Brazilian scientists' publications and mainstream science: Some policy implications

Against the common view that scientific output in peripheral and non-English speaking countries is largely underrepresented inScience Citation Index (SCI), this study shows that academic Brazilian scientists in chemistry and electrical engineering tend to publish in good international journals covered bySCI. The rate of citations they earn, however, looks rather poor. The reasons why Brazilian scientists publish in foreign journals are analysed and the policy of encouraging scientists to publish their best contributions abroad is questioned.     

The publication productivity of international agricultural research centers

The literature output over one year, 1990, of 22 International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs), including 16 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers, was examined. Total output of the IARCs was 1,694 items, of which on average 42% were primary (refereed) literature; 24% were reports and monographs; 18% proceedings papers; 8% book chapters; and 8% semitechnical/popular literature. Total literature production from the IARCs is similar in magnitude to that of FAO. There were 1,230 internationally recruited scientists in the IARCs, with an average annual productivity of 1.38 items per scientist, including 0.58 primary literature articles. There was no correlation between scientific productivity and numbers of scientists in a center. However, there was a significant positive correlation between scientific productivity and center budget, indicating higher efficiency in the larger centers. In view of the nature of IARCs' literature output, we argue that IARCs should reject the trend for scientists to be assessed only by citations in core primary literature; and that IARCs should set up an international standard, perhaps based on the present proportionality of types of their literature output in order to assess IARC individual scientists and the health of their institutional output.     

Natural laws and strategic trade-offs: implications for research and policy advising

Contrary to what previous research has asserted, our investigation contends that there is no evidence refuting Wickham Skinner’s strategic trade-offs model. We arrive at this conclusion by analysing Skinner’s words in light of Karl Popper’s falsification theory of scientific knowledge. It is observed that the trade-offs model’s core principle has natural law-like characteristics, something which makes it deterministic. We also note that past research attempting to refute Skinner’s ideas have been, by and large, inadequate and erroneous. This is because those studies have been performed mainly on the basis of probabilistic hypotheses, methodologies and estimates. These hypotheses, methods and estimates are, strictly speaking, open-ended and imprecise, and, as such, void of empirical content. This means that there is an inconsistency between the nature of Skinner’s model and the characteristics of the theories, methodologies and evidence that have been proposed as more complete alternatives (e.g. cumulative capabilities model). Therefore, Popperian epistemology would deem as inadequate any attempt to refute a deterministic law/theory/statement by means of probabilistic models, methodologies and evidence. We also elaborate on a new approach and rationale to test the strategic trade-offs model’s main assertions. It combines deterministic and probabilistic approaches to analyse the data and interpret the results. Implications for research and policy advising are also offered.     

The burden of injuries in the Philippines: implications for national research policy

Injuries cause 10% of the mortality and 15% of disability worldwide. However, there is a paucity of data on injuries in the developing world where two-thirds of all injury deaths occur. This is the first published report characterizing the overall problem of injuries in the Philippines, a developing country in southeast Asia. This report defines the burden of injuries in the Philippines and identifies priority areas for the national health research agenda. A systematic review of 35 years of published and unpublished data on injuries in the Philippines (1960–1995) was conducted. Injury fatality rates increased by 196% from 14.3 per 100,000 in 1960 to 42.3 per 100,000 in 1995, and one in 11 deaths in the Philippines are due to injuries. Intentional injuries account for 48% of all injury deaths and motor vehicle crashes for 15%. For 15–44 year old males, injuries account for 42% of all deaths, 67% of which are intentional. The proportion of all deaths attributable to intentional injuries has increased by 925% and that of motor vehicle crashes by 600% from 1960 to 1995. Improvements in injury surveillance and documentation of non-fatal injury outcomes are needed. Research into risk factors and potential interventions for the prevention of intentional injuries should be a priority in the Philippines.     

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...     

