Relationship among research collaboration, number of documents and number of citations: a case study in Spanish computer science production in 2000–2009

This paper analyzes the relationship among research collaboration, number of documents and number of citations of computer science research activity. It analyzes the number of documents and citations and how they vary by number of authors. They are also analyzed (according to author set cardinality) under different circumstances, that is, when documents are written in different types of collaboration, when documents are published in different document types, when documents are published in different computer science subdisciplines, and, finally, when documents are published by journals with different impact factor quartiles. To investigate the above relationships, this paper analyzes the publications listed in the Web of Science and produced by active Spanish university professors between 2000 and 2009, working in the computer science field. Analyzing all documents, we show that the highest percentage of documents are published by three authors, whereas single-authored documents account for the lowest percentage. By number of citations, there is no positive association between the author cardinality and citation impact. Statistical tests show that documents written by two authors receive more citations per document and year than documents published by more authors. In contrast, results do not show statistically significant differences between documents published by two authors and one author. The research findings suggest that international collaboration results on average in publications with higher citation rates than national and institutional collaborations. We also find differences regarding citation rates between journals and conferences, across different computer science subdisciplines and journal quartiles as expected. Finally, our impression is that the collaborative level (number of authors per document) will increase in the coming years, and documents published by three or four authors will be the trend in computer science literature.     

Science-Technology Linkages in an Emerging Research Platform: The Case of Combinatorial Chemistry and Biology

This article focuses on issues concerning science and technology relationships posed by the emergence of a new drug discovery method, namely, combinatorial chemistry and biology. We assess the scientific content of combinatorial chemistry and biology using citations in patents to scientific journals and compare this research platform with biotechnology. We also identify the institutional affiliation of all the authors of the cited papers, which leads us to an analysis of knowledge spillovers between the main participants in the research network. Finally, we examine the relevance of localisation in the process of knowledge exchange with regard to EU countries and the US. The result of the analysis provides evidence to support the view that the inventive capacity of a country is dependent upon the basic research which is carried out, especially in universities and public research centres located in the inventor's country.     

How cross-disciplinary is bionanotechnology? Explorations in the specialty of molecular motors

Nanotechnology has been presented in the policy discourse as an intrinsically interdisciplinary field, requiring collaborations among researchers with different backgrounds, and specific funding schemes supporting knowledge-integration activities. Early bibliometric studies supported this interdisciplinary vision (Meyer & Persson, 1998), but recent results suggest that nanotechnology is (yet) a mixed bag with various mono-disciplinary subfields (Schummer, 2004). We have reexamined the issue at the research project level, carrying out five case studies in molecular motors, a specialty of bionanotechnology. Relying both in data from interviews and bibliometric indicators, we have developed a multidimensional analysis (Sanz-Menéndez et al., 2001) in order to explore the extent and types of cross-disciplinary practices in each project. We have found that there is a consistent high degree of cross-disciplinarity in the cognitive practices of research (i.e., use of references and instrumentalities) but a more erratic and narrower degree in the social dimensions (i.e., affiliation and researchers’ background). This suggests that cross-disciplinarity is an eminently epistemic characteristic and that bibliometric indicators based on citations and references capture more accurately the generation of cross-disciplinary knowledge than approaches tracking co-authors’ disciplinary affiliations. In the light of these findings we raise the question whether policies focusing on formal collaborations between laboratories are the most appropriate to facilitate cross-disciplinary knowledge acquisition and generation.     

Interdisciplinarity and insularity in the diffusion of knowledge: an analysis of disciplinary boundaries between philosophy of science and the sciences

