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.     

The impact of publications from mainland China on the trends in alphabetical authorship

This paper investigates the impact of burgeoning Chinese publication on academic alphabetical authorship in the 25 subject categories that have the highest percentage of intentionally alphabetical publications. The use of alphabetical authorship is common in the social sciences and humanities, mathematics, and in some physical disciplines. Chinese academic publication has increased rapidly in recent decades (Hong Kong and Macau were excluded from the study because Hong Kong and Macau are much more internationalized than mainland China). However, authors from mainland China do not prefer alphabetical authorship. The increase in publications from mainland China lowers the probability of intentional alphabetical authorship in the natural science and technology subject categories that we examined. In some natural science and technology categories, the influence is strong. But for the social sciences and humanities, the influence is weak, due to the lower share of world publications from mainland China. Yet, in some social science and humanities subject categories such as ‘Economics’, the relative share of publications from mainland China is increasing rapidly, and the results on alphabetical authorship trends will be felt in the near future.     

Korean science and international collaboration, 1995-2000

Summary This paper investigates Korean scientific output, focusing on international collaboration patterns, through an analysis of journal publications. For the study, 44,534 publications, published by researchers affiliated with Korean institutions and indexed by SCI during the six years 1995-2000, were considered. The study period was divided into two periods to compare the international collaboration for three years 1995-1997 and 1998-2000. The results show a clear decrease in Korea's international collaboration level between the study periods even though the number of researchers as well as the total R&D expenditure decreased considerably after Korea's economic change. The decrease of international collaboration in Korean science was inversely associated with different determinants such as scientific size as well as national scientific infrastructure. This decreasing trend of international collaboration in Korean science was largely caused by discipline-to-discipline variations in coverage of the SCI database. Among the top-ten collaborating countries, only the Chinese and the Canadian share of collaborative publications with Korea increased between the two periods under consideration.     

An exploratory study on collaboration profiles of Chinese publications in Molecular Biology

Summary As science has become much complex and sophisticated, greater attention is paid to scientific collaboration within recent bibliometric studies. A total of 6538 publications in Molecular Biology from China during 1999-2003, as indicated by data collected from database of the Science Citation Index Expanded - Web Edition, have been analyzed. A large proportion of publications have been authored by more than 3 scientists. The composition of publications grouped by collaboration patterns are: 1.58% non-collaborative papers, 42.43% local papers, 34.37% domestic papers and 21.62% international papers on average during the studied period. The countries with which China has collaborative links and their frequencies are all itemized to indicate the intensity of international collaboration in the field of Molecular Biology. Finally, the differences between the impact of wholly indigenous papers and internationally collaborative papers have been compared. The results indicate that foreign collaboration does contribute a lot to the improvement of the mainstream connectivity and international visibility.     

Impacts of Teaching Approaches on Learning Approaches of Construction Engineering Students: A Comparative Study between Hong Kong and Mainland China

Teaching and learning contexts influence the learning process and determine the learning outcome or product. Teaching approaches may vary across different engineering and science courses and students. This study was aimed at understanding the differences in teaching approaches between two regions (Hong Kong and mainland China) and their relevant impacts on the learning process in construction engineering education. An exploratory survey was conducted on construction engineering students in China to investigate relationships between teaching approaches, learning approaches, and teaching satisfaction. Results indicate that the “transferring” and “shaping” teaching approaches are commonly used in the first and second class universities in the mainland, while the “transferring” and “traveling” approaches are commonly applied in Hong Kong. Teacher‐centered teaching is correlated to a “surface” learning approach among students at Hong Kong universities but it is correlated to a “deep” learning approach for students in the mainland. Students at universities in mainland China are satisfied with all four teaching approaches, “transferring,” “shaping,” “traveling,” and “growing;” while students in Hong Kong are only significantly satisfied with the “growing” teaching approach.     

Scientific output of Iran at the threshold of the 21st century

Summary Using the method of bibliometrics, a 1999-2002 biochemistry and molecular biology database was constructed for China from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded). Based on this database, the author quantitatively analyzed the current research activity in biochemistry and molecular biology in China. Results show that almost half the publications were published in Chinese journals. The percentage of articles published by Chinese authors in the total articles from the world is increasing. The number of articles published in high influence journals is continuously increasing. The research outputs are mainly located in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The sites of the China Science Academy and National Universities are the important locations for these studies. The collaboration rate of Chinese output is low as compared to results from other countries. USA and Japan are the main international collaborating countries.     

