activity. A distribution of Guangdong Province and Beijing as the two most active hotspots with a dozen active spots across the mainland was gradually formed. The collaborative activity of Guangdong Province has exceeded that of Beijing since 2011, while that of Guangzhou and Shenzhen increased linearly and exponentially respectively, and contributed at least 70% to Guangdong Province every year. The relationship between Hong Kong and Mainland China in science and technology has become closer than ever before.     

Four decades of fuzzy sets theory in operations management: application of life-cycle,bibliometrics and content analysis

The blockchain is a technology which accumulates and compiles data into a chain of multiple blocks. Many blockchain researchers are adopting it in multiple areas. However, there are still lacks bibliometric reports exhibiting the exploration of an in-depth research pattern in blockchain. This paper aims to address that gap by analyzing the widespread of blockchain research activities conducted thus far. This study analyzed the Scopus database by using bibliometric analysis in a pool of more than 1000 articles that were published between 2013 and 2018. In particular, this paper discusses various aspects of blockchain research conducted by researchers globally. This study also focuses on the utilization of blockchain and its consensus algorithms. This bibliometric analysis discovered the following: (1) Blockchain able to solve security issues in internet of things (IoT) and would be an increasing trend in the future; (2) Researchers begin to adopt blockchain in healthcare area; (3) The most active country in blockchain publication is United States, followed by China and Germany; (4) Switzerland and Singapore are two small size countries that published few publications, however receives many citations. (5) Research collaborations between countries increased the research publications except for Canada, India, and Brazil. (6) Keyword analysis revealed that researchers are adopting blockchain to solve problems in multiple categories of the data research area (data privacy, digital storage, the security of data, big data, and distributed database). This study also highlighted the utilization and consensus of the algorithm in blockchain research.

     

Productivity analysis of research in Natural Sciences, Technology and Clinical Medicine: an input–output model applied in comparison of Top 300 ranked universities of 4 North European and 4 East Asian countries

The article introduces a relational input–output model for the productivity analysis of university research. The comparative analyses focus on top university research in hard sciences from 4 East Asian countries (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) and 4 North European countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), universities of which get altogether 95 recognitions in the HEEACT Top 300 rankings in the Natural Sciences (Sci), Technology (Tec) or Clinical Medicine (Med). According to productivity ratings (A₀, A, A⁺, A⁺⁺), Taiwan receives 10 A⁺⁺ ratings (Sci 5, Tec 5), Sweden 9 (Sci 4, Med 4, Tec 1) and Hong Kong 9 (Tec 4, Med 2, Sci 1). The smallest numbers of A⁺⁺ ratings are found in Norway, 1 (Med) and Finland 3 (all in Med). The only university with an A⁺⁺ rating in the top of all three fields is the National University of Singapore. The Pohang University of Science and Technology (South Korea) and the National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) are exceptionally productive in Sci and Tec; Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) and the University of Helsinki (Finland) belong to the top in Med. Even though Northern European countries are ranked higher in the ‘knowledge economy indicators’, East Asians fare better by indicators of learning outcomes and by productivity of university research in Natural Sciences and Technology; North European countries are stronger in Clinical Medicine.     

The story behind Oncotarget? A bibliometric analysis

Being the most proliferative journal of oncology a cancer research of the past decade, the Open Access journal Oncotarget had reached more than 20,000 publications and a relatively high impact factor score in the past years. In 2018, the journal citation report decided to withdraw the status of an impact factor journal. Since there was a large discussion in the scientific community and specific reasons for the withdrawal were not stated, this bibliometric analysis was performed to assess if Oncotarget exhibits any differences in its bibliometric structure compared to other journals. For this purpose, we used the “New Quality and Quantity Indices in Sciences” platform and analyzed 20,000 Oncotarget articles. Density equalizing mapping technique helps to construct maps of cancer research in Oncotarget and shows that it has led to a unique global landscape which is not asymmetrically dominated by the Western hemisphere but exhibits a publishing architecture with a pronounced emphasis on Chinese articles.

     

Advanced bibliometric methods as quantitative core of peer review based evaluation and foresight exercises

This paper gives an overview of the potentials and limitations of bibliometric methods for the assessment of strengths and weaknesses in research performance, and for monitoring scientific developments. We distinguish two different methods. In the first application, research performance assessment, the bibliometric method is based on advanced analysis of publication and citation data. We show that the resulting indicators are very useful, and in fact an indispensable element next to peer review in research evaluation procedures. Indicators based on advanced bibliometric methods offer much more than only numbers. They provide insight into the position of actors at the research front in terms of influence and specializations, as well as into patterns of scientific communication and processes of knowledge dissemination. After a discussion of technical and methodological problems, we present practical examples of the use of research performance indicators. In the second application, monitoring scientific developments, bibliometric methods based on advanced mapping techniques are essential. We discuss these techniques briefly and indicate their most important potentials, particularly their role in foresight exercises. Finally, we give a first outline of how both bibliometric approaches can be combined to a broader and powerful methodology to observe scientific advancement and the role of actors.     