Two fundamentally different perspectives on knowledge diffusion dominate debates about academic disciplines. On the one hand, critics of disciplinary research and education have argued that disciplines are isolated silos, within which specialists pursue inward-looking and increasingly narrow research agendas. On the other hand, critics of the silo argument have demonstrated that researchers constantly import and export ideas across disciplinary boundaries. These perspectives have different implications for how knowledge diffuses, how intellectuals gain and lose status within their disciplines, and how intellectual reputations evolve within and across disciplines. We argue that highly general claims about the nature of disciplinary boundaries are counterproductive, and that research on the nature of specific disciplinary boundaries is more useful. To that end, this paper uses a novel publication and citation network dataset and statistical models of citation networks to test hypotheses about the boundaries between philosophy of science and 11 disciplinary clusters. Specifically, we test hypotheses about whether engaging with and being cited by scientific communities outside philosophy of science has an impact on one’s position within philosophy of science. Our results suggest that philosophers of science produce interdisciplinary scholarship, but they tend not to cite work by other philosophers when it is published in journals outside of their discipline. Furthermore, net of other factors, receiving citations from other disciplines has no meaningful impact—positive or negative—on citations within philosophy of science. We conclude by considering this evidence for simultaneous interdisciplinarity and insularity in terms of scientific trading theory and other work on disciplinary boundaries and communication.     

Significant difference of dependence upon scientific knowledge among different technologies

Summary The authors have constructed an original database of the full text of the Japanese Patent Gazette published since 1994. The database includes not only the front page but also the body text of more than 880,000 granted Japanese patents. By reading the full texts of all 1,500 patent samples, we found that some inventors cite many academic papers in addition to earlier patents in the body texts of their Japanese patents. Using manually extracted academic paper citations and patent citations as “right” answers, we fine-tuned a search algorithm that automatically retrieves cited scientific papers and patents from the entire texts of all the Japanese patents in the database. An academic paper citation in a patent text indicates that the inventor used scientific knowledge in the cited paper when he/she invented the idea codified in the citing patent. The degree of science linkage, as measured by the number of research papers cited in patent documents, is particularly strong in biotechnology. Among other types of technology, those related to photographic-sensitized material, cryptography, optical computing, and speech recognition also show strong science linkage. This suggests that the degree of dependence on scientific knowledge differs from technology to technology and therefore, different ways of university-industry collaboration are necessary for different technology fields.     

Scientific linkage of science research and technology development: a case of genetic engineering research

In this study, the author tried to demonstrate the linkage between science research and technology development through non-patent citation analysis to reveal that the important knowledge resources from science research had significant impact on technology development. Genetic engineering technology was the field examined in this study. From the references listed in the patents, it was observed that the technology development in genetic engineering was influenced heavily by the research done by public sector. Over 90% of the citations were non-patent literatures, and the majority of non-patent citations were journal articles. Citing preferences, such as country preference and institute preference were observed from the data included in this study.     

Technological Relevance of Science: An Assessment of Citation Linkages between Patents and Research Papers

Patent citations to the research literature offer a way for identifying and comparing contributions of scientific and technical knowledge to technological development. This case study applies this approach through a series of analyses of citations to Dutch research papers listed on Dutch-invented and foreign patents granted in the US during the years 1987–1996.First, we examined the general validity and utility of these data as input for quantitative analyses of science-technology interactions. The findings provide new empirical evidence in support of the general view that these citations reflect genuine links between science and technology. The results of the various analyses reveal several important features of industrially relevant Dutch science: (1) the international scientific impact of research papers that are also highly cited by patents, (2) the marked rise in citations to Dutch papers on foreign-invented patents; (3) the large share of author-inventor self-citations in Dutch-invented patents; (4) the growing relevance of the life sciences, (5) an increase in the importance of scientific co-operation. We also find significant differences between industrial sectors as well as major contributions of large science-based multinational enterprises, such as Philips, in domestic science-technology linkages.The paper concludes by discussing general benefits and limitations of this bibliometric approach for macro-level analysis of science bases in advanced industrialised countries like the Netherlands.     

Low awareness of the link between science and innovation affects public policies in developing countries: The Chilean case

Developing countries share disbelief about the benefits of the endogenous production of science as a tool for economical growth. Hence, public policies to strengthen science and technology and promote the culture of innovation are, in general, weak and sometimes incoherent. Patenting has become not only an icon to protect discoveries which can yield profits and enable socio-economical growth but also a potent informetric tool to assess innovation and certainly, since the seminal work of Narin, to understand the multidimensional interactions between science, technology and innovation. In this article we examine the impact of Chilean research articles on world technology as viewed by the link between articles produced in Chile and US patents. Our results show that from 1987 to 2003, 509 US patents had 562 citations to 273 articles produced at least, by one author working in a Chilean institution. US, not Chilean companies are the holders of patents citing Chilean produced articles. The research articles covered many disciplines but a clear concentration occurred in the biomedical field. Additionally, chemistry was also well cited. Our results confirm that in Chile a non-patenting culture which involves researchers and institutions still prevails. Hence, public policies need to be designed and implemented to foster scientific production and innovation in order to advance progress in the current knowledge-economy-driven society which sustains competitiveness in the globalized world.     

