Scientometric analysis of a scientific school

A procedure including scientometric methods combined with other techniques is described. This allows to define the membership and structure of a scientific school and to trace the dynamics of its development. Formation and evolution of a scientific school is presented as a purposeful scientific-information process involving changes in the nature and dynamics of the types of information links.     

Scientometric analysis of nature, the journal

300,000 reports inNature during the 1869–1998 period have been reviewed. The distribution of articles by subfields was determined. Additional sources of information were several journals on analytical chemistry and papers at the Pittsburg conference series during 1950–1999. The methodology used is based on the analysis of the average age of employed instruments. The agreement between scientometric data from various sources of information depends on the development stage of the field of science. Calculated and measured scientometric curves were compared. One of the key trends in the development of basic sciences, namely, the increase of articles dealing with instrumental analytical chemistry, inNature is revealed. The research was supported by the Russian Foundation of Basic Research (Project No. 97-06-80163a) and State Target Programme "Integracia" (Project No. 670).     

Scientometric analysis of geostatistics using multivariate methods

Multivariate methods were successfully employed in a comprehensive scientometric analysis of geostatistics research, and the publications data for this research came from the Science Citation Index and spanned the period from 1967 to 2005. Hierarchical cluster analysis (CA) was used in publication patterns based on different types of variables. A backward discriminant analysis (DA) with appropriate statistical tests was then conducted to confirm CA results and evaluate the variations of various patterns. For authorship pattern, the 50 most productive authors were classified by CA into 4 groups representing different levels, and DA produced 92.0% correct assignment with high reliability. The discriminant parameters were mean impact factor (MIF), annual citations per publication (ACPP), and the number of publications by the first author, for country/region pattern, CA divided the top 50 most productive countries/regions into 4 groups with 95.9% correct assignments, and the discriminant parameters were MIF, ACCP, and independent publication (IP); for institute pattern, 3 groups were identified from the top 50 most productive institutes with nearly 88.0% correct assignment, and the discriminant parameters were MIF, ACCP, IP, and international collaborative publication; last, for journal pattern, the top 50 most productive journals were classified into 3 groups with nearly 98.0% correct assignment, and its discriminant parameters were total citations, impact factor and ACCP. Moreover, we also analyzed general patterns for publication document type, language, subject category, and publication growth.     

A national-scale cross-time analysis of university research performance

Research policies in the more developed nations are ever more oriented towards the introduction of productivity incentives and competition mechanisms intended to increase efficiency in research institutions. Assessments of the effects of these policy interventions on public research activity often neglect the normal, inherent variation in the performance of research institutions over time. In this work, we propose a cross-time bibliometric analysis of research performance by all Italian universities in two consecutive periods (2001–2003 and 2004–2008) not affected by national policy interventions. Findings show that productivity and impact increased at the level of individual scientists. At the level of university, significant variation in the rank was observed.     

Scientometric analysis of the major Iranian medical universities

Nowadays, scientometrics has become an important field of study to monitor the progresses in scientific performance of a research group, a department, a university etc. A number of scientometrical studies have been done about Iranian scientific outcome in recent years. But there is no comparison between major Iranian medical universities. In this study, by using Scopus as search engine, the scientific outcomes of the Iran University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, and Tehran University of Medical Sciences have been compared with each other. These universities were compared by the number of published articles per year, number of citations received per year, number of citations received per year per article, total H-indices, top ten authors, and top ten journals. The results of this study show that the order of the studied universities in research performance is as follow: Tehran > Shiraz = Shahid Beheshti > Isfahan = Iran > Tabriz = Mashhad universities of medical sciences. In addition, the data of Tehran University of Medical Sciences as the top medical university of Iran was compared with some of top medical universities around the world.     

Scientometric analysis of attendance at International Scientific Meetings

International scientific meetings represent important channels for communicating research results. Based on data from more than 500 proceedings of scientific meetings, organization and participation patterns of several countries (or geopolitical regions) were analyzed. Some new indicators were derived and proved to be useful in characterizing the scientific activity of the countries. Particularly, the “open” and “closed” nature of national scientific communities, as well as “attraction” and “repulsion” between certain pairs of countries could be revealed by this method.     

What are the key elements of a sustainable university?

Nowadays, the principles of sustainable development are becoming increasingly important and universities are acting as agents in promoting these principles within society. In the future, universities will inevitably play crucial role in propagating these principles. This paper highlights important documents and discusses definitions of the term education for sustainable development. Elements, based on continuous feedback loop (Deming spiral) are discussed, in order to incorporate sustainability principles into university activities. The University of Maribor has been used as a case study to test the effectiveness of the proposed integration of sustainable development principles.     