Research productivity in education and psychology in the Philippines and comparison with ASEAN countries

An objective assessment using bibliometric indicators of research productivity in education and psychology in the Philippines was conducted. Results were then benchmarked against its Southeast Asian neighbors’ research productivity in the same fields. Results showed that the Philippines ranked low in research productivity compared to Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, particularly starting in the 1990s. Only a few researchers, mainly coming from a small number of higher education institutions, were publishing papers on a regular basis in a small range of journals. Those journals had either no or low impact factors and most papers had low citation counts. It also collaborated less with domestic and international institutions. This low research productivity was explained in terms of economic indicators, the local orientation of many social science research studies, funding, individual characteristics of researchers, and the epistemic culture of knowledge production in the country. However, the reforms initiated by the government, particularly in the higher education sector, would hopefully lead to a better research landscape and, consequently, improved research productivity in the near future.     

Dependency on un-captured GDP as a source of resilience beyond economic value in countries with advanced ICT infrastructure: Similarities and disparities between Finland and Singapore

The majority of countries with advanced information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure have been experiencing extended stagnation due to an “embedded” trap in ICT advancement. However, certain countries have been able to sustain a high level of ICT- driven global competitiveness. This suggests that in these contexts there is resilience beyond economic value. Finland and Singapore can be considered countries of resilience with respect to ICT-driven global competitiveness because of their continued GDP growth despite the recession. While both countries share significant similarities including institutional strength in ICT, they demonstrate noteworthy disparities in their development trajectories: Singapore is growth-oriented based on captured GDP while Finland seeks happiness by shifting to un-captured GDP. This contrast can be attributed to their distinct co-evolution with their institutional systems characterized by government/business initiatives in ICT usage for economic efficiency and differences in the new economic index referred to as “happiness seeking”. Given the increasing significance of un-captured GDP derived from the dramatic advancement of the Internet, this paper, will use a comparative analysis of ICT-driven development trajectories in six leading countries in the field over the last two decades. This analysis reveals the different option for maintaining economic resilience. A new method for measuring un-captured GDP was developed to assess the consequences and state of un-captured GDP in six countries. Institutional sources leading to this state were analyzed and a source of resilience beyond economic value was conceptualized and articulated.     

A bibliometric methodology to unveil territorial inequities in the scientific wealth to combat COVID-19

Scientometrics - In this paper we develop a methodology to assess the scientific wealth of territories at field level. Our methodology uses a bibliometric approach based on the observation of...     

Scientific publications of China in 1994: Evolution or revolution?

SCI data bases have been widely used to analyse scientific production of various nations, their position in the international research community as well as their fields specializations. In the present study we examined, within the same methodological framework, the impact of the drastic reorientation of science funding systems which occured in China (PRC) in the midst of the eighties. A decade after this turning point the pattern of Chinese publications from the 1994 SCI-CDRom reflects those of other countries although with its own peculiarities i.e. a relative weakness of life sciences and a prevalence of fundamental physics compared to the world average. Some effect of PRC's policy could nevertheless be detected on this SCI profile like e.g. a neat increase of international papers after the opening of the country or the relatively high weight of collaborative works with laboratories from Hong Kong. We suggest that SCI data base is best suited for the analysis of public research of international standard due to the narrowness of the SCI window concerning applied research.     

An impact indicator for researchers

The assessment of individual researchers using bibliometric indicators is more complex than that of a region, country or university. For large scientific bodies, averages over a large number of researchers and their outputs is generally believed to give indication of the quality of the research work. For an individual, the detailed peer evaluation of his research outputs is required and, even this, may fail in the short term to make a final, long term assessment of the relevance and originality of the work. Scientometrics assessment at individual level is not an easy task not only due to the smaller number of publications that are being evaluated, but other factors can influence significantly the bibliometric indicators applied. Citation practices vary widely among disciplines and sub disciplines and this may justify the lack of good bibliometric indicators at individual level. The main goal of this study was to develop an indicator that considers in its calculation some of the aspects that we must take into account on the assessment of scientific performance at individual level. The indicator developed, the h _nf index, considers the different cultures of citation of each field and the number of authors per publication. The results showed that the h _nf index can be used on the assessment of scientific performance of individual researchers and for following the performance of a researcher.     

