The effect of team consolidation on research collaboration and performance of scientists. Case study of Spanish university researchers in Geology

We analyse to what extent research collaboration and performance of individual scientists is influenced by the level of consolidation of the team they belong to. A case study of Spanish senior university researchers in Geology is performed. Methodology is based on the combination of a mail survey carried out among a defined set of researchers, and a bibliometric study of their scientific output. Results provide support for the hypothesis that consolidation of research teams would result in a greater facility to establish contacts and collaborations with colleagues, that could benefit all members of the team, fostering their participation in funded projects and favouring their potential to publish in international mainstream journals. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The contribution of star scientists to overall sex differences in research productivity

The state of the art on the issue of sex differences in research efficiency agrees in recognizing higher performances for males, however there are divergences in explaining the possible causes. One of the causes advanced is that there are sex differences in the availability of aptitude at the “high end”. By comparing sex differences in concentration and performance of Italian academic star scientists to the case in the population complement, this work aims to verify if star, or “high-end”, scientists play a preponderant role in determining higher performance among males. The study reveals the existence of a greater relative concentration of males among star scientists, as well as a performance gap between male and female star scientists that is greater than for the rest of the population. In the latter subpopulation the performance gap between the two sexes is seen as truly marginal.     

View from afar: ‘Visible’ productivity of scientists in the developing world

Much of what we know about science and technology in less developed countries comes from international databases such as bibliographies and citation, indices. However, it is not clear if researchers whose work appears in international databases are representative of scientists in the developing world as a whole, or whether they differ in terms of important social characteristics. A search of international databases on agriculture and natural resource management in Ghana, Kenya, and Kerala was used to compile a bibliography that could be compared with results from a face-to-face survey of researchers. Results indicate that, many of the characteristics of those who are internationally visible differ from the wider population of scientists. The implication is that the “view from afar” based exclusively on information drawn from international databases does not accurately reflect the population of researchers or domestic productivity in less developed countries.     

Ski accidents and legal responsibility: The Spanish case

This study classifies and analyzes Spanish court rulings on responsibility for ski accidents¹ occurring within ski resort boundaries, and refers to court cases to propose guidelines aimed at assisting skiers and ski resort managers. Six main trends emerged from the study: (a) Spanish courts resolved lawsuits arising from four clearly identifiable categories of ski accidents. (b) Although lawsuits involving ski accidents were heard in both civil and criminal procedures, civil actions were more extensively brought than criminal ones. (c) The majority of the sentences ending legal proceedings resulted in acquittals, although the cost to defendants in the minority of cases where convictions were made exceeded one million euros in total. (d) No single lawsuit, either civil or criminal, was settled in a Court of First Instance; the vast majority were heard in Provincial Courts and only a small proportion reached the High Court. (e) The defendant was the ski resort operator in the great majority of cases. (f) Court decisions were consistently grounded only on the presence or otherwise of the factors necessary to prove either damages as a result of negligence, according to civil law, or misdemeanor or criminal injuries, in criminal lawsuits.     

Selective linking from social platforms to university websites: a case study of the Spanish academic system

Mention indicators have frequently been used in Webometric studies because they provide a powerful tool for determining the degree of visibility and impact of web resources. Among mention indicators, hypertextual links were a central part of many studies until Yahoo! discontinued the ‘linkdomain’ command in 2011. Selective links constitute a variant of external links where both the source and target of the link can be selected. This paper intends to study the influence of social platforms (measured through the number of selective external links) on academic environments, in order to ascertain both the percentage that they constitute and whether some of them can be used as substitutes of total external links. For this purpose, 141 URLs belonging to 76 Spanish universities were compiled in 2010 (before Yahoo! stopped their link services), and the number of links from 13 selected social platforms to these universities were calculated. Results confirm a good correlation between total external links and links that come from social platforms, with the exception of some applications (such as Digg and Technorati). For those universities with a higher number of total external links, the high correlation is only maintained on Delicious and Wikipedia, which can be utilized as substitutes of total external links in the context analyzed. Notwithstanding, the global percentage of links from social platforms constitute only a small fraction of total links, although a positive trend is detected, especially in services such as Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook.     