Testing bibliometric indicators by their prediction of scientists promotions

We have developed a method to obtain robust quantitative bibliometric indicators for several thousand scientists. This allows us to study the dependence of bibliometric indicators (such as number of publications, number of citations, Hirsch index...) on the age, position, etc. of CNRS scientists. Our data suggests that the normalized h-index (h divided by the career length) is not constant for scientists with the same productivity but different ages. We also compare the predictions of several bibliometric indicators on the promotions of about 600 CNRS researchers. Contrary to previous publications, our study encompasses most disciplines, and shows that no single indicator is the best predictor for all disciplines. Overall, however, the Hirsch index h provides the least bad correlations, followed by the number of papers published. It is important to realize however that even h is able to recover only half of the actual promotions. The number of citations or the mean number of citations per paper are definitely not good predictors of promotion. Due to space constraints, this paper is a short version of a more detailed article. [JENSEN & AL., 2008B]     

Developing technology in the vicinity of science: An examination of the relationship between science intensity (of patents) and technological productivity within the field of biotechnology

In this paper we investigate — at a country level — the relationship between the science intensity of patents and technological productivity, taking into account differences in terms of scientific productivity. The number of non patent references in patents is considered as an approximation of the science intensity of technology whereas a country’s technological and scientific performance is measured in terms of productivity (i.e., number of patents and publications per capita). We use USPTO patent-data pertaining to biotechnology for 20 countries covering the time period 1992–1999. Our findings reveal mutual positive relationships between scientific and technological productivity for the respective countries involved. At the same time technological productivity is associated positively with the science intensity of patients. These results are confirmed when introducing time effects. These observations corroborate the construct validity of science intensity as a distinctive indicator and suggest its usefulness for assessing science and technology dynamics.     

Competition for funding as an indicator of research competitiveness

Summary Research quality is the cornerstone of modern science, it is used in the understanding of reputational differences among scientific and academic institutions. Traditionally, scientific activity is measured by a set of indicators and well-established bibliometric techniques based on the number of academic papers published in top-ranked journals or on the number of citations of these papers. These indicators are usually critical in measuring differences in research performance, both at individual and at scientific institutional levels. In this paper, we introduce an alternative and complementary set of indicators based on the results of competition for research funding, that aims to enlarge the framework in which research performance has traditionally been measured. Theoretical support for this paper is found in the role that the search for funding plays in the researchers’ credibility cycle as well as in peer review, the basic instrument for the allocation of public R&D funds. Our method analyses the outcomes of the researchers’ struggle for funding, using data from research proposal applications and awards, as the unit of observation, and aggregating them by research institutions to rank them in relative scales of research competitiveness.     

The mathematical relation between the impact factor and the uncitedness factor

In a general framework, given a set of articles and their received citations (time periods of publication or citation are not important here) one can define the impact factor (IF) as the total number of received citations divided by the total number of publications (articles). The uncitedness factor (UF) is defined as the fraction of the articles that received no citations. It is intuitively clear that IF should be a decreasing function of UF. This is confirmed by the results in [van Leeuwen & Moed, 2005] but all the given examples show a typical shape, seldom seen in informetrics: a horizontal S-shape (first convex then concave). Adopting a simple model for the publication-citation relation, we prove this horizontal S-shape in this paper, showing that such a general functional relationship can be generally explained.     

Bibliometric analysis of biotechnology research in Pakistan

In this study we present an analysis of the research trends in Pakistan in the field of biotechnology for the period 1980–2011. Starting with just 15 publications in 1980 with a negligible annual growth rate for the initial 15 years, the number of publications reached 3,273 in 2011 with an annual growth rate of 22 % for the last 15 years. This growth in publications is studied through factors such as Relative Growth Rate and Doubling Time. A comparison of organizations actively engaged in research in biotechnology is made through factors such as their total publications, total citations, and average citations per paper and indices that determine the quality of publications like h-index, g-index, hg-index and p-index. University of Karachi shows the highest number of publications (2,698), while National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering with fewer publications shows the highest average citation per paper (8.07). Agha Khan University however, shows the highest h, g, hg and p indices.     