Bibliometric analysis of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related research in the beginning stage

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has become the major of health issues since its outbreak early 2003. No analyses by bibliometric technique that have examined this topic exist in the literature. The objective of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of all SARS-related publications in Science Citation Index (SCI) in the early stage. A systematic search was performed using the SCI for publications since SARS outbreak early 2003. Selected documents included 'severe acute respiratory syndrome' or 'SARS' as a part of its title, abstract, or keyword from the beginning stage of SARS outbreak, March till July 8, 2003. Analysis parameters included authorship, patterns of international collaboration, journals, language, document type, research institutional address, times cited, and reprint address. Citation analysis was mainly based on impact factor as defined by Journal Citation Reports(JCR) issued in 2002 and on the actual citation impact (ACI), which has been used to assess the impact relative to the whole field and has been defined as the ratio between individual citation per publication value and the total citation per publication value. Thirty-two percent of total share was published as news features, 25% as editorial materials, 22% as articles, 13% as letters, and the remaining being biographic items, corrections, meeting abstracts, and reprints. The US dominated the production by 30% of the total share followed closely by Hong Kong with 24%. Sixty-three percent of publication was published by the mainstream countries. The SARS publication pattern in the past few months suggests immediate citation, low collaboration rate, and English and mainstream country domination in production. We observed no associations of research indexes with the number of cases. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Geographical knowledge diffusion and spatial diversity citation rank

This paper proposes a citation rank based on spatial diversity (SDCR) in terms of cities and countries, focusing on the measurement of the “spatial” aspect in citation networks. Our main goal is to solve the citation bias caused by different geographical locations of citations. We empirically investigate spatial properties of citing distances, citation patterns and spatial diversity to understand geographical knowledge diffusion, based on the data from “Transportation Science and Technology” subject category in the Web of Science (1966–2009). We also compare the proposed ranking method with other bibliometric measures, and conduct a case study to figure out the recent ranks of the well-established authors in Transportation research. It is found that the SDCR of a focal author is highly correlated with the sum of spatial diversity weights (“strength”) of all his in-links, and it is better to set the damping factors smaller than 0.75 when ranking authors with various initial academic years by SDCR. The cases show that Hong Kong is becoming a cluster in Transportation research.     

An impact-citations-exergy (<Emphasis Type="Italic">iCX</Emphasis>) trajectory analysis of leading research institutions in India

A thermodynamic analogy allows bibliometric research assessment of information production processes to be based on a scalar indicator which is an energy-like term called exergy. Derived from standard indicators like impact, citations and number of papers, the exergy indicator X is a multiplicative product of quality and quantity of a scientist’s or group’s performance using available bibliometric information. Thus, given the bibliometric sequences of leading research agencies and institutions, research performance can be displayed as trajectories on a two-dimensional map as time progresses. In this paper, we track the performance of several of the leading players contributing to academic scientific research in India.     

DHC乳化炸药混装车在香港的应用

文中介绍了ＤＨＣ乳化炸药混装车样车赴香港参加将军澳工业村开山填海工程的情况，主要包括炸药的选择与提高，地面站站房布置，混装车应用前后的穿爆工艺比较；及所创造的显著经济效益等。该车的成功应用表明，它完全可以替代同类型的进口车．     

Smart bibliometrics: an integrated method of science mapping and bibliometric analysis

Bibliometric techniques and science mapping are widely employed in the research environment to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of scientific knowledge on a given topic. These techniques are essential to assist the researcher's work by guiding the compilation of the bibliography to support the theory discussion. To this objective, the Smart Bibliometrics was developed to facilitate bibliometric analysis and selection of theoretical references, embodied by a system that brings intelligence, dynamism, and agility to the scientific writing process. The innovation of this methodology is the fusion of two relevant criteria applied during the bibliometric analysis process: the application of a representative metric of classification of scientific papers and dynamic visuals strategically developed. The methodology differs for providing the user with dynamic navigation and interaction experience with the data collected, innovating the approach to reaching insights within the universe of discussions of the scientific community. In addition, as an innovation factor, the method is presented in a scalable Business Intelligence (BI) system that features blunt visuals, extensive analysis repertoire, intuitive navigation, and automated updating. The development was carried out in a cutting-edge technological platform to attend information and sharing intents by employing cloud computing resources, another feature that enables interaction among researcher groups also from different institutions. Additionally, it is not necessary to install any software. The output will be available for consultation, at any time and place, just by using one device with an internet connection.