Scientific productivity paradox: The case of China's S&T system

Summary In 1985 China began the reform of its Science & Technology (S&T) sector inherited from the planned economy. To disclose the impact of the drawn-out reform on the efficiency of the whole sector, we measure the scientific productivity of China's S&T institutes. The analysis is based on R&D input and output data at the country aggregate and provincial level. We utilize Polynomial Distributed Lag model to uncover the structure of the lag between R&D input and output. The findings reveal that the growth rate of scientific productivity of China's S&T institutes has been negative since the 1990s.     

Scientists' performance and consolidation of research teams in Biology and Biomedicine at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research

Summary Empirical evidence is given on how membership in a consolidated, well-established research team provides researchers with some competitive advantage as compared to their colleagues in non-consolidated teams. Data were obtained from a survey of researchers ascribed to the 'Biology and Biomedicine' area of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research, as well as from their curricula vitae. One quarter of the scientists work as members of teams in the process of consolidation. Our findings illustrate the importance, for the development and consolidation of research teams, of the availability of a minimum number of researchers with a permanent position and of a minimum number of support staff and non-staff personnel (mainly post-doctoral fellows). Consolidation of research teams has a clear influence on the more academic-oriented quantitative indicators of the scientific activity of individuals. Researchers belonging to consolidated teams perform quantitatively better than their colleagues in terms of the number of articles published in journals covered in the Journal Citation Reports, but not in terms of the impact of these publications. Consolidation favours publication, but not patenting, and it also has a positive effect on the academic prestige of scientists and on their capacity to train new researchers. It does not significantly foster participation in funded R&D projects, nor does it influence the establishment of international collaborations. Impact is influenced to a remarkable degree by seniority and professional background, and is significantly greater for young scientists who have spent time abroad at prestigious research laboratories.     

An insight into the importance of national university rankings in an international context: the case of the I-UGR rankings of Spanish universities

The great importance international rankings have achieved in the research policy arena warns against many threats consequence of the flaws and shortcomings these tools present. One of them has to do with the inability to accurately represent national university systems as their original purpose is only to rank world-class universities. Another one has to do with the lack of representativeness of universities’ disciplinary profiles as they usually provide a unique table. Although some rankings offer a great coverage and others offer league tables by fields, no international ranking does both. In order to surpass such limitation from a research policy viewpoint, this paper analyzes the possibility of using national rankings in order to complement international rankings. For this, we analyze the Spanish university system as a study case presenting the I-UGR Rankings for Spanish universities by fields and subfields. Then, we compare their results with those obtained by the Shanghai Ranking, the QS Ranking, the Leiden Ranking and the NTU Ranking, as they all have basic common grounds which allow such comparison. We conclude that it is advisable to use national rankings in order to complement international rankings, however we observe that this must be done with certain caution as they differ on the methodology employed as well as on the construction of the fields.     

Changes on publishing behavior in response to research policy guidelines. The case of the Spanish Research Council in the field of agronomy

The aim of this study is to identify changes in publishing behavior of Spanish scientists belonging to the Area of Agronomy of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), in response to scientific policy actions carried out in Spain. For this purpose, we analyze Spanish scientific output published in Spanish journals (covered by the ICYT database), as well as in international journals (covered by theScience Citation Index), during the period 1980–1995. Congress and conference publications, books and monographs, are also considered. The following changes in publication habits have been noticed: migration of works towards SCI journals and increased use of books and monographs as channel of publication of research works. A decreasing participation of Spanish researchers in scientific meetings has also been noticed, especially since 1989.     

The role of domestic journals in geographically-oriented disciplines: The case of Spanish journals on earth sciences

The role of domestic journals in disseminating research results in the filed of Earth Sciences in Spain is discussed. The analysis is based on bibliometric indicators of Spanish scientific production, as well as on the opinion of Spanish researchers in this field, obtained through a specially designed survey. A reasonable correspondence has been found between the results of bibliometric analysis and scientists' judgements. Results show that 69% of Spanish articles in Earth Sciences were published in Spanish journals during the period 1990–1994. Scientists use both national and international journals to communicate, their research results, although due to the nature of the discipline, geographically oriented and therefore mostly devoted to local problems, they use basically domestic journals. In terms of international visibility, although none of the Spanish journals in this field is covered by the SCI, most of them are covered by some of the most representative international databases in the field concerned. The study points out the importance of domestic journals in the field of Earth Sciences in Spain.     

