Scientific collaboration of Cuban researchers working in Europe: understanding relations between origin and destination countries

The global network of scientific collaboration created by researchers opens new opportunities for developing countries to engage in the process of knowledge creation historically lead by institutions in the developed world. The results discussed here explore how Cubans working in European science and technology might contribute to extending the scientific collaboration of the country through their ties with Cuban institutions mainly in the academic sector. A bibliometric method was used to explore the pattern of collaboration of Cuban researchers in Europe using the institutional affiliation of authors and collaborators. The records of scientific publications of the defined sample were obtained from Scopus database for the period between 1995 and 2014. The network of collaboration was generated using the affiliations of Cuban authors in Europe and co-authors with worldwide affiliations shown in the records of publications of each Cuban researcher of the study. The analysis of aggregate values of the output of Cuban researchers in Europe (1995–2014) reveals that their collaboration with Cuba correlates moderately with their performance in Europe. However, when taking into account their time publishing in Europe, the collaboration with Cuba decreases the longer they remain away from home. The network of collaborating Cuban researchers in Europe comprises 991 different affiliations from 58 countries: 698 from Europe, 118 from North America, 96 from Latin America and 79 from the rest of the world. K-core analysis of centrality shows two Cuban universities sharing the central position with another 24 institutions worldwide of which 18 belong to higher education.     

Publication productivity and collaboration of researchers in South Africa: new empirical evidence

Apart from a few bibliometrical studies the South African scientific system is a scantly researched area and asking for more empirical evidence. This empirical study of academics and researchers (n = 204) from a selected province of South Africa examines the interrelationship between publication productivity and collaboration, and the sectoral differences between higher education institutions and research institutes. The study highlights the specific context of the scientific system in South Africa with its characteristics features of productivity and collaboration and shows how they are structurally facilitated and hindered. Being a prominent contributor to the development of science in Africa the study offers some interesting findings.     

The role of South African researchers in intercontinental collaboration

Scientometrics - The analysis presented here focuses on mapping, based on publication output, the scientific collaboration of African based researchers and the role of the South African research...     

Knowledge-based innovation and collaboration: a triple-helix approach in Saudi Arabia

This study analyzed the research productivity of Saudi academics using the triple-helix model. In the analysis, we combined domestic and international collaboration by three sectors—university, industry, and government—according to the model of the triple-helix. This approach produces better results than by simply including international collaboration as fourth sector. According to the analysis, research collaboration in Saudi Arabia which is measured by the triple-helix, was “-” uncertainty (negative T-value) while scientific productivity has been dramatically increasing since the late 2000s. The triple-helix collaboration does not quite differ between domestic collaboration and “domestic and international” collaborations. In our further analysis, we found that technological development was not based on scientific research in Saudi Arabia; rather, the technological development relies on prior technology (patent references). From that point, Saudi Arabia’s current long-term strategic plan to develop a scientific base for a knowledge-based industry is well aligned to the current contexts of Saudi Arabia.     

Scientific collaboration as a window and a door into North Korea

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is one of the world’s most secretive and reclusive states. In scientometrics, even the United Nations, which compiles data from every country of the world, has been able to do little beyond counting the few scientific papers made publicly available (UNESCO 2010). The world could benefit from knowing more about North Korean science, which is quite well developed—witness all the concern about their nuclear energy and rocket launches. Here an analysis is presented of the North Korean presence in the world’s scientific literature, and of the possibilities for collaboration which offers a mechanism for positive development for their citizens and also for their neighbours.     

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.     

Gender gaps in international research collaboration: a bibliometric approach

This paper addresses gender differences in international research collaboration measured through international co-authorship. The study is based on a dataset consisting of 5600 Norwegian researchers and their publication output during a 3-year period (44,000 publications). Two different indicators are calculated. First, the share of researchers that have been involved in international collaboration as measured by co-authorship, and second, the share of their publications with international co-authorship. The study shows that the field of research is by far the most important factor influencing the propensity to collaborate internationally. There are large differences from humanities on the one hand, where international collaboration in terms of co-authorship is less common, to the natural sciences on the other, where such collaboration is very frequent. On an overall level, we find distinct gender differences in international research collaboration in Norway in the favour of men. However, men and women are not equally distributed across fields and there are relatively more female researchers in fields where the international collaboration rates generally are lower. When the data are analysed by scientific field, academic position, and publication productivity of the researchers, the gender differences in the propensity to collaborate with colleagues in other countries are minor only, and not statistically significant. Concerning gender inequality in science, the main challenge seems to be the lower productivity level of female researchers, which obviously hinders their academic career development. Differences in international collaboration are unlikely to be an important factor in this respect, at least not in the Norwegian research context analysed in this study.

     

Scientific collaboration at the regional level: The case of a small country

Despite the various studies on international collaboration, we still know very little about other forms of scientific collaboration. The present paper looks at collaboration at a national levle, more particularly between regions in a country. It is found that regional collaboration is very limited. In fact, international collaboration is three times more important than regional collaboration. This can be explained by the fact that the competition center in science is international rather than national.     

Scientific Quality Index: a composite size-independent metric compared with h-index for 480 medical researchers

Scientometrics - The goal of this study was to measure the scientific output of 480 authors—leaders in 12 selected branches of medicine, using the Hirsch index (the h-index) and a newly...     

Scientific knowledge in South Africa: information trends,patterns and collaboration

Scientometrics - South Africa has made remarkable progress in science and technology. In the production of scientific information it is a leading country not only in sub-Saharan Africa but also in...     