Regional development and interregional collaboration in the growth of nanotechnology research in China

China is becoming a leading nation in terms of its share of the world??s publications in the emerging nanotechnology domain. This paper demonstrates that the international rise of China??s position in nanotechnology has been underwritten by the emergence of a series of regional hubs of nanotechnology R&D activity within the country. We develop a unique database of Chinese nanotechnology articles covering the period 1990 to mid-2006 to identify the regional distribution of nanotechnology research in China. To build this database, a new approach was developed to clean and standardize the geographical allocation of Chinese publication records. We then analyze the data to understand the regional development of nanotechnology research in China over our study period and to map interregional and international research collaboration linkages. We find that the geographical distribution of China??s domestic nanotechnology research is characterized by regional imbalance, with most of the leading regions located in eastern China, including not only Beijing and Shanghai but also a series of other new regional hubs. There is much less development of nanotechnology research in central and western China. Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong are among the leading Chinese regions for international nanotechnology research collaboration. Other Chinese nanotechnology regions are less focused on international collaboration, although they have developed domestic interregional collaborations. Although new regional research hubs have emerged in the nanotechnology domain, the paper notes that their concentration in eastern China reinforces existing imbalances in science and technology capabilities in China, and in turn this may further reinforce the dominant position of eastern China in the commercialization of new technologies such as nanotechnology.     

International Collaboration in Indian Scientific Papers

Internationally co-authored publications may be regarded as an indicator of scientific co-operation between countries and is of interest in science policy. In this study, the extent of international collaboration in Indian science has been estimated from SCI data in 1990 and 1994. We find an increase in collaboration both in terms of output and the extent of the network and significantly higher impact (IF) associated with internationally co-authored papers in several disciplines. However, there was no significant increase in IF of collaborative papers over time, whereas Indian papers in general showed a statistically significant, though small, increase in average impact from 1990 to 1994. The bulk of Indian scientific co-operation was with the developed Western nations and Japan, but it was often the smaller countries with a few co-authored papers which showed higher average impact. Co-operation with South Asian countries, initially low, has doubled in four years. By a combination of multivariate data analysis techniques the relative positions of India's partners in scientific collaboration have been mapped with respect to the fields of co-operation.     

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.     

Scientific research collaboration in China

The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of scientific research collaboration in China by bibliometric indicators, collaborative index, degree of collaboration and level of collaboration, based on the articles published in 1218 titles of Chinese scientific and technical periodicals in the year 1993. The results suggest that the current trend of collaboration among multiauthors and multiinstetutions for producing scientific articles may have reflected the multidimensional science of China.     

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.     

Assessing the Potential of Cross-border regional innovation Systems:A case study of the Hong Kong -Shenzhen region

While technological transformations have redrawn the boundaries of regional innovation systems, the effect of such transformations on the development of cross-border regional innovation systems (CBRISs) – defined here as the innovation system spanning neighboring territories belonging to different nation-states – has not been well understood. The Hong Kong-Shenzhen region presents a unique opportunity to study the potential of CBRISs, as Hong Kong and Shenzhen are adjacent to each other though there is a border between them and the two cities have their own political and legal systems under the “one country, two systems” arrangement. In this research, we examine the development of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen region by focusing on cognitive proximity, innovation actors, collaboration, and global connectivity through an analysis of patent and publication data for the 2001–2015 period. Our findings point to a good potential given the growing convergence in scientific research among the two cities, steadily increasing collaboration output, and a complementarity among innovation actors. However, compared with other cross-border regions, the technological linkages between Hong Kong and Shenzhen remain limited.     

Measuring the stability of scientific collaboration

Stability has long been regarded as an important characteristic of many natural and social processes. In regards to scientific collaborations, we define stability to reflect the consistent investment of a certain amount of effort into a relationship. In this paper, we provide an explicit definition of a new indicator of stability, based on the year-to-year publication output of collaborations. We conduct a large-scale analysis of stability among collaborations between authors publishing in the field of computer science. Collaborations with medium–high degree of stability tend to occur most frequently, and on average, have the highest average scientific impact. We explore other “circumstances”, reflecting the composition of collaborators, that may interact with the relationship between stability and impact, and show that (1) Transdisciplinary collaborations with low stability leads to high impact publications; (2) Stable collaboration with the collaborative author pairs showing greater difference in scientific age or career impact can produce high impact publications; and (3) Highly-cited collaborators whose publications have a large number of co-authors do not keep stable collaborations. We also demonstrate how our indicator for stability can be used alongside other similar indicators, such as persistence, to better understand the nature of scientific collaboration, and outline a new taxonomy of collaborations.     

中国版权局与香港海关携手打击盗版光盘

近年来，中国国家版权局与香港海关携手，共同打击盗版光盘，不仅有效规范了香港光盘生产加工秩序．而且对于净化内地与香港的著作权保护环境、防范不法分子通过香港加工盗版音像制品走私进入内地市场、有效保护著作权人合法权益等方面也发挥了积极作用。     

Collaboration patterns of Taiwanese scientific publications in various research areas

This paper employs bibliometric methods to observe collaboration patterns of scientific publications in biotechnology, information and computer technology, future energy, and nanotechnology among different institutions in Taiwan. The results show primary domestic and international collaborative patterns, the effect of collaborative papers on the world-wide average, collaborative networks, and the distribution of institutions on global map. The findings suggest that domestic collaboration in each area is higher in proportion than international collaboration. Biotechnology leads in both domestic and international collaborative percentage. Among cooperative benchmarking countries, the US and China are the main partners. Collaboration among research institutes and universities is the most frequent collaborative pattern in each area except biotechnology, which tends to occur between hospitals and universities. On average, international collaborative papers tend to have greater effect, except in nanotechnology. Academia Sinica collaborated frequently with foreign institutes in each research field. A further analysis on how each collaborative group forms is recommended, especially collaboration among the Triple-Helix relationships.     