The model of maximum productivity for research universities SciVal author ranks,productivity, university rankings,and their implications

Scientometrics - Aware of the growing importance of global rankings, universities aim to enhance their positions. However, the exact relation between research productivity and ranking positions is...     

Internal migration of scientists in Russia and the USA: the case of physicists

To assess endocrinologic and metabolic research productivity in East Asia (i.e., China, Japan, and South Korea) and correlations between socioeconomic factors and endocrinologic and metabolic research productivity. Articles (except editorials, conference abstracts, letters, news, and corrections) published in 134 endocrinology and metabolism journals in 2005–2014 were screened with the Web of Science database. Total and annual numbers of articles, study designs, impact factors, citations, and articles in high-impact-factor journals were determined for China, Japan, and South Korea. Annual numbers of articles were related to socioeconomic factors for each country. In 2005–2014, there were 144,660 articles from East Asia published in endocrinology and metabolism journals: 10,190, 9470, and 3124 from Japan, China, and South Korea, respectively. Japan published the most randomized controlled trials, followed by China and South Korea, respectively. China had the most articles in high-impact-factor journals, followed by Japan and South Korea, respectively. South Korea had the highest average impact factor and number of citations. During the period studied, annual numbers of articles from China and South Korea increased remarkably (P < 0.05) but remained stable for Japan. Annual numbers of articles from China and South Korea were positively correlated with gross domestic product and expenditure on health care (P < 0.05). The increase in endocrinology and metabolism articles during 2005–2014 in China and South Korea was associated with improved socioeconomic conditions. China has made progress in scientific publication in the past decade; however, there is still room for improvement.     

Unraveling the attitudes on entrepreneurial universities: The case of Croatian and Spanish universities

The objective of this paper is to present evidence that there are different types of supportive faculty members. We conducted a case study on a sample of Croatian and Spanish universities by using an already tested ENTRE-U scale for measuring the faculty members' attitudes. These two scenarios are quite different in terms of their innovation systems, economic context and university system. We tested and found no evidence of any statistically significant difference due to the country. These two facts suggest the possible existence of an isomorphic trajectory when implementing entrepreneurial universities regardless the context. University managers should be aware of the existence of three different types of supportive individuals. Each of these groups requires a certain program of human resource development. This shifts the debate to how entrepreneurial universities should manage the tensions arising from the need of some degree of specialization in any of the three roles of the faculty members, namely teaching, researching and transfer of the knowledge stemming from research results.     

A priori vs. a posteriori normalisation of citation indicators. The case of journal ranking

Two paradigmatic approaches to the normalisation of citation-impact measures are discussed. The results of the mathematical manipulation of standard indicators such as citation means, notably journal Impact Factors, (called a posteriori normalisation) are compared with citation measures obtained from fractional citation counting (called a priori normalisation). The distributions of two subfields of the life sciences and mathematics are chosen for the analysis. It is shown that both methods provide indicators that are useful tools for the comparative assessment of journal citation impact.     

Correction to: Internal migration of scientists in Russia and the USA: the case of physicists

Scientometrics - The original article was published without an acknowledgment section. The complete acknowledgment section is given below.     

Quantitative analysis of Spanish university scientific output in the area of Legal and Forensic Medicine: International exposure

We set out to analyse and quantify the papers published (for an international readership) by Spanish universities in the field of Legal and Forensic Medicine. For this, we used the MEDLINE data base, to analyse research articles in which a Spanish university teacher (whose sole employment was with a university, as registered by the Ministry of Education in July 2005, (n = 67), appeared as author or co-author in this field. The years covered are 1952 (First year that a Spanish author appears for an article on Legal and Forensic Medicine in this service) to July 2005. A total of 770 articles were counted; the productivity in this area was increasing substantially from the 1980’s onwards. English language scientific journals were the preferred channel of communication. Slightly more than 85% of the works can be classified into four themes, of which Genetics is the most prolific. The number of papers published in English journals represented 84% of the total and only 13% was published in Spanish journals. There was a close relationship between growth in the authority index and inter-institutional co-operation, which boosted the production of articles. When at least one of the authorship of a published paper was a Spanish university teacher, the research was led by a university in 62.4% of cases, and of this 85.6% were Spanish universities.     

The importance of language in global teams: A linguistic perspective

Abstract and Key Results