Scientometric indicators as a means to assess the performance of state supported universities in developing countries: The Chilean case

Chilean universities are responsible for more than 80% of the science produced in the country, which in the last 20 years with some periods of great difficulties, has grown more than 600%. One of the underlying problems of the governments of developing countries to delineate suitable strategies to allocate efficiently the few funds available, has been the absence of clarity to distinguish the individuals and centers committed with competitive scientific research. As a consequence, the state funds, which in part are scarce because the region invest to little in science, do not always reach to the right people and to the right places, amplifying the already existing problems for the good scientists that resist to emigrate. To evaluate the corresponding situation in Chile, and to follow the results of substantial actions to support the scientific activity in the country, we have examined the performance of state financed universities.     

Scientometric analysis of the topical content of scientific research and its particularities

A new method for quantitative evaluation of the topical content of scientific research is proposed. The method is based on the analysis of the number and topic of publications in different fields. A mathematical model, describing the connection between level and width of research, between topic renewal and concentration of research is developed. Furthermore, coefficients characterizing various aspects of research are introduced. The theoretical conclusions fit well the factual data obtained from the INIS system. A nucleus of terms defining the most developed directions of research is found in each case. The analysis indicates that the growth rate of publications cannot serve as a reliable criterion of research topicality.     

Scientometric assessment of engineering in Malaysians universities

There is a world trend for Research Performance Evaluation (RPE), developing of new scientometric indices and examining of their application. Consequently, concerns and anomalies arise about the convergent validity and reliability of these indices for the decision making purposes. This is especially prevalent in the region/countries/disciplines having less or emerging trends of publishing and getting citations. The present scientometric study addresses usefulness of the most noted metric h-index along with other selected indicators in the field of Engineering in Malaysians universities. To understand, the role of this metric if any, we examined the functional correlation, predictive value and its relationship with national assessment criteria. Results report that this indicator has good potential to work alone, ease in use and robust to get a broader snapshot for positioning and performance evaluation. However, for better decision making purpose, this can be used for broader contextual peer assessment process along with other indicators. Its validity is further checked with two size independent institutional h-indices: h_G–H and h_m.     

Scientometric portraits of recognized scientists: a structured literature review

Scientometrics - The purpose of scientometric portraits is to recognize prominent scholars, inspire others, and guide those who dedicate their lives to scientific advancement. This study presents...     

Symmetry analysis of relative motions in a double-wall carbon nanotube

The binding energy of a double-wall carbon nanotube (DWNT) is theoretically studied as a function of the relative longitudinal shift and relative rotation of the component single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). It is shown that the binding energy is an oscillating function of the relative shift and rotation, with the oscillation period depending on the relations between symmetry elements of the SWNTs. The results of numerical calculations of the binding energy of DWNTs, performed in the approximation of weak van der Waals interlayer interaction, are presented.     

Scientometric analysis of the development of nuclear physics during the last 50 years

A new method for author groups formation and decay processes is proposed. With the help of a special mathematical model time distribution of authors and their publications was established and group productivity, composition and stability, annual change of the total number of short-term and long-term authors, their renovation etc. as well as the time dependence of these quantities was determined. Particularities of activity of authors working in nuclear physics are investigated. It is shown that the most rapid development in this field took place in the pre-war years, it was at high level up to 1960 and then began to decrease. The method used permits to forecast the development of science and to analyse the activity of author units in particular scientific centers.     

Research performance evaluation in the German university sector

This paper reviews the history of research performance evaluation in the university sector of the Federal Republic of Germany over a fifteen-year period from 1975–88. While the first studies were rankings of entire institutions, recent studies have focused on performance differences between departments and individual researchers of the same discipline. Many different performance measures have been used to rank universities and departments within disciplines. Differences in conceptualization, data collection, counting and weighting procedures, however, make it very difficult to generalize findings across studies. This first generation of German research evaluation studies should, therefore, be viewed more as examplifying interesting methodological approaches than as offering definitive and clear-cut conclusions. Nevertheless some important lessons have been learnt from fifteen years of studies on university research performance evaluation.     

Proposal for a multilevel university cybermetric analysis model

Universities’ online seats have gradually become complex systems of dynamic information where all their institutions and services are linked and potentially accessible. These online seats now constitute a central node around which universities construct and document their main activities and services. This information can be quantitative measured by cybermetric techniques in order to design university web rankings, taking the university as a global reference unit. However, previous research into web subunits shows that it is possible to carry out systemic web analyses, which open up the possibility of carrying out studies which address university diversity, necessary for both describing the university in greater detail and for establishing comparable ranking units. To address this issue, a multilevel university cybermetric analysis model is proposed, based on parts (core and satellite), levels (institutional and external) and sublevels (contour and internal), providing a deeper analysis of institutions. Finally the model is integrated into another which is independent of the technique used, and applied by analysing Harvard University as an example of use.     

