International temporary mobility of researchers: a cross-discipline study

The increasing literature addressing international mobility of researchers has repeatedly pointed out the lack of empirical data compiled over the last two decades, jeopardizing progress in the understanding of the characteristics and impacts of such human flows. This paper makes a contribution to the field by exploring the extent to which information obtained from researchers’ electronic curriculum vitae (CV) may be used to study temporary geographical mobility. We exploit a new type of data set—a comprehensive database of electronic CVs—developing a broad set of cross-discipline mobility indicators to assess the dimensions and characteristics of international research visits among a population of over 10,000 researchers. The sample population is made up of PhD holders working in the regional research system of Andalusia, Spain. Information regarding their international research visits over the last four decades is downloaded from CVs contained in the electronic scientific information system of the region. We assess mobility rates and the characteristics of the temporary mobile population. The analysis of visiting patterns shows significant differences in mobility profiles in terms of frequency, duration and destination of visits, across disciplines, career stages and time periods. The study also shows how different definitions of international mobility lead to substantial variations in cross-discipline mobility rates.     

Citer analysis as a measure of research impact: library and information science as a case study

The investigators studied author research impact using the number of citers per publication an author’s research has been able to attract, as opposed to the more traditional measure of citations. A focus on citers provides a complementary measure of an author’s reach or influence in a field, whereas citations, although possibly numerous, may not reflect this reach, particularly if many citations are received from a small number of citers. In this exploratory study, Web of Science was used to tally citer and citation-based counts for 25 highly cited researchers in information studies in the United States and 26 highly cited researchers from the United Kingdom. Outcomes of the tallies based on several measures, including an introduced ch-index, were used to determine whether differences arise in author rankings when using citer-based versus citation-based counts. The findings indicate a strong correlation between some citation and citer-based measures, but not with others. The findings of the study have implications for the way authors’ research impact may be assessed.     

A new methodology for ranking scientific institutions

This paper examines policy-relevant effects of a yearly public ranking of individual researchers and their institutes in economics by means of their publication output in international top journals. In 1980, a grassroots ranking (‘Top 40’) of researchers in the Netherlands by means of their publications in international top journals started a competition among economists. The objective was to improve economics research in the Netherlands to an internationally competitive level. The ranking lists did stimulate output in prestigious international journals. Netherlands universities tended to perform well compared to universities elsewhere in the EU concerning volume of output in ISI source journals, but their citation impact was average. Limitations of ranking studies and of bibliometric monitoring in the field of economics are discussed.     

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.     

A bibliometric analysis of the effectiveness of Korea’s Biotechnology Stimulation Plans,with a comparison with four other Asian nations

This study investigates the scientific output and publication patterns of Korean biotechnology before and after the start of the Korean Biotechnology Stimulation Plans (1994–2007), and then compares the results with publication data from the same time periods for Japan, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore. For this study, 14,704 publications, published by at least one researcher from one of the five Asian nations (indexed by SCI Expanded during the years 1990–1993 and the years 2000–2003), were considered. A marked increase of Korean research output in biotechnology was largely influenced by an increasing tendency for researchers to enter the field of biotechnology and by increased expenditures for R&D activity through the Korean Biotechnology Stimulation Plans. In addition, the SCI Expanded coverage of national journals affected the scientific output and publication patterns of Japanese and Korean researchers. Looking at the Korean publications by collaboration type, international collaboration leads to more publications in mainstream journals of high impact factors than local and domestic collaborations for the two periods. However, although the Korean Biotechnology Stimulation Plans were followed by a remarkable increase in South Korea’s research output, this increase has not been accompanied by growth in the quality of those publications in terms of impact factors of journals for Korean publications.     

Product and process innovation in manufacturing firms: a 30-year bibliometric analysis

In recent decades, internationalization of research activities has increased, as demonstrated by the phenomena of international scientific collaboration and international mobility of researchers. This paper investigates whether the international scientific collaboration is explained by researchers’ motivation as well as their international migration. Using metadata from papers published in Nature and Science from 1989 to 2009, count data estimation was conducted. The results illustrate those researchers’ international migration and motivation, shown by both synergy and difference effects between countries, explain international collaboration. This implies that international co-authorship in recent decades has been based on researchers’ motivation as well as their networking. The positive result for synergy effects also means that pairs of countries with rich research environments tended to have more international collaboration, which may lead to the convergence of qualified research output in advanced scientific countries. Our findings also support the conclusion that researchers move to countries with better research environments, but networks created through international collaboration are not a factor in international migration. The relationship between international mobility and collaboration is confirmed as going in one direction, from mobility to collaboration.     

