Linguistic patterns of academic Web use in Western Europe

A survey of linguistic dimensions of Web site hosting and interlinking of the universities of sixteen European countries is described. The results show that English is the dominant language both for linking pages and for all pages. In a typical country approximately half the pages were in English and half in one or more national languages. Normalised interlinking patterns showed three trends: 1) international interlinking throughout Europe in English, and additionally in Swedish in Scandinavia; 2) linking between countries sharing a common language, and 3) countries extensively hosting international links in their own major languages. This provides evidence for the multilingual character of academic use of the Web in Western Europe, at least outside the UK and Eire. Evidence was found that Greece was significantly linguistically isolated from the rest of the EU but that outsiders Norway and Switzerland were not. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Chinese Multinational Enterprises in Europe and Africa: How do They Perceive Political Risk?

The concept of political risk has been defined from the perspective of developed-country multinational enterprises (MNEs) and has mainly focused on the political and regulatory perils in developing host countries. However, we have limited understanding of how emerging market firms perceive political risk in international marketplaces. Adopting a case study method, we examine how Chinese MNEs perceive political risk when operating in developed and developing host countries, specifically, the European Union (EU) and Africa. Our findings show that Chinese MNEs regard their home-country origin and industry-specific restrictions as major political risks in the EU. By contrast, they consider the volatile political environment in some African countries as the main source of political risk. In addition to the sharp contrast in the political and regulatory environment between the EU and African states, Chinese MNEs commonly encounter political risks in both markets due to their own behaviour.     

The growth of international collaboration in East European scholarly communities: a bibliometric analysis of journal articles published between 1989 and 2009

In the last two decades international collaboration in the Eastern European academic communities has strongly intensified. Scientists from developed countries within the European Union play a key role in stimulating the international collaboration of academics in this region. In addition, many of the research projects that engage East-European scholars are only possible in the framework of the large European programmes. The present study focuses on the role of EU and other developed nations as a partner of these countries and the analysis of the performance of collaborative research as reflected by the citation impact of internationally co-authored publications.     

Impact of national size on research collaboration

It is generally assumed that there is a negative correlation between national scientific size and amount of international research collaboration: The larger the size is of the national scientific arena, the lesser the amount of international research collaboration. In this study, the collaboration pattern of 49 universities is analysed and a comparison is made between the Northern European and American universities in our sample. It was found that the American universities have more national and less international collaboration than the European ones. However, for the European universities there are no impact of national size although the countries differ much in scientific size. This deviation from the general trend indicates that the above-mentioned explanation is too simple and that national scientific size does not correlate negatively with the amount of international research collaboration without exceptions.     

National research profiles in a changing Europe (1983–2003) An exploratory study of sectoral characteristics in the Triple Helix

Eight Eastern European countries joined the European Union in 2004. In this paper, bibliometric methods are used to analyse if the integration of these countries into the EU was accompanied by corresponding changes in their sectoral research profiles. In addition, the authors discuss changes in the national profiles of three accession countries and three EU15 member states during the last two decades. The results confirm that a process of European homogenisation and convergence is taking place, but also show that this process is slow and that member countries have maintained their individual peculiarities and preferences during this evolution.     

Maps of the academic web in the European Higher Education Area — an exploration of visual web indicators

This paper shows maps of the web presence of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) on the level of universities using hyperlinks and analyses the topology of the European academic network. Its purpose is to combine methods from Social Network Analysis (SNA) and cybermetric techniques in order to ask for tendencies of integration of the European universities visible in their web presence and the role of different universities in the process of the emergence of an European Research Area. We find as a main result that the European network is set up by the aggregation of well-defined national networks, whereby the German and British networks are dominant. The national networks are connected to each other through outstanding national universities in each country.     

Dermatological scientific production from European Union authors (1987–2000)

To evaluate the contribution to international dermatological literature made by authors from European Union (EU) countries. Using MedLine, a selection was made of articles by EU authors published between 1987 and 2000 in 32 dermatological journals, classified as such by the Institute for Scientific Information. Overall 19,225 documents were published by European authors in the selected dermatological journals from 1987 to 2000. The leading countries in terms of output were the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and France. The leading countries in number of articles after taking into account the gross domestic product and the population were Denmark, Finland and Sweden. The main journals were the British Journal of Dermatology(14.5% of articles from European authors), Contact Dermatitis (13.7%), Journal of Investigative Dermatology (7.3%),Journal of American Academy of Dermatology (6.4%), andActa Dermato-Venereologica (6.1%). The country with the highest output of papers by journal was the United Kingdom (11 journals) followed by Germany (9 journals), Italy (6 journals), France (3 journals), Spain (2 journals) and Sweden (1 journal). In conclusions: the scientific production of European Union research on dermatology is highest in northern countries. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A snapshot of EU publications in sleep research: A scientometric survey

A bibliometric analysis of the literature covering a one-year period (2003) was performed to evaluate the number of scientific publications on sleep and its distribution among the European Union countries. 912 articles appearing in Life Sciences and Clinical Medicine journals indexed in the Institute for Scientific Information databases were downloaded. These articles were authored by EU researchers; Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy rank at the top of the EU countries. The output distribution of the most productive EU countries are also presented and discussed. Despite the limitations of the methods used, the present results give an interesting snapshot of the EU publishing behavior in sleep research.     