Research performance indicators for university departments: A study of an agricultural university

The present bibliometric study extends previous work by focusing on the research performance of departments in the natural and life sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, and the humanities. The present study covers all 70 departments from one agricultural university, and several veterinary departments of a second university. The impact analysis was extended by including other types of documents than journal articles. For about a third of the departments, publications not covered in citation indexes accounted for at least 30% of the citations to their total oeuvre. To deal with different citation and publication habits in the various fields, both short-term and medium-term impact assessments were made. The commonly used three year window is not universally applicable, as our results show. The inclusion of self-citations forms an important source of error in the ratio of actual/expected impact. To cope with this, the trend and level of self-citations was compared at university level with that in a matched sample of publications. Moreover, at a departmental level, self-citation rates were used to detect departments with divergent levels of self-citation. The expected impact of journals accounted for only 18% of the variance in actual impact. Comparison of bibliometric indicators with two peer evaluations showed that the bibliometric impact analyses provided important additional information.     

Selecting key performance indicators for production with a linear programming approach

Modern production systems are prone to disruptions due to shorter product life cycles, growing variant diversity and progressively distributed production. At the same time, reduced time and capacity buffers diminish mitigation opportunities, requiring better tools for production control. Performance measurement with key performance indicators (KPIs) is a widely used instrument to detect changes in production system performance in order to coordinate appropriate countermeasures. The main challenge in planning KPI systems consists in determining relevant KPIs. On the one hand, enough KPIs must be selected for a sufficiently high information content. On the other hand, the cognitive abilities of users are not to be overstrained by selecting too many KPIs. This tradeoff is addressed in a proposed selection process using an integer linear programme for objective KPI selection. In order to achieve this goal, crucial facets of the information content requirement are formalised mathematically. The developed method is validated using a practical application example, showing the influence of model parameter selection on optimisation results. The formalisation of the information content is shown to be a novel and promising approach.     

Reconfiguration: a key to handle exceptions and performance deteriorations in manufacturing operations

During a manufacturing operation, exceptions may occur dynamically and unpredictably. Their occurrence may lead to the degradation of system performance or, in the worst case scenario may interrupt the production process by causing errors in the schedule plan. This paper classifies three families of exceptions: (1) out-of-order events such as machine breakdowns, (2) operational out-of-ordinary events such as rush orders and (3) deteriorations of manufacturing resource performance such as reductions of machines’ utilization. In all cases, in order to maintain an adequate level of system performance, it is necessary to detect exceptions, to diagnose them quickly and to recover them by taking corrective actions to avoid fault propagations. Decisions concerning how to deal with exceptions, i.e. which strategy to implement, depend on the manufacturing environment (dedicated line, flexible system, reconfigurable system or a mix of them) and the advantages arising from using a certain exception handling policy vary from one production system to another. The activity of reconfiguring manufacturing resources has been demonstrated to be a powerful operation strategy to handle machine breakdowns. This paper extends the concept of ‘reconfiguration for exception handling’ to other families of exceptions and proposes reconfiguration for their recovery. The reconfiguration process is handled by an agent-based control system that implements four negotiation processes among manufacturing resource agents.     

Scientometric analysis of synchronous references in the Physics Nobel lectures, 1981-1985: A pilot study

Scientometric analysis of synchronous references in the nine Physics Nobel lectures by Nicolaas Bloembergen (1981), Arthur L. Schawlow (1981), Kai M. Siegbahn (1981), Kenneth G. Wilson (1982), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1983), William A. Fowler (1983), Carlo Rubbia (1984), Simon van der Meer (1984), and Klaus von Klitzing (1985) indicated high variations: No. of Synchronous References ranged from 24 (Meer) to 283 (Siegbahn); Synchronous Self-References ranged from 5 (Rubbia) to 88 (Siegbahn); synchronous references to others ranged from 10 (Chandrasekhar) to 255 (Wilson); Synchronous Self-Reference Rates ranged from 6.66% (Rubbia) to 65.51% (Chandrasekhar); Single-Authored References ranged from 15 (Klitzing) to 160 (Wilson); Multi-Authored References ranged from 4 (Chandrasekhar) to 194 (Siegbahn); Collaboration Coefficient in the synchronous references ranged from 0.14 (Chandrasekhar) to 0.75 (Klitzing); and Recency (age of 50% of the latest references) ranged from 2 (Klitzing) to 18 (Chandrasekhar) years. Seventy five per cent of the references belonged to journal articles. Highly referred journals wereAstrophysical Journal, Physical Review B,Physical Review Letters, Arkiv Fuer Fysik,Surface Science,Physics Letters, and IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

压缩机性能数据的相对标准不确定度分析

通过多年对压缩机性能的研究,发现影响压缩机性能数据的主要参数为压力、温度、电流、电压、功率、转速等独立物理量,对这些独立物理量测量不确定度进行分析,推导出压缩机主要性能指标——容积流量、轴功率、比功率的合成相对标准不确定度,并给出容积流量的测量相对标准不确定度值的实例.