The relationship between scientists’ research performance and the degree of internationalization of their research

Policy makers, at various levels of governance, generally encourage the development of research collaboration. However the underlying determinants of collaboration are not completely clear. In particular, the literature lacks studies that, taking the individual researcher as the unit of analysis, attempt to understand if and to what extent the researcher’s scientific performance might impact on his/her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues. The current work examines the international collaborations of Italian university researchers for the period 2001–2005, and puts them in relation to each individual’s research performance. The results of the investigation, which assumes co-authorship as proxy of research collaboration, show that both research productivity and average quality of output have positive effects on the degree of international collaboration achieved by a scientist.     

The relationship between research performance and international collaboration in chemistry

The number of internationally co-authored articles have significantly increased in recent years and now receive more citations than domestic works. Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629–643, 2011b) investigated scholars in Italian universities and found a positive correlation between their research performance and degree of internationalization. This study uses a data set in chemistry to examine the robustness of the results presented by Abramo et al. (Scientometrics 86:629–643, 2011b) and the relationship between international collaboration and mobility among researchers. The results confirmed the robustness of the previous study and raised the possibility that the higher citation rate of international papers is not solely explained by the higher performance of researchers. Therefore, international research collaboration seems to exert some kind of “bonus” effect because of internationalization. The results also indicate that researchers who collaborate internationally accumulate science and technology human capital through collaboration. A positive relationship between the international mobility of researchers and their performance is also shown although the direction of the cause and effect is not yet clear.     

Coexistence of university-industry relations and academic research: Barrier to or incentive for scientific productivity

In this article we analyse whether university-industry relations (UIR) are penalising research activity and inhibiting university researchers’ scientific productivity and, if so, to what extent. The analysis is based on a case study of two Spanish universities. We find that UIR exercise a positive effect on university scientific productivity only when they are based on the development of R&D contracts, and when the funds obtained through these activities do not exceed 15% of the researcher’s total budget. We also find that researchers who combine research and UIR activities obtain higher funding from competitive public sources than that engage only in research. In addition, their average scientific productivity is higher and they achieve higher status within their institutions than those members of faculty who concentrate only on research.     

Chinese researchers returning home: Impacts of international mobility on research collaboration and scientific productivity

The aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the relationship between scientific mobility and international collaboration. This case study deals with leading Chinese researchers in the field of plant molecular life sciences who returned to their home country. A correlation analysis of their mobility history, publication output, and international co-publication data, shows the relationship between scientific output, levels of international collaboration and various individual characteristics of returned researchers. The outcome of the analysis suggests that while host countries may loose human capital when Chinese scientists return home, the so-called “return brain drain”, they may also gain in terms of scientific linkages within this rapidly emerging and globalizing research field.     

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.     

Mapping of biotechnology patents of China from 1995–2008

The patents of China in biotechnology in the United States Patent and Trademark Office during 1995–2008 have been analyzed in this paper with the help of bibliometrics and social network analysis techniques. The analysis has been carried out from several perspectives including total patent output of industries, universities and public research institutes (PRIs) and their positions in the knowledge network, the main innovators and their interactions, the collaboration among Chinese regions and the collaborations from abroad. The results show that though with some improvements, the patent performance of Chinese organizations and regions in biotechnology still need to be improved. The connections between Chinese innovators are not very cohesive and they depend heavily on foreign knowledge, especial knowledge from U.S. multinational firms and universities. The important innovators of China in this field are mainly PRIs and universities. More and stronger firm innovators, especially large and powerful multinational companies, are strongly needed for the nation’s biotechnology industry.     

Self-citations,co-authorships and keywords: A new approach to scientists’ field mobility?

This paper introduces a new approach to detecting scientists’ field mobility by focusing on an author’s self-citation network, and the co-authorships and keywords in self-citing articles. Contrary to much previous literature on self-citations, we will show that author’s self-citation patterns reveal important information on the development and emergence of new research topics over time. More specifically, we will discuss self-citations as a means to detect scientists’ field mobility. We introduce a network based definition of field mobility, using the Optimal Percolation Method (Lambiotte & Ausloos, 2005; 2006). The results of the study can be extended to selfcitation networks of groups of authors and, generally also for other types of networks.     

Nanoscale research in South Africa: A mapping exercise based on scientometrics

This article reports the findings of a scientometric analysis of nanoscale research in South Africa during the period 2000–2005. The ISI databases were identified as the most appropriate information platform for the objectives of the investigation and have been interrogated for the identification of South African authors publishing in the field. The article identifies trends over time, major institutional contributors, journals in which South African authors publish their research, international collaborators and performance in comparison to four comparator countries (India, Brazil, South Korea and Australia). The major findings of the investigation are as follows: nanoscale research in South Africa is driven by individual researchers interests up to date and it is in its early stages of development; the country’s nanoscale research is below what would one expect in light of its overall publication output; the country’s nano-research is distributed to a number of Universities with subcritical concentration of researchers.     