Restructuring the Japanese national research system and its effect on performance

Summary The Japanese government has been attempting to reform the national research system for the past 20 years. This paper describes the structural changes of the system and its performance based on bibliometric analyses and discusses the effects of S&T policy. The investigation indicates that although Japan gradually increased its production of highly cited publications, its share of low-cited publications is much higher than the former. Detailed analyses reveal that the top eight universities account for half of the highly cited publications in the university sector, while other hundreds of universities have massively increased their low-cited publications since 1990. The development of financial and human resources for research in the 1990s enabled new actors to be involved in scientific research, but the resources were concentrated to a small number of universities, reinforcing the collaboration between these universities and others.     

Mapping of Indian computer science research output, 1999�C2008

The research output of India in computer science during 1999?C2008 is analyzed in this paper on several parameters including total research output, its growth, rank and global publication share, citation impact, share of international collaborative papers and major collaborative partner countries and patterns of research communication in most productive journals. It also analyses the characteristics of most productive institutions, authors and high-cited papers. The publications output and impact of India is also compared with China, South Korea, Taiwan and Brazil.     

Exploring and visualizing spatial-temporal evolution of patent collaboration networks: A case of China's intelligent manufacturing equipment industry

With the integration of intelligent manufacturing (IM) technology and the manufacturing industry, the intelligent manufacturing equipment industry (IMEI) has become the focus of a new round of industrial revolution. This integration has led to a new revolution in the manufacturing industry and is key to transforming China into a manufacturing country with international competitiveness. However, China's IMEI is in the development stage, thus presenting a major challenge to it becoming a competitive core industry. Therefore, there is an urgent need to explore the IMEI patent collaboration network and analyze its evolutionary characteristics, which can improve not only the innovation ability of network organizations but also the overall competitiveness of the IMEI. This study employs social network analysis (SNA) to study the evolution of the patent collaboration network of China's IMEI. The results show that the number of co-patents for the IMEI field in China has obvious stage characteristics, the collaborative innovation patterns adopted by different provinces vary, and the State Grid has a strong influence on the network. The scale of the patent collaboration network is gradually expanding, exhibiting a “small-world” structure. Jiangsu mainly innovates through intra-provincial collaboration. Provinces such as Beijing, Guangdong and Shandong are more inclined to inter-provincial collaboration.     

Blockmodeling of co-authorship networks in library and information science in Argentina: a case study

The paper introduces the use of blockmodeling in the micro-level study of the internal structure of co-authorship networks over time. Variations in scientific productivity and researcher or research group visibility were determined by observing authors?? role in the core-periphery structure and crossing this information with bibliometric data. Three techniques were applied to represent the structure of collaborative science: (1) the blockmodeling; (2) the Kamada-Kawai algorithm based on the similarities in co-authorships present in the documents analysed; (3) bibliometrics to determine output volume, impact and degree of collaboration from the bibliographic data drawn from publications. The goal was to determine the extent to which the use of these two complementary approaches, in conjunction with bibliometric data, provides greater insight into the structure and characteristics of a given field of scientific endeavour. The paper describes certain features of Pajek software and how it can be used to study research group composition, structure and dynamics. The approach combines bibliometric and social network analysis to explore scientific collaboration networks and monitor individual and group careers from new perspectives. Its application on a small-scale case study is intended as an example and can be used in other disciplines. It may be very useful for the appraisal of scientific developments.     

Performance evaluation of research universities in Mainland China,Hong Kong and Taiwan: based on a two-dimensional approach

For a long time, rankings overused in evaluating Chinese universities’ research performance. The relationship between research production and research quality hasn’t been taken seriously in ranking systems. Most university rankings in China put more weight on research production rather than research quality. Recently, the developmental strategy of Chinese universities has shifted from ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’. As a result, a two-dimensional approach was developed in this article to balance ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’. The research production index and the research quality index were produced to locate research universities (RU) from Mainland China, Hong Kong (HK) and Taiwan (TW) in the two-dimensional graph. Fifty-nine RU were classified into three categories according to their locations, which indicated the relevant level of research performance. University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, Tsing Hua University and Peking University appeared to be leading universities in research performance. The result showed that the mainland universities were generally of higher research production and lower research quality than HK and TW universities, and proved that the merging tides of Chinese universities enlarged their research production while causing a low level of research quality as well.