Is there a fallacy of composition of external R&D? An empirical assessment of the impact of quasi-internal,external and offshored R&D

Empirical studies at the individual firm level often find a positive impact of external R&D on innovation. However, external R&D sourcing might produce an impoverishment of the local knowledge base and thus damage innovation production at the regional level. To address this possible fallacy of composition, we first review the various forms of ‘external’ R&D. We then use the French R&D survey to assess the impact of four different ways of transacting or collaborating on R&D: onshore affiliate external R&D, offshore affiliate external R&D, onshore non-affiliate and offshore non-affiliate external R&D. We then estimate knowledge production functions on the 94 metropolitan French NUTS3 regions observed between 1997 and 2008, differentiating internal R&D and these categories of external R&D. We obtain that the impact of onshore non-affiliate external R&D is significantly negative. The other external R&D categories are non-significant and we do not detect any complementarity between internal and external R&D.     

Internationalization of academic journals: Is there still a gap between social and natural sciences?

In this study we compare internationalization of academic journals in six fields of science. Internationalization was investigated through journals’ concentration on publishing papers from particular countries, relationship between the geographical distributions of editors and authors, and relationship between language of publication and the geographical distribution of papers. Having analyzed more than 1,000 journals we can state that social sciences literature in the fields considered is still nationally and linguistically fragmented more than natural sciences literature, but in some cases the gap is not so big. One of the consequences concerning research output assessment is that usefulness of international databases having national disparity in coverage is still limited in social sciences.     

Measurement of driver calibration and the impact of feedback on drivers’ estimates of performance

Recent studies focused on driver calibration show that drivers are often miscalibrated, either over confident or under confident, and the magnitude of this miscalibration changes under different conditions. Previous work has demonstrated behavioral and performance benefits of feedback, yet these studies have not explicitly examined the issue of calibration. The objective of this study was to examine driver calibration, i.e., the degree to which drivers are accurately aware of their performance, and determine whether feedback alters driver calibration. Twenty-four drivers completed a series of driving tasks (pace clocks, traffic light, speed maintenance, and traffic cones) on a test track. Drivers drove three different blocks around the test track: (1) baseline block, where no participants received feedback; (2) feedback block, where half of the participants received performance feedback while the other half received no feedback; (3) a no feedback block, where no participants received feedback. Results indicated that across two different calibration measures, drivers were sufficiently calibrated to the pace clocks, traffic light, and traffic cone tasks. Drivers were not accurately aware of their performance regarding speed maintenance, though receiving feedback on this task improved calibration. Proper and accurate measurements of driver calibration are needed before designing performance feedback to improve calibration as these feedback systems may not always yield the intended results.     

The relation between the quality of research,researchers’ experience,and their academic environment

This article investigates to what extent researchers’ experience and the solidity of their academic environment influence the quality of their research. The hypotheses are derived from the assumptions that experience matters for quality research and that there are great intellectual synergies to be obtained from interacting with many colleagues who are active researchers. All articles published between 2000 and 2006 in five leading transportation journals are included in the analysis, and their research quality is measured by the number of times each article is cited by August 2016. Controlling for other factors influencing citations, such as article age and the number of references, the most important finding is that both experience and academic environment matter for performing quality research. When the authors’ experience, measured by the number of previous publications, increases by 1% from its average level, their published articles are expected to garner 0.31% more citations. Moreover, when the research activity at the unit to which the authors are affiliated, measured by the unit’s total number of publications, increases by 1% from its average level, the number of times their articles are cited will increase by 0.19%. This signals that, relatively speaking, the researchers’ own experience and merits mean more than the academic environment with regard to producing high-quality research. The above results enable us to discuss how researchers’ experience can compensate for working in less active academic communities holding research quality constant.     

Researchers’ risk-smoothing publication strategies: Is productivity the enemy of impact?

Scientometrics - In the quest for balance between research productivity and impact, researchers in science and engineering are often encouraged to adopt a play-it-safe research and publication...     

What is the relationship between research funding and citation-based performance? A comparative analysis between critical disciplines

Scientometrics - The goal of the study here is to model and analyze the relation between research funding and citation-based performance in science to predict the diffusion of new scientific...     

An analysis of the connection between researchers’ productivity and their co-authors’ past attributions,including the importance in collaboration networks

Although many studies have analyzed the “synchronic” correlation of properties between authors and their co-authors, the “diachronic” correlation of properties, i.e., the correlation between their subsequent and precedent activity, has not yet been sufficiently studied using quantitative methods. This study pays attention not only to productivity but also the importance in the collaboration network as a measure of the researcher’s activity, and clarifies whether there is any connection between (i) the researcher’s activity subsequent to a collaboration and (ii) the collaborator’s precedent activity, aiming at deriving knowledge about the diachronic effect of collaborators.     

How does scientific success relate to individual and organizational characteristics? A scientometric study of psychology researchers in the German-speaking countries

Purpose: To provide up-to-date bibliometric reference data describing the output and success of psychology researchers in the German-speaking countries, including lifetime publication and citation numbers, and to investigate associations of bibliometric measures with academic status and gender as well as the department characteristics of size and quota of senior researchers. Method Queried literature databases using an extensive online register of academic psychologists in the German-speaking countries, obtaining valid data for 85 % (N = 1742) of the population of interest. Findings Skewed distributions for publications and citations; maximum number of German-language (=native) publications much higher than maximum number of English-language publications; relatively large part of population publishing almost exclusively in German; publication count predictable by academic status, gender, department size, and quota of senior researchers; citation count predictable by publication count, status, department size, and quota of senior researchers; department characteristics interact with individual characteristics to produce specific conditions under which publication count and citation count are higher or lower than expected: combination of female gender, small department size and large quota of senior researchers is associated with particularly increased publication count; female gender and large department size are associated with decreased publication count; high publication count, large department size and low quota of senior researchers are associated with increased citation count; low publication count and large quota of senior researchers are associated with decreased citation count. Conclusions Reference values for scientific output provided in this study provide an anchor for monitoring and international comparison; despite considerable noise in data, we show that interactions of individual and organizational characteristics are relevant for scientific success and should be investigated further, e.g. by adopting various measures of organizational diversity and tracing a population longitudinally.     

