Transient and continuant authors in a research field: The case of terrorism

The issue of research continuance in a scientific discipline was analyzed and applied to the field of terrorism. The growing amount of literature in this field is produced mostly by one-timers who “visit” the field, contribute one or two articles, and then move to another subject area. This research pattern does not contribute to the regularity and constancy of publication by which a scientific discipline is formed and theories and paradigms of the field are created. This study observed the research continuance and transience of scientific publications in terrorism by using obtainable “most prolific terrorism authors” lists at different points in time. These lists designed by several terrorism researchers, presented a few researchers who contributed to the field continuously and many others whose main research interest lay in another discipline. The four lists observed included authors who were continuants, transients, new-comers, and terminators (who left the field). The lack of continuous, full-time research in a research field is typical of many disciplines, but the influence of this research pattern on a field’s growth and stability is different for older, established disciplines than for new and formative fields of study. With in the former, intellectual mobility could contribute to the rise of new topics and probably enrich the particular scientific field; with the latter, by contrast, it could hamper the formation and growth of the field.     

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.     

Usefulness of Hirsch’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">h</Emphasis>-index to evaluate scientific research in Spain

The applicability of Hirsch’s h index (Hirsch, 2005) for evaluating scientific research in Spain has been investigated. A series of derivative indexes that take into account: i) the overall low scientific production in Spain before the’ 80s; ii) differences among areas due to size (overall number of citations for publications in a given area); and iii) the number of authors, are suggested. Their applicability has been tested for two different areas in the Biological Sciences. The proposed set of indexes accurately summarizes both the success and evolution of scientists’ careers in Spain, and it may be useful in the evaluation of other not well established national scientific research systems.     

Korean journals in the Science Citation Index: What do they reveal about the intellectual structure of S&T in Korea?

During the last decade, we have witnessed a sustained growth of South Korea’s research output in terms of the world share of publications in the Science Citation Index database. However, Korea’s citation performance is not yet as competitive as publication performance. In this study, the authors examine the intellectual structure of Korean S&T field based on social network analysis of journal-journal citation data using the ten Korean SCI journals as seed journals. The results reveal that Korean SCI journals function more like publication places, neither research channels nor information sources among national scientists. Thus, these journals may provide Korean scholars with access to international scientific communities by facilitating the respective entry barriers. However, there are no citation relations based on their Korean background. Furthermore, we intend to draw some policy implications which may be helpful to increase Korea’s research potential.     

Establishment of paper assessment system based on academic disciplinary benchmarks

An article assessment system based on both Tianjin University and nine key Chinese Universities’ academic disciplinary benchmarks was established to evaluate researcher’s published papers. With this scientific benchmarking system, the quality of a researcher’s papers could be easily located in a percentile scale in corresponding field within certain groups. Several factors, including total number of papers, order of authors, impact of journals, citation count, h-index, e-index, a-index, m-quotient, etc., were also utilized for both quantity and quality analysis. Furthermore, the novel proposed weighted citation analysis was introduced to judge a researcher’s contribution to his/her research outcomes. The convenient application and comprehensive evaluation property of this assessment system was thoroughly discussed via a given example.     

Geschlechterforschung ist Wissenschaftsforschung – Wissenschaftsforschung ist Geschlechterforschung

The articles collected in this number all originate from a section of the 2004 annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik.The section was organized by the Berlin Feminist Science Studies Workgroup (BFSSW) at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. The contributions are dedicated to recent accounts and research topics in a field constituted by the intersection between 20th century (life) sciences and gender studies.They view modern life sciences as situated in hybrid fields of theory and practice, public and scientific discourse, of experimental procedures and practices of control. Methodological approaches range from Derrida’s notion of deconstruction, Foucault’s regulatory power and governmentality, Butler’s method of analyzing performativity and Haraway’s situated knowledge. They focus on dispositifs of research and regulation, visualizing procedures in the human sciences, and the emergence of new objects of biopolitics. One contribution focuses on the ‘politics of emotions’ and the paradoxical effects of laughter in ‘sexed’ and ‘gendered’ discourses and explores the productivity of humor for a gender-sensitive way of ‘doing history’. This introduction deals with recent developments in – mainly German – gender studies during the last two decades under the triple perspective of women in science, science of gender and gender in science.

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Geschlechterforschung ist Wissenschaftsforschung – Wissenschaftsforschung ist Geschlechterforschung Einführung in den Themenschwerpunkt “Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte”

     

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’.     

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.     

The state of science and technology in Africa (2000–2004): A scientometric assessment

This article reports for first time the state of science and technology in the African Continent on the basis of two scientometric indicators — number of research publications and number of patents awarded. Our analysis shows that Africa produced 68,945 publications over the 2000–2004 period or 1.8% of the World’s publications. In comparison India produced 2.4% and Latin America 3.5% of the World’s research. More detailed analysis reveals that research in Africa is concentrated in just two countries — South Africa and Egypt. These two counties produce just above 50% of the Continent’s publications and the top eight countries produce above 80% of the Continent’s research. Disciplinary analysis reveals that few African countries have the minimum number of scientists required for the functioning of a scientific discipline. Examination of the Continent’s inventive profile, as manifested in patents, indicates that Africa produces less than one thousand of the world’s inventions. Furthermore 88% of the Continent’s inventive activity is concentrated in South Africa. The article recommends that the African Governments should pay particular attention in developing their national research systems.     

‘Triad’ or ‘tetrad’? On global changes in a dynamic world

The US-EU race for world leadership in science and technology has become the favourite subject of recent studies. Studies issued by the European Commission reported the increase of the European share in the world’s scientific production and announced world leadership of the EU in scientific output at the end of the last century. In order to be able to monitor those types of global changes, the present study is based on the 15-year period 1991–2005. A set of bibliometric and technometric indicators is used to analyse activity and impact patterns in science and technology output. This set comprises publication output indicators such as (1) the share in the world total, (2) subject-based publication profiles, (3) citation-based indicators like journal-and subject-normalised mean citation rates, (4) international co-publications and their impact as well as (5) patent indicators and publication-patent citation links (both directions). The evolution of national bibliometric profiles, ‘scientific weight’ and science-technology linkage patterns are discussed as well. The authors show, using the mirror of science and technology indicators, that the triad model does no longer hold in the 21^st century. China is challenging the leading sciento-economic powers and the time is approaching when this country will represent the world’s second largest potential in science and technology. China and other emerging scientific nations like South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and Turkey are already changing the balance of power as measured by scientific production, as they are at least in part responsible for the relative decline of the former triad.     

How to identify emerging research fields using scientometrics: An example in the field of Information Security

In the highly competitive world, there has been a concomitant increase in the need for the research and planning methodology, which can perform an advanced assessment of technological opportunities and an early perception of threats and possibilities of the emerging technology according to the nation’s economic and social status. This research is aiming to provide indicators and visualization methods to measure the latest research trend and aspect underlying scientific and technological documents to researchers and policy planners using “co-word analysis”. Information Security field is a highly prospective market value. In this paper, we presented an analysis Information Security. Co-word analysis was employed to reveal patterns and trends in the Information Security fields by measuring the association strength of terms representatives of relevant publications or other texts produced in the Information Security field. Data were collected from SCI and the critical keywords could be extracted from the author keywords. These extracted keywords were further standardized. In order to trace the dynamic changes in the Information Security field, we presented a variety of technology mapping. The results showed that the Information Security field has some established research theme and also rapidly transforms to embrace new themes.     

Multi-modal social networks for modeling scientific fields

This paper analyzes whether methods from social network analysis can be adopted for the modeling of scientific fields in order to obtain a better understanding of the respective scientific area. The approach proposed is based on articles published within the respective scientific field and certain types of nodes deduced from these papers, such as authors, journals, conferences and organizations. As a proof of concept, the techniques discussed here are applied to the field of ‘Mobile Social Networking’. For this purpose, a tool was developed to create a large data collection representing the aforementioned field. The paper analyzes various views on the complete network and discusses these on the basis of the data collected on Mobile Social Networking. The authors demonstrate that the analysis of particular subgraphs derived from the data collection allows the identification of important authors as well as separate sub-disciplines such as classic network analysis and sensor networks and also contributes to the classification of the field of ‘Mobile Social Networking’ within the greater context of computer science, applied mathematics and social sciences. Based on these results, the authors propose a set of concrete services which could be offered by such a network and which could help the user to deal with the scientific information process. The paper concludes with an outlook upon further possible research topics.     

发展心理视野下学前儿童家具设计探讨

目的将学前儿童生理、认知、社会心理的发展规律、教育规律与具体物理环境视为一个系统,对发展心理视野下的学前儿童家具的设计心理学理论体系加以梳理和构建。方法分析儿童"发展"的内涵与系统性要求,梳理学前儿童家具设计与心理学的关系结构。结论指出了学前儿童家具5个方面的特殊性。在学前儿童家具领域,发展心理、学前教育和环境心理构成了设计心理学3个最为重要的理论基础,并分别加以论证。提出了发展心理视野下的设计心理学研究新思路,认为这一思路有助于在设计开展的前期,对设计的定位、目标功能的界定与描述、创意的发现等问题,在宏观层面为儿童家具设计者提供帮助。     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Science and scientific collaboration in South Africa: apartheid and after

Scientific collaboration is growing in its importance; more so in Asian and African countries. This paper examines the scenario of science and scientific collaboration in South Africa which had passed through the colonial and apartheid regimes before it became a democracy in 1994. South African science under distinct political periods moved through some difficult periods but it did not badly affect the progress and direction of South African science. Science and scientific collaboration continued to grow under its major political phases amidst serious challenges. Despite internal conflict and boycott by the international scientific community, South Africa could move onto a stable and steady path of growth in science and collaboration under apartheid which is being carried on in the new South Africa. Collaborative research is encouraged at various levels of knowledge production and in science. The importance science and scientific development is gaining in today’s South Africa is remarkable.     

A geometric approach to the construction of scientific impact indices

Two broad classes of scientific impact indices are proposed and their properties - both theoretical and practical — are discussed. These new classes were obtained as a geometric generalization of the well-known tools applied in scientometric, like Hirsch’s h-index, Woeginger’s w-index and the Kosmulski’s Maxprod. It is shown how to apply the suggested indices for estimation of the shape of the citation function or the total number of citations of an individual. Additionally, a new efficient and simple O(log n) algorithm for computing the h-index is given.