Analysis of the medical and biological pain research literature in the European Union: A 2006 snapshot

This study analyzed 2443 papers published in 2006 by European Union authors on pain-related research. Five EU countries (the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France) each published > 200 papers while three countries (Cyprus, Malta and Estonia) published none; socio-economic indicators were related to each country’s productivity. The 2443 papers were published in 592 journals and Cephalalgia, Pain and European Journal of Pain were the most prolific. Publications were also analyzed for intra- versus inter-EU/non-EU collaborations and subdisciplines profiles in Clinical Medicine and the Life Sciences for the World, USA, EU and the top-four EU countries were compared.     

Visibility and impact of research in Psychiatry for North European countries in EU,US and world contexts

An earlier publication and citation analysis of Scandinavian clinical and social medicine 1988–96 reported that in particular Sweden and Denmark loose publication and citation world shares in many medical fields. In well fare systems such observations are alarming, and follow up studies and monitoring are thus carried out in selected medical fields. One such typical field is Psychiatry. It was decided to broaden the scope of analysis also to include the Netherlands with the European Union, USA and the world as comparative baselines. The period covered is 1981–98. This paper reports the findings and their implications on research policy. As in many other scientific fields the Psychiatric research output converges with respect to the US vs. EU in publication world shares. Both Denmark and Sweden suffer from stagnation in absolute publication numbers over the period and loose visibility dramatically in terms of world and EU shares. Finland and the Netherlands show steep growth rates. In terms of citations the picture is identical. Sweden declines dramatically its EU citation share from 13% to 6.5% during the period. The gap between EU and the US citation impact widens with USA on top. Among the analysed Northern EU countries only the Netherlands demonstrates an above-average impact. Other European players, like Belgium and Ireland, increasingly take part in Psychiatric research and show much higher citation impact than the Scandinavian well fare countries.     

A multi-level network analysis of web-citations among the world’s universities

This paper describes the results of a multi-level network analysis of web-citations among the 1,000 universities with the greatest presence on the world wide web. Using data from January 2011, it describes the web-citation network of the world’s universities and ascertains the antecedent factors that determine its structure. At the university level, the network is composed of ten groups, and the most central universities are mainly from the United States. The factors that predict the structure of the network are, whether or not the universities are in the same country, the language of instruction, the size and excellence of the institution (university ranking and the number of Nobel Prizes received), if they offer doctoral degrees, and the infrastructure of its country. Physical distance was not a determinant of the network’s structure. At the nation-state level, international connections among a nation’s universities are composed of a single cluster with the United States, United Kingdom and Germany at the center. The structure of the international network may be predicted by the countries’ overall hyperlink connections, international co-authorships, student flows and the number of Nobel Prizes won by its citizen.     

European Union associated university websites

Scientometrics - The web site is an important communication medium for universities in many countries. There are numerous reasons to expect that their characteristics will vary along national...     

A catalogue of dosemeters and dosimetric services within Europe--an update

The catalogue of dosemeters and dosimetric services within the European Union (EU) Member States and Switzerland that was issued by EURADOS in the year 2000 has been updated and extended with information on dosimetric services in the new EU Member States and Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine. The total number of dosimetric services in these European countries is now estimated to be about 200. The present catalogue is based on information collected from 90 European dosimetric services, among which 34 questionnaires from 32 services were obtained over the years 2001-2004 for the first time. This article assesses and updates the present use of personal dosemeters and the extent to which occupationally exposed persons in Europe are monitored with dosemeters able to measure the operational quantity-personal dose equivalent, H(P)(d). The perspective of joining EU by the new countries accelerated the implementation of the EU Basic Safety Standard Directive to their national regulations. As a result, all newly investigated services reported their ability to measure H(P)(d). The catalogue provides information on the dosemeters, dose calculation and background subtraction algorithms, calibration methods, energy and angular response, and performance.     

A new methodology for ranking scientific institutions

This paper examines policy-relevant effects of a yearly public ranking of individual researchers and their institutes in economics by means of their publication output in international top journals. In 1980, a grassroots ranking (‘Top 40’) of researchers in the Netherlands by means of their publications in international top journals started a competition among economists. The objective was to improve economics research in the Netherlands to an internationally competitive level. The ranking lists did stimulate output in prestigious international journals. Netherlands universities tended to perform well compared to universities elsewhere in the EU concerning volume of output in ISI source journals, but their citation impact was average. Limitations of ranking studies and of bibliometric monitoring in the field of economics are discussed.     

