Statistical profile of science and technology in India and Brazil

By making comparison of the science indicators, the author has critically examined the development of science and technology (S&T) in India and Brazil. The SWOT analysis indicate that, with the support of federal government, both of these developing countries have built capacities and capabilities in many areas of S&T towards attaining self-reliance and have developed potential to excel in the world-market and face challenges thereof. India and Brazil are continuing to make efforts for attaining the transition from a developing to a developed country and reviewing S&T policies towards achieving industrial competitiveness. The views expressed are the personal views of the author only.     

Researchers profile, co-authorship pattern and knowledge organization in information science in Brazil

This paper aimed to present the profile of the researchers, the pattern of scientific collaboration and the knowledge organization in the area of information science in Brazil. The study covered sex differences, skills by region and type of institution, academic formation, indicators of productivity, relations of co-authorship, interactions with other fields of knowledge, and sectors of application of the researches developed in the area. The survey, covering the period 2000–2010, was based on information from the curricula vitae of the researchers with Research Productivity Grant funded by a government agency and from the Directory of Research Group of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. The results revealed that the majority of the researchers are women, both in research and postgraduate; there is a significant regional asymmetry; the studies are concentrated in public universities; the papers are published mainly in national journals with open access; the scientific production follows the same pattern of the areas of humanities, social sciences, and linguistics, literature and arts; there is a tendency of increasing the incidence and extent of co-authored papers; there is interaction with other 20 areas of knowledge, which are directly or indirectly connected, forming a single component that comprises all of them; and ‘information and S&T management’ followed by ‘education’ are the main sectors of application of the studies developed by the Brazilian researchers. The study therefore showed an overview of this scientific community seeking to contribute to a better understanding of its characteristics and specificities.     

Cycling to work in Brazil: Users profile, risk behaviors, and traffic accident occurrence

In 2006, we carried out a cross-sectional study in the urban area of Pelotas, Southern Brazil, with the aim of outlining the profile of bicycle commuters, analyzing their use of safety equipment and risk behaviors and the association between these variables and involvement in traffic accidents in the previous 12 months. This study was based on the baseline survey carried out prior to an educational intervