A propensity score approach in the impact evaluation on scientific production in Brazilian biodiversity research: the BIOTA Program

Evaluation has become a regular practice in the management of science, technology and innovation (ST&I) programs. Several methods have been developed to identify the results and impacts of programs of this kind. Most evaluations that adopt such an approach conclude that the interventions concerned, in this case ST&I programs, had a positive impact compared with the baseline, but do not control for any effects that might have improved the indicators even in the absence of intervention, such as improvements in the socio-economic context. The quasi-experimental approach therefore arises as an appropriate way to identify the real contributions of a given intervention. This paper describes and discusses the utilization of propensity score (PS) in quasi-experiments as a methodology to evaluate the impact on scientific production of research programs, presenting a case study of the BIOTA Program run by FAPESP, the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (Brazil). Fundamentals of quasi-experiments and causal inference are presented, stressing the need to control for biases due to lack of randomization, also a brief introduction to the PS estimation and weighting technique used to correct for observed bias. The application of the PS methodology is compared to the traditional multivariate analysis usually employed.     

A framework for modelling,control and supervision of poultry farming

Thermal comfort is a decisive factor in broiler chicken production, as it defines the relationship between food consumption and meat production. Temperature and humidity are major parameters for thermal balance. In spite of available automation technology, poultry farming is still dependent on an expert to observe the process and set up control parameters accordingly. Besides being inefficient, this is also uncomfortable and error-prone. This article proposes a framework for control, supervision, and decision-making in poultry farming. We initially set up a plant architecture that enables us to take advantage of emerging modern technologies, such as sensor networks, control theory, and remote monitoring, to handle temperature and humidity inside a poultry house. Then, we present the steps of modelling, synthesis, and implementation of a controller that observes events in the plant and commands the actuators in a minimally restrictive, controllable and non-blocking way, while complying with a set of operational requirements. Our final result provides a dual-channel web-based supervision system that shows the process status remotely for users and allows them to interfere with control, whenever convenient.     

The effect of academic inbreeding on scientific effectiveness

In academia, the term “inbreeding” refers to a situation wherein PhDs are employed in the very same institution that trained them during their doctoral studies. Academic inbreeding has a negative perception on the account that it damages both scientific effectiveness and productivity. In this article, the effect of inbreeding on scientific effectiveness is investigated through a case study. This problem is addressed by utilizing Hirsch index as a reliable metric of an academic’s scientific productivity. Utilizing the dataset, constructed with academic performance indicators of individuals from the Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering Departments, of the Turkish Technical Universities, we demonstrate that academic inbreeding has a negative impact on apparent scientific effectiveness through a negative binomial model. This model appears to be the most suitable one for the dataset which is a type of count data. We report chi-square statistics and likelihood ratio test for the parameter alpha. According to the chi-square statistics the model is significant as a whole. The incidence rate ratio for the variable “inbreeding” is estimated to be 0.11 and this ratio tells that, holding all the other factors constant, for the inbred faculty, the h-index is about 89% lower when compared to the non-inbred faculty. Furthermore, there exists negative and statistically significant correlation with an individual’s productivity and the percentage of inbred faculty members at the very same department. Excessive practice of inbreeding adversely affects the overall productivity. Decision makers are urged to limit this practice to a minimum in order to foster a vibrant research environment. Furthermore, it is also found that scientific productivity of an individual decreases towards the end of his scientific career.     

Increasing discrepancy between absolute and effective indexes of research output in a Brazilian academic department

We investigate possible effects from a strong encouragement for a large number of publications on the scientific production of a Brazilian cell biology department. An average increase in individual absolute production and a concomitant decrease in individual participation in each paper were detected by traditional bibliometric parameters, such as number of publications, citations, impact factors and h index, combined to their “effective” versions, in which co-authorship is taken into consideration. The observed situation, which might well represent a national trend, should be considered as a strong warning against current criteria of scientific evaluation heavily based on uncritical counting of publications.     

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.     

疫苗：我国海水鱼类养殖业向工业化转型的重要支撑

国际上水产养殖发达国家和地区的成功产业实践证实,接种疫苗在规模化、集约化的海水鱼类工业化进程中扮演着重要角色。疫苗的广泛应用为大幅度减少抗生素等化学药物的使用起到显著效应,为海水养殖业的健康和可持续发展发挥着关键性的产业支撑作用。中国作为世界上产量遥遥领先的水产养殖大国,以鱼类为代表的海水养殖业正在向工业化转型升级,而日益严重的病害和水产品安全问题正成为我国海水鱼类养殖业获得更大发展的制约性障碍之一。随着国家鲆鲽类产业技术体系为代表的海水鱼类疫苗的研究和商业化开发所取得的不断突破,我国海水鱼类养殖业的病害防治策略正在朝着以疫苗接种为核心的产业方向快速迈进。     

Measuring impacts of academic science on industrial research: A citation-based approach

Summary This paper introduces a citation-based metholodology to characterize and measure the magnitude and intensity of knowledge flows and knowledge spillovers from the public research sector to basic and strategic research in the private sector. We present results derived from an interrelated series of statistical analyses based on Private-to-Public Citations (PrPuCs) within reference lists of the research articles produced by industrial researchers during the years 1996-2003. The first part of the results provides an overview of PrPuC statistics worldwide for OECD countries. Overall, 70% to 80% of those references within corporate research papers relate to papers produced by public research organizations. When controlling for the size of their public sector research bases, Switzerland and the United States appear to be the major suppliers of 'citable' scientific knowledge for industrial research - the value of their Corporate Citation Intensity (CCI) exceeds their statistically expected value by more than 25%. A country's CCI performance turns out to be closely related to the citation impact of the entire domestic science base. The second section deals with an exploratory case study devoted to Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications, one of the corporate sector's major research areas. The findings include a list of the major citing and cited sources at the level of countries and organizations, as well as an analysis of PrPuCs as a “missing link”connection intra-science citations and citations received from corporate science-based patents.     

In the Beholder's eye: A possible reinterpretation of Velho's results on Brazilian agricultural research

Using the data recently presented byLea Velho on the citation rates in and on Brazilian agricultural journal articles, it is suggested that a given such paper is cited by the non-Brazilian scientific literature at the same rate as a paper written anywhere else in the world would be, and that is cited by other Brazilian papers very much more than a paper elsewhere would be. These conclusions are surprizing in view of the prevailing conventional wisdom, and are also exactly opposite to the conclusionsVelho herself derived from the same data.     

Creation of journal-based publication profiles of scientific institutions — A methodology for the interdisciplinary comparison of scientific research based on the J-factor

A form of normalisation is presented for the evaluation of citation data on multidisciplinary research. This method is based on the existing classification according to the publishing journals and not on the classification of output according to ISI subject categories. A publication profile is created for each institution to be investigated. This profile accounts for the weight of publications in a journal, represented by the number of publications as a proportion of the total output of the institution. In accordance with this weight, the citation rate of each journal is compared to a qualified relative indicator. The final result is a relative citation rate J, which is the relative perception of the performance of an institution accounting for its publication and citation habits and makes a transdisciplinary comparison possible.     

International versus national oriented Brazilian scientific journals. A scientometric analysis based on SciELO and JCR-ISI databases

Summary SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library on Line, www.scielo.bireme.br) is aprogram aimed at offering a core of Brazilian Scientific Journals in an open access mode at internet. This initiative has been followed by other Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian countries. Along with the development of the open accessed electronic library, a complementary scientometric/bibliometric database has been set up which permit to retrieve citation data of more than 40,000 articles. The robustness that this database has now achieved allows one to make important studies which were not possible before, using only the international Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database.     

落实科学发展观，切实加强核与辐射安全监管

深入学习落实科学发展观，要求我们进一步坚持实事求是原则，通过对核与辐射安全监管具体实践的深入调查研究，进一步研究探索核与辐射安全监管面临的主要问题，明确面临的主要任务和重点工作。     

Evaluation of recent scientific research output by a bibliometric method

Describes a new method of evaluation of scientific output by laboratories engaged in diverse fields of research. This method helps to evaluate those outputs which are quite recent and not amenable to citation analysis. For the purpose of analysis, impact factor of journals in which papers are published are considered. A method for normalisation of impact factor of journals has been described and, normalised impact factors have also been used for the purpose of analysis. It is found that in such analysis normalised impact factor tends to show better results compared to simple impact factor. The analysis helps us to generate numerous performance indicators such as average impact factor and normalised impact factor for each laboratory and the research complex such as CSIR as a whole; average impact factor and normalised impact factor for each scientist of a laboratory and the research complex; spectral distribution of papers falling within various ranges of impact factors and normalised impact factors. By comparing the performances over several years the trend of research activity of each laboratory can also be obtained.Paper presented at the International Conference on Science Indicators for Developing Countries, Paris, 15–19 October, 1990.     

A comparative study of patenting activity in U.S. and Brazilian scientific institutions

Patents generated from scientific research indicate academic involvement in technology development. Academic patenting activity is recent, even in developed countries. This study compares patenting activity of Brazilian and American universities. Brazilian universities had 29.5-fold increase in applications and 4.01-fold in grants (1990–2001), about twice the increase presented by American universities in this period. However, a significant fraction of Brazilian academic applications are abandoned due to the lack of specialized staff to help in writing and to shepherd the application through the patenting process in universities. The participation of research institutes in technological innovation is increasing steadily, even without financial incentives. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

On interdisciplinary collaborations in scientific coauthorship networks: the case of the Brazilian community

Scientometrics - Interdisciplinary collaborations have recently drawn the attention of scholars, since bridging academic relationships contributes to make scientific coauthorship networks stronger....     

Modeling nonspecific toxicity of organic compounds to the fathead minnow fish by means of chromatographic systems

The performance of chromatographic systems to mimic aquatic toxicity to the fathead minnow fish is evaluated taking into account the factors that contribute to the variance of biological-chromatographic correlations. These factors are the precision to measure the fathead minnow toxicity, the precision of the surrogate chromatographic system, and the error from the dissimilarity between the fathead minnow and chromatographic systems. The precisions are estimated through the characterization of the systems by the solvation parameter model. Several chromatographic systems as well as the common reference octanol-water partition system have been selected to test their ability to model the nonspecific toxicity to the fathead minnow by means of the proposed approach. Predictions and experimental tests show that the micellar electrokinetic chromatography system of sodium taurocholate and chromatographic measurements using an immobilized artificial membrane column provide the most precise estimations of this biopartitioning property. The octanol-water partition system, the conventional C18 high-performance liquid chromatography systems, and the micellar electrokinetic chromatography system of sodium dodecylsulfate show worse performances.     

On the formalization and reuse of scientific research

The reuse of scientific knowledge obtained from one investigation in another investigation is basic to the advance of science. Scientific investigations should therefore be recorded in ways that promote the reuse of the knowledge they generate. The use of logical formalisms to describe scientific knowledge has potential advantages in facilitating such reuse. Here, we propose a formal framework for using logical formalisms to promote reuse. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by using it in a worked example from biology: demonstrating cycles of investigation formalization [F] and reuse [R] to generate new knowledge. We first used logic to formally describe a Robot scientist investigation into yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) functional genomics [f₁]. With Robot scientists, unlike human scientists, the production of comprehensive metadata about their investigations is a natural by-product of the way they work. We then demonstrated how this formalism enabled the reuse of the research in investigating yeast phenotypes [r₁ = R(f₁)]. This investigation found that the removal of non-essential enzymes generally resulted in enhanced growth. The phenotype investigation was then formally described using the same logical formalism as the functional genomics investigation [f₂ = F(r₁)]. We then demonstrated how this formalism enabled the reuse of the phenotype investigation to investigate yeast systems-biology modelling [r₂ = R(f₂)]. This investigation found that yeast flux-balance analysis models fail to predict the observed changes in growth. Finally, the systems biology investigation was formalized for reuse in future investigations [f₃ = F(r₂)]. These cycles of reuse are a model for the general reuse of scientific knowledge.