Elastic constants identification of symmetric angle-ply laminates via a two-level optimization approach

A two-level optimization method for elastic constants identification of symmetric angle-ply laminates is presented. Measured axial and lateral strains of two symmetric angle-ply laminates with different fiber angles are used in the proposed method to identify four elastic constants of the composite laminates. In the first-level optimization process, the theoretically and experimentally predicted axial and lateral strains of a [(45°/−45°)₂]_s laminate are used to construct the error function which is a measure of the differences between the experimental and theoretical predictions of the axial and lateral strains. The identification of the material constants is then formulated as a constrained minimization problem in which the best estimates of the shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio of the laminate are determined by making the error function a global minimum. The problem of this level of optimization is then solved using a multi-start global minimization algorithm. In the second-level optimization process, the shear modulus and Poisson’s ratio determined in the previous level of optimization are kept constant while the Young’s moduli of the second angle-ply laminate with fiber angles other than 45° are identified using the same minimization technique that has been used in the previous level. The accuracy of the proposed method are studied by means of a number of numerical examples on the material constants identification of symmetric angle-ply laminates made of different composite materials. Finally, static tensile tests of [(45°/−45°)₂]_s and [(30°/−30°)₂]_s laminates made of Gr/ep composite material are performed to measure the strains of the laminates. The experimental data are then used to identify the elastic constants of the laminates. The excellent results obtained in the experimental investigation have demonstrated the feasibility and applications of the proposed method.     

Evaluating scholars based on their academic collaboration activities: two indices, the RC-index and the CC-index, for quantifying collaboration activities of researchers and scientific communities

Although there are many studies for quantifying the academic performance of researchers, such as measuring the scientific performance based on the number of publications, there are no studies about quantifying the collaboration activities of researchers. This study addresses this shortcoming. Based on three measures, namely the collaboration network structure of researchers, the number of collaborations with other researchers, and the productivity index of co-authors, two new indices, the RC-Index and CC-Index, are proposed for quantifying the collaboration activities of researchers and scientific communities. After applying these indices on a data set generated from publication lists of five schools of information systems, this study concludes with a discussion of the shortcomings and advantages of these indices.     

变革型领导对科研人员创新绩效的影响

目的本研究旨在探讨变革型领导对科研人员创新绩效的影响机制。方法采用变革型领导、心理授权以及科研人员创新问卷,在科研团队中收集了128个团队,共333对上下级配对调查问卷数据。结果通过多层线性回归分析,结果表明心理授权对变革型领导与科研人员创新之间的关系具有中介作用。结论变革型领导可以通过增加科研人员的心理授权来影响科研人员创新。     

Scientific collaboration in Brazilian researches: a comparative study in the information science,mathematics and dentistry fields

This study attempts to describe, in a comparative way, scientific collaboration and co-authoring activities and understanding of Brazilian researchers of productivity level 1 at the National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq). In order to do so, a questionnaire was sent to the researchers of productivity level 1 at CNPq in the Mathematics, Dentistry and Information Science fields, with questions about scientific collaboration and co-authoring activities. We analyzed the scientific production of the researchers who answered the questionnaire and we have identified that 78% of the participants consider that scientific collaboration and co-authorship are different activities, and the potential and usual number of research collaborators is between 2 and 3 in Mathematics and Information Science, and between 5 and 6 collaborators in Dentistry. Differences among fields were pointed out by identifying main collaborators and co-authors. The reasons for collaborating vary according to the nature of the research, however, the percentages are high in these three areas: “training of researchers and students”, “desire to increase their own experience through the experience of others” and “increased productivity.” From the analysis of the scientific production declared in their Lattes Curriculum, we have found that the average number of authors per publication in the field of Information Science is 2.2 authors, in Mathematics is 2.8 authors per publication, and in Dentistry the average is 5.3 authors per publication. We have concluded that scientific collaboration and co-authorship are terms assigned to different activities for the analyzed fields.     

Scientific collaboration in biotechnology: the case of the northeast region in Brazil

The objective of this study is to investigate scientific collaboration in biotechnology in the northeast region of Brazil. The data presented refer to the 1980–2010 period and were collected from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development platform database known as Lattes (a compilation of curricula vitae of researchers in Brazil, including a record of their scientific production) and from the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science database. Our analysis involved the use of bibliometric indicators, specifically co-authorship between or among institutions, as well as the evaluation of social networks and multivariate statistics. Overall, we verified that collaboration takes place mostly at the intra-institutional level. At intra-regional scale, we could observe the development of four clusters in relation to the collaboration dynamics, in which geographic proximity stands out as grouping factor. At the interregional level, the partnerships revolve around institutions that count with laboratory infrastructure and research tradition in the field of biotechnology. Regarding international collaboration, it remains connected to national scientific cooperation programs.     

Conceptual design of industrial systems: an approach to support collaboration

The design of any industrial system is a complex problem where many domains are involved. Each domain developed its own way of modeling based on a mono disciplinary perception. This leads to a communication problem and consequently to expectations on the formulated solution that do not correspond with the real solution. To enable the communication between domains and to preserve the match between intentions, expectations and reality of the system to be designed, a combination of a soft and hard systems approach is used to define a Conceptual model for Industrial Systems (CIS). The use of the model during design is illustrated for the technical domain, but has proven to be applicable for the organization and information domain as well.     

Highly cited researchers: a moving target

Scientometrics - Highly cited researchers are a category of researchers defined by scientometric rules relating to counts of citations to their scholarly articles. The designation often refers to...