Homeland security literature in relation to terrorism publications: The source and the response

Summary The literature on Terrorism and National Security (NS), and Homeland Security (HS) presents two sides of a coin: one side demonstrates the problematic nature of terrorism and asks for solutions; the other side tries to find a response and solutions to the problem. It was expected that the NS literature would emanate from the same source material as the HS publications. Analysis of the literature of terrorism, homeland security, and national security on Science Citation Index (SCI) has shown that the material on terrorism and NS stems from the same scientific sources; that is, the Social Sciences. In contrast, the HS scientific literature originates in the exact sciences, engineering, and life and environmental sources. The three kinds of literature have grown remarkably in recent years; however, cross-section search strategy between terrorism and HS studies yields small retrieval sets. This means that few articles both present the problem and propose possible solutions. Currently, HS is on one side of the scholarly arena, and NS and terrorism literature on the other side; they advance mostly in lines parallel to each other, but as the researcher moves from observing the core scientific literature toward the more general material, this state of affairs changes. Another analysis of a multimedia database, WorldCatalog (which indexes mostly books, but also videos and computer materials, both scientific and popular) demonstrates a different trend; the same publications deal with both terrorism and HS counter-terrorism, and suggested solutions.     

Brittleness of materials: implications for composites and a relation to impact strength

Brittleness of materials—whether it occurs naturally or with aging—affects significantly performance and manifests itself in various properties. In the past, brittleness was defined qualitatively, but now a definition of brittleness for viscoelastic materials exists, enabling analysis of all types of polymer-based materials. The quantity brittleness, B, has been evaluated for neat thermoplastics, but here composites and metal alloys are also assessed. The physical significance of brittleness is connected to the dimensional stability of materials. The connections of brittleness to tensile elongation and to fatigue are explored while its relationship to surface properties—specifically wear by repetitive scratching—is examined more closely. The economic impact of wear results in monetary loss associated with failure and reduced service life of plastic parts—thus its connection to brittleness finds use across a broad spectrum of industrial applications which utilize plastics for manufacturing, processing, etc. We also demonstrate a correspondence between impact strength (Charpy or Izod) and brittleness of polymers. It is shown that the assumption hardness is equivalent to brittleness is inaccurate; this fact has important implications for interpreting the results of mechanical testing of viscoelastic materials.     

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.     

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.     

Composite scientometric indicators for evaluating publications of research institutes

Summary Both quantitative and qualitative evaluation of publications of research teams or institutes requires several scientometric indicators. In this paper a new composite indicator is introduced for the assessment of publications of research institutes working in different fields of science. The composite indicator consists of three part-indicators (Journal Paper Productivity, Relative Publication Strategy and Relative Paper Citedness). The different methods of calculating the composite index have only a slight effect on the value, whereas application of diverse weights for the individual part-indicators results in significant changes.     

Relationship on research publications and productivity-export volumes for natural rubber

This article investigated contributions of natural rubber (NR) research through research articles and patents in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded) and SCOPUS databases and related the results with productivity-export volumes during 2002–2006. 1,771 research papers and 5,686 patents on “natural rubber” were retrieved from the databases. The results revealed that the top five countries produced the NR raw material by the order of productivity volumes were Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and China whereas those produced the synthetic rubber were the United States, China, Japan, Russia and Germany. Among the top three countries for NR production, Malaysia became a NR producer for its own use, whereas Thailand and Indonesia still had higher export volumes. Research articles and patents on natural rubber had contribution shares of about 20.9% and 47.5% of all rubber publications, respectively. The patents on natural rubber were found to increase with time while the research articles remained unchanged. Journal of Applied Polymer Science was the most preferable for publishing the research papers on rubbers. Eight countries ranked in the top countries for contributing the research articles on natural rubber were the United States, India, Malaysia, France, Germany, Thailand, Japan and China, similar country distributions being also found for research articles on synthetic styrene-butadiene rubber except for Thailand and Malaysia. No linear relationship between the productivity-export volume and research publication number was observed, but the results implied that the growth rate for commercializing the rubber was greater than that for research and development of natural rubber. Most NR research works focused on neat NR, which was contributed the most by USA while NR blend and NR composite papers were mainly published by Indian researchers.     

A typology for drinking driving offenders: Methods for classification and policy implications

Comprehensive arrest histories were obtained for 353 DUI offenders who were referred to a probation and rehabilitation demonstration program. The average number of total offenses was 7.9, with 89% of all tracked offenders having more than one offense. Approximately 63% of all recorded offenses were other types of offenses besides DUI. The overall arrest history profile of the group suggested that many DUI offenders are habitual violators of other laws as well. To identify distinctive arrest profiles within the referral sample, a Q mode factor analysis followed by a discriminant function analysis was used to classify offenders into profile subgroups. Five distinctive subgroups emerged. A “low offense” group was characterized by the lowest average number of overall arrests and also contained all offenders with no arrest besides the index DUI arrest. A “mixed” group had a higher average number of total arrests than the “low offense” group and diverse types of offenses. A young “traffic” group was distinguished by many hazardous moving violations other than DUI. Two smaller and older groups—a “public drunkenness” group and a “license” group—had the highest average number of arrests including DUI, public drunkenness, license violations, equipment violations, disturbance arrests and assault arrests. These subgroups were found to differ on demographic variables and drinker status variables. The “public drunkenness” group was found to have the highest accident rate. Groups were compared to groups found in other cluster analyses. Also, treatment implications were discussed. It was suggested that treatment programs focusing exclusively on changing alcohol consumption behavior are not likely to reduce accident risk for some of the offender groups. For example, it was suggested that effective intervention for the “traffic” group should target driving behavior, whether drunk or sober, rather than focus exclusively on consumption behavior. Other alternatives are also discussed.     

On the relationship of funding and research publications

The impact of 17 year period of funding in schistosomiasis research on publication outcome was examined. Two productivity and three quality indicators were used to compare the output from the entire population of schistosomiasis in this period with those associated with 351 funded researchers. A substantially higher productivity and citation impact were found. This consistency of direction points to the positive effect of a period of sustained funding commitment.Dedicated to the memory of Michael J. MoravcsikThis publication is supported in part by a NIH grant RO1-LM-04680 from the National Library of Medicine.     

Environmental science research in India: An analysis of publications

Investigates the trends in environmental science research in India with regard to its various branches, channels of communication used, authorship pattern of the papers, institution-wise output, rank of journals, extent of collaboration and scholarship of papers basing the entries noticed in theParyavaran Abstracts. Major areas of interest of Indian environmentalists are given and prolific investigators have been listed. Journals used by Indian workers for publication of their work are studied. Subject areas with number of papers, number of authors, and average authorship are tabulated.     

A decade of database research publications: a look inside

The database management technology has played a vital role in the advancements of the information technology field. Database researchers are one of the key players and main sources to the growth of the database systems. They are playing a foundational role in creating the technological infrastructure from which database advancements evolve. We analyze the database research publications of nine top-tier and prestigious database research venues. In particular, we study the publications of four major core database technology conferences (SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, EDBT), two main theoretical database conferences (PODS, ICDT) and three database journals (TODS, VLDB Journal, TKDE) over a period of 10 years (2001–2010). Our analysis considers only regular papers as we do not include short papers, demo papers, posters, tutorials or panels into our statistics. In this study, we report the list of the authors with the highest number of publications for each conference/journal separately and in combined. We analyze the preference of the database research community towards publishing their work in prestigious conferences or major database journals. We report about the most successful co-authorship relationships in the database research community in the last decade. Finally, we analyze the growth in the number of research publications and the size of the research community in the last decade.     

Bibliometric analysis of the Czech research publications from 1994 to 2005

We have compared bibliometric data of Czech research papers generated from 1994 to 2005 with papers from six other EU countries: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Finland, Ireland and Greece. The Czech Republic ranked the fifth in number of papers per thousand inhabitants and the sixth in number of citations/paper. Relatively the most cited were Czech papers from fields Engineering and Mathematics ranking the third, and Computer Science, Environment/Ecology and Molecular Biology ranking the fourth among 7 EU countries. Our analysis indicates that Czech research is lagging behind the leading EU countries, but its output is proportional to the R&D expenses.