Cooperation patterns in science within Europe: the standpoint of small countries

This article is concerned with the cooperation patterns of science among European countries from the viewpoint of small countries. This is an issue, which empirical literature so far has overlooked, but which is still relevant for understanding the implications of integration processes in EU. We have replicated and expanded in sample, indicator and time dimensions the empirical analysis suggested by Frenken (Economic Systems Research 14(4):345–361, 2002) for assessing the homogeneity of cooperation patterns among European countries. We find that small states are less homogenously collaborating with all countries in the European research system and their intra-national research cooperation is also more fragmented. Our analysis reveals the outcomes of cooperation processes, and also highlights the factors such as research funding and research specialisation that can impact the results of the connectivity measurement. We also show that the results are sensitive to the size and measurement of the science system.     

International collaboration development in nanotechnology: a perspective of patent network analysis

International collaboration has played an important role in the development of nanotechnology. Patents encompass valuable technological information and collaborative efforts. Thus, this paper examines international collaboration development in nanotechnology using patent network analysis. The results show that the number of international collaboration nanotechnology patents has increased steadily and the proportion of them of total nanotechnology patents has likewise exhibited an upward trend. USA has always been the most influential participant with largest number of international collaboration patents. Asian countries/regions have shown an obvious increase in the number of international collaboration patents. By contrast, there have shown a generally decline in European countries. More and more countries have become actively engaged in international collaboration in nanotechnology with increasingly closer relationships. Two styles of international collaboration exit: while USA, Germany, UK and Japan collaborate with a wide range of countries/regions; Spain, Israel, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan are more selective in their collaboration partners. Though International collaboration has yet to find global significance in terms of patent citation impacts, it has nevertheless been incremental in improving patent citation impacts for most of the top 20 countries/regions since 2004.     

Publication patterns in Russia and the West compared

The institutional environment of science differs across countries. Its particularities have an impact on outcomes of scientific enterprise in terms of authorship patterns and patterns of citations. The paper analyzes scholarly papers produced by faculty and graduate students affiliated with six universities, two of them operate in the Russian institutional environment of science and four others??in the Western European and North American. The citation analysis of papers included in two major databases, eLibrary (Russian) and Web of Knowledge (international), shows that the lists of predictors for the number of references to a scholarly article significantly differ in the Western and Russian cases.     

Exploring the web visibility of world-class universities

With the rapid development of the Internet, there is a need for evaluating the public visibility of universities on the Internet (i.e., web visibility) in terms of its implications for university management, planning, and governance. The data were collected in December 2010 by using Yahoo, one of the most widely used search engines. Specifically, we gathered “Single Mention” data to measure the number of times that each university was mentioned on websites. In addition, we collected network-based data on Single Mentions. We obtained another data set based on the 2010 world university rankings by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). We employed several analytical methods for the analysis, including correlations, nonparametric tests (e.g., the Mann–Whitney test), and multidimensional scaling (MDS). The significant positive correlation between university rankings and web visibility suggests that indicators of web visibility can function as a proxy measure of conventional university rankings. Another distinctive implication can be drawn from the pattern of a disparity in web visibility stemming from the linguistic divide, that is, universities in English-speaking countries dominated the central positions in various network structures of web visibility, whereas those in non-English-speaking countries were located in the periphery of these structures. In this regard, further research linking web visibility to university management, planning, and governance is needed.     

Revealed comparative advantages in academic publishing of “old” and “new” European Union Member States 1998–2018

Scientometrics - The paper uses a variant of the Revealed Comparative Advantage index to examine comparative advantages of the European Union (EU) countries in 254 research areas and their...     

欧洲食品安全科技体系特点及其启示

通过对德国、丹麦和瑞典等欧洲食品安全科技体系的考察，以及与欧盟食品安全相关专家的交流，总结了欧洲食品安全科技的特点。欧盟成员国宪法规定，食品安全科研机构完全独立于食品安全管理机构，将整个食品安全科技活动纳入国家财政预算，保证了食品安全独立开展科学研究，以及研究结果的可靠性和公证性。欧盟各国根据国家食品生产与安全的特点和食品国际贸易的特殊性，制定了食品安全科技发展的优先领域。其最显著的特点是开展风险评估、建立食品与饲料快速预警系统、评价营养与健康的关系。欧盟各国的食品安全活动，尤其是风险评估，都非常重视与欧盟食品安全局、欧盟委员会及国际组织（包括FAO/WHO、OIE等）的广泛合作。考察团成员对欧洲食品安全研究动态、研究重点有了更多的了解，对中国制定食品安全战略规划、明确食品安全优先领域和应重点解决的科技问题、强化国家食品安全控制体系都有重要的参考价值。