Oxidation-induced microstructural changes of a polymer-derived Nextel™ 610 ceramic composite and impact on the mechanical performance

This study analyses the effects of heat treatments in oxidative atmosphere on the mechanical and microstructural properties of a fiber-reinforced weak interface composite (UMOX?) which is composed of a mullite-SiOC matrix and Nextel? 610 fibers with fugitive coatings. Composites of different porosity grades, depending on the polymer infiltration and pyrolysis cycle, are exposed to 1000 and 1200 °C for 50 h. The exposure provokes the formation of silica, which leads to matrix densification and the formation of silica bridges at the fiber–matrix interface, resulting in an increased interfacial bonding strength. Consequently, the fracture toughness and the flexural strength are significantly reduced. The study confirms that SiOC-based materials are suitable for an application at high temperatures in oxygen-rich atmospheres up to 1000 °C. It is, however, important to consider the microstructural changes and thereby induced decrease of the overall mechanical performance during a high-temperature use.     

A hierarchical approach to analyzing knowledge integration between two fields—a case study on medical informatics and computer science

As a driver in modern science, interdisciplinary research has attracted a lot of attention. Major foci are laid on exploring the relations of multiple involved disciplines as well as the knowledge structure in interdisciplinary field. However, there is still a lack of decomposing the knowledge structure of interdisciplinary field to investigate how knowledge from relevant disciplines is integrated in the field. This study proposes an approach to investigating knowledge integration relationships between two research fields from a perspective of hierarchy. Medical Informatics (MI) and its most relevant field of Computer Science (CS) are chosen in the case study. This study decomposed each keyword network of the two fields into four layers by using the K-core method, then quantified the knowledge integration relationships between different layers of the two fields together. The results present that the MI basic layer shows the strongest knowledge integration with CS, followed by the middle layer, with the detail layer the weakest. And all MI layers have the greatest breadth and strength of knowledge integration with the CS middle layer, followed by the CS marginal layer and detail layer, but with the CS basic layer the weakest. A time series analysis shows that the integration of new CS knowledge into MI is a gradual process without explosive growth and the path of knowledge integration between the two fields were identified. The proposed approach could be applied to deeply understanding the integration of one discipline knowledge by an interdisciplinary field.

     

An evolutionary analysis of the innovation policy domain: Is there a paradigm shift?

Scientometrics - Researchers focus on understanding the nature of ecosystems and societies as well as explaining how paradigms change. These efforts are presented and disseminated through scholarly...     

A neural network-based methodology of quantifying the association between the design variables and the users’ performances

User performance is highly correlated with design variables of a system. Such association can be described as display–control relationship. In this study, a neural network-based methodology is proposed to identify and quantify the association among design variables (inputs) and to compute their relative influences (RIs) on the two performance measures (outputs) of user response time and response accuracy, using artificial neural network, generalised regression neural network, support vector regression (SVR), multiple linear regression and response surface model. Based on the results of the comparison, it is found that neural network-based methods are more reliable than SVR-based methods in computing the RI of design variables. As a result of our analysis, the best option for optimising each of the measures is suggested. Some useful observations about the design of man–machine systems are also presented, discussed and visualised. In the study of man–machine systems, quantitative methods are seldom adopted for examining the mappings between various displays and controls under a variety of operating conditions. The major contribution of this study is to provide some insights into the usefulness of quantitative methods in evaluating man–machine design in terms of display–control compatibility and to extract explanatory information from renowned black box systems such as neural networks.     

How to investigate the historical roots and evolution of research fields in China? A case study on iMetrics using RootCite

Scientometrics - This paper aimed to provide an approach to investigate the historical roots and evolution of research fields in China by extending the reference spectroscopy year spectroscopy...     

Effects of kanban withdrawal policies and other factors on the performance of JIT systems—a simulation study

This paper presents the results of a simulation study of a just–in–time (JIT) production control system and its performance under different operational conditions. In particular, the effects of two different kanban withdrawal policies on such performance measures as throughput rate, station utilizations and total work in process levels are investigated. Also, simulation experiments are carried out to determine the effects of processing time variability, number of different types of kanbans allowed at each station and production line length on the mentioned performance measures of JIT production control method. The simulation experiments were carried out for production lines in which processing times of stations were assumed to follow gamma and Erlang distributions.     

Investigating different types of research collaboration and citation impact: a case study of Harvard University’s publications

This study aims to investigate the influence of different patterns of collaboration on the citation impact of Harvard University’s publications. Those documents published by researchers affiliated with Harvard University in WoS from 2000–2009, constituted the population of the research which was counted for 124,937 records. Based on the results, only 12% of Harvard publications were single author publications. Different patterns of collaboration were investigated in different subject fields. In all 22 examined fields, the number of co-authored publications is much higher than single author publications. In fact, more than 60% of all publications in each field are multi-author publications. Also, the normalized citation per paper for co-authored publications is higher than that of single author publications in all fields. In addition, the largest number of publications in all 22 fields were also published through inter-institutional collaboration and were as a result of collaboration among domestic researchers and not international ones. In general, the results of the study showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the number of authors and the number of citations in Harvard publications. In addition, publications with more number of institutions have received more number of citations, whereas publications with more number of foreign collaborators were not much highly cited.