Core-periphery,new clusters,or rising stars?: international scientific collaboration among ‘advanced’ countries in the era of globalization

Assuming the OECD member states as ‘advanced’ nations equipped with basic scientific capacities, the present research addresses the network configuration of these countries in international scientific collaboration and the transformation of this network along with globalization. The result suggests that geographical, linguistic, and economic affinities did not have a meaningful impact on the formation of co-authorship network between ‘advanced’ nations, different from previous research results which claimed their importance on international cooperation. Globalization facilitated by the development of information and transportation technologies was found to influence the co-authorship link between countries, but not to accelerate centralization of the network in the past 15 years. Though the core-periphery pattern still persists, new rising stars, which are Korea and Turkey, have emerged in the co-authorship network among ‘advanced’ nations. These two countries, having a rapid increase in the share of degree centrality from 1995 to 2010, had strategic financial support from the government which stimulated the collaboration between universities and industries and emphasized the development of science and engineering fields.     

The representation of nationalities on the editorial boards of international journals and the promotion of the scientific output of the same countries

This paper analyses the nationalities of the editorial board members of the top 20 journals (according to their impact factor in the ISI Journal Citation Report, Science Edition 2005) serving 15 scientific disciplines. A total of 281 journals were analysed (some journals crossed disciplinary boundaries) and 10,055 of their editorial board members were identified. Some 53% of board members were from the United States. Europe provided 32%, with the United Kingdom making the greatest contribution (9.8%). The analysis of scientific output by nationality in these journals showed a significant correlation, in all disciplines, with the representation of the corresponding nations on the editorial boards. The composition of editorial boards may therefore provide a useful indicator for measuring a country’s international scientific visibility. The present results should be taken into account in the design of national policies with the aim of enhancing the presence of a country’s most prestigious scientists on the editorial boards of the main international journals.     

Scientometric impact assessment of a research policy instrument: the case of rating researchers on scientific outputs in South Africa

The influence of the National Research Foundation’s (NRF) rating system on the productivity of the South African social science researchers is investigated scientometrically for the period from 1981 to 2006. Their output performance is mainly indicated by their research publications. Following international best practice in scientometrics as well as the behavioural reinforcement theory, we employed the “before/after control impact (BACI) method”, as well as the well known econometric breakpoint test as proposed by Chow. We use as control group the publications in the field of clinical medicine. The field is not supported by NRF and hence clinical medicine researchers are not affected by the evaluation and rating system. The findings show a positive impact of the NRF programme on the research outputs of social sciences researchers and the implementation of the programme has increased the relevant population of research articles by an average of 24.5% (during the first 5 years) over the expected number of publication without the programme. The results confirm the scientometric findings of other studies (e.g. that of Nederhof) that ratings promulgate research productivity.     

A new input indicator for the assessment of science &; technology research?

Traditional input indicators of research performance, such as research funding, number of active scientists, and international collaborations, have been widely used to assess countries’ publication output. However, while publication in today’s English-only research world requires sound research in readable English, English proficiency may be a problem for the productivity of non-native English-speaking (NNES) countries. Data provided by the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) containing the academic profile of 51,223 Brazilian researchers show a correlation between English proficiency and publication output. According to our results, traditional input indicators may fall short of providing an accurate representation of the research performance of NNES developing countries.     

Africa’s contribution to the worldwide research literature: New analytical perspectives,trends, and performance indicators

This paper examines general characteristics of African science from a quantitative ‘scientometric’ perspective. More specifically, that of research outputs of Africa-based authors published in the scientific literature during the years 1980–2004, either within the international journals representing ‘mainstream’ science, or within national and regional journals reflecting ‘indigenous science’. As for the international journals, the findings derived from Thomson Scientific’s Citation Indexes show that while Africa’s share in worldwide science has steadily declined, the share of international co-publications has increased very significantly, whereas low levels of international citation impact persist. A case study of South African journals reveals the existence of several journals that are not processed for these international databases but nonetheless show a distinctive citation impact on international research communities.     

In-depth analysis on China’s international cooperation in science

It has been about 30 years since China adopted an open-up and reform policy for global competition and collaboration. This opening-up policy is accompanied by a spectacular growth of the country’s economy as well as visibility in the world’s scientific literature. Also China’ competitiveness in scientific research has grown, and is mirroring the development of the country’s economy. On the other hand, international collaboration of most countries dramatically increased during the last two decades and accompanied the growth of science in emerging economies. Thus the question arises of whether growth of competitiveness in research is accompanied by an intensification of collaboration in China as well. In the present study we analyse the dynamics and the national characteristics of China’s co-operation in a global context. We also study research profile and citation impact of international collaboration with respect to the corresponding domestic ‘standards’.