The citation gap between printed and instrumental output of technological research: The case of the electron microscope

The merits and shortcomings of bibliometric evaluation techniques are well known; the reliability of the techniques varies according to the discipline. For technology the reliability is small. The electron microscope is a clear case of extreme mismatch between the number of citations received and the impact of the instrument in a wide area of science. The instrument is comparable to a scientific publication in the way in which it is used and referred to in the literature. In this paper we estimate the size of the citation gap, i.e. the number of citations an author misses because the results of his research are made public in the form of an instrument instead of via an article in a journal.     

Research and partnership in studies of sugarcane using molecular markers: a scientometric approach

In this study, we applied scientometric methods and performed a science mapping analysis to investigate and describe the application of molecular markers in genetic studies for sugarcane. We analyzed 344 papers retrieved from Web of Science Thomson Reuters database, considering the time frame from 1974 to 2017, allowing the analysis of the produced scientific knowledge, temporal trends and research partnership in the subject. To our knowledge, a scientometric evaluation of the use of molecular markers for genetic studies in sugarcane has not yet been reported. Our main finding shows that dominant markers are more commonly used than co-dominant markers, and that when co-dominant markers are applied, most of the retrieved information is underexploited, due to lack of knowledge for the use of dosage information. Our results also show that despite the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies, for sugarcane only 13.33% of the studies reported the use of more than 1000 markers. We also found connectivity among researchers and institutions publishing worldwide, but only few authors represented a bridge between different research groups. Thus, the international research partnership is still low. Our findings show dominance in country publication. Six countries (India, Brazil, USA, Australia, China, and France) were responsible for 80% of the published papers and received most citations. We suggest special reinforcement in building international partnership, since collaborations occur mostly within countries. International collaboration can improve research performance and eventually lead to a better exploitation and more development of knowledge for sugarcane.

     

Applying research collaboration as a new way of measuring research performance in Korean universities

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of applying research collaboration as a new way of measuring research performance in Korean universities. In this study, we examine whether the activeness of research collaboration between university–government–industry can also enact as a way to measure the research performance aside from the typical indicators such as number of published articles or citations resulted from universities. Also this study focuses to analyze whether such performance differs according to universities’ characteristics and disciplines. For the analysis of the study, we gathered publication and citation data (2000–2009) of 46 Korean universities that are actively involved in research and analyzed their science citation index-expanded and the social sciences citation index (SSCI) data. Notable findings include (1) Several low ranked universities have shown rapid improvement with their research performance despite the rigid hierarchical characteristic of Korean higher education system, (2) Although universities in Korea are involved in various kinds of collaboration methods, it was evident that such dynamic is not necessarily reflected in existing hierarchy structure, (3) Academic relations with education oriented universities and research oriented universities have different dynamics and patterns in research collaboration, (4) In terms of the collaborative publication rate, private universities collaborate more actively amongst university sector whereas public universities collaborate more with government and industry. (5) Due to the nature of the social science subject itself, it was found that the research in SSCI is inevitably more based on the researcher’s independence, hence more international collaboration was found amongst researchers in natural science and engineering subjects.     

Role of interdisciplinarity in computer sciences: quantification,impact and life trajectory

The tremendous advances in computer science in the last few decades have provided the platform to address and solve complex problems using interdisciplinary research. In this paper, we investigate how the extent of interdisciplinarity in computer science domain (which is further divided into 24 research fields) has changed over the last 50 years. To this end, we collect a massive bibliographic dataset with rich metadata information. We start with quantifying interdisciplinarity of a field in terms of the diversity of topics and citations. We then analyze the effect of interdisciplinary research on the scientific impact of individual fields and observe that highly disciplinary and highly interdisciplinary papers in general have a low scientific impact; remarkably those that are able to strike a balance between the two extremes eventually land up having the highest impact. Further, we study the reciprocity among fields through citation interactions and notice that links from one field to related and citation-intensive fields (fields producing large number of citations) are reciprocated heavily. A systematic analysis of the citation interactions reveals the life trajectory of a research field, which generally undergoes three phases—a growing phase, a matured phase and an interdisciplinary phase. The combination of metrics and empirical observations presented here provides general benchmarks for future studies of interdisciplinary research activities in other domains of science.     

Using ego-network analyses to examine journal citations: a comparative study of public administration,political science,and business management

This study demonstrates how social network analysis, specifically ego-network analysis, can be used as a methodology to investigate the degrees of the isolation, insularity, and prestige of academic journals in a particular field in relation to other fields. Using the example of journals in public administration for illustrative purposes, we analyze the network of connections between journals in this field and the ones in two related fields: political science and business/management. Earlier studies found that the research in public administration was largely isolated from the three disciplines that were its foundations: law, management, and political science. Using ego-network analyses and ratio calculations from the Web of Science citation data, we found that the top journals of public administration were indeed relatively isolated in the years 2005, 2010, and 2015. Of the public administration journals, Public Administration Review (PAR) and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART) were increasingly more recognized (less isolated and became more prestigious) among the journals in other fields. This methodology can be applied to the journals in other fields to study the relations between fields, particularly the relative academic prestige of the fields, in terms of journal citations.

     

Validation study: Patent citations as indicators of science and foreign dependence

The purpose of this study was to test whether the distribution of citations from issued U.S. patents could be used to measure the science dependence and the foreign dependence of patented technologies. The citations considered were front page references from U.S. patents citing to U.S. and foreign patents, to research papers and to other publications. Rankings based on the number of citations per patent to the scientific literature were compared to peer rankings of the science dependence of the technologies. Rankings based on the number of citations to foreign origin material, including foreign origin U.S. patents, foreign patents and foreign priority statements, were compared to peer rankings of the foreign dependence of the technological areas.For the analysis a total of 24 technologies were chosen. Twelve of these were judged in advance to be science dependent and twelve were judged in advance to be foreign dependent. A peer group of 19 high level R&D managers was asked to rank all 24 technologies in terms of both their science and their foreign dependence. The bibliometric rankings of the technologies, based on their citations, were then compared with the peer rankings of the technologies.Overall, a high degree of agreement was found between the experts' opinion as to the science and foreign dependence of the areas and the corresponding bibliometric rankings. For example, the eight technologies judged most science dependent by experts averaged 0.92 cites per patent to scientific journal papers, while the eight technologies judged least science dependent had only 0.05 references per patent to journal papers. Similarly, large and statistically significant differences were found in the number of cites to foreign origin material for the eight technologies judged most foreign dependent by the experts when compared with the eight technologies judged least foreign dependent by the experts. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that patent citation data can be used in technological indicators development, and in technological policy analysis. They imply that citation-based location and analysis of science and foreign dependent technologies is a valid research tool when applied to the U.S. patent system.     

The highly cited papers of professors as an indicator of a research group's scientific performance

In the first part of the paper the citations in 1986 and 1987 of 3938 papers published in 1985 by 324 research groups in the faculties of science and of medicine of eight universities in the Netherlands are analyzed. Because of the large statistical spread of (1) the number of short-term citations of papers cited equally frequently over a long period, and (2) the number of citations over a long period of papers by the same author, short-term citation scores appear to be an unreliable indicator of a research group's contribution to science. In the second part of the paper an alternative approach is presented, based on a subdivision of the 3938 papers in papers authored by professors with 0–2, 3–8, or 9 highly cited papers (HCPs, 25 citations) to their name. Very large citation score differences were found for the three categories. For example: for papers first-authored by a professor, the average number of citations per person in 1986 and 1987 for 1985 papers was for 161 professors with 9 HCPs a factor 14 larger than for 575 professors with only 0–2 HCPs; for papers co-authored by professors, this factor was 6.6. These findings justify the conclusion that the number of HCPs scored by the professors (and other senior scientists) during their entire career is a much more reliable predictor of the performance of a research group than the number of short-term citations of the articles published by the group within a short period. A research group's contribution to science is primarily determined by the individual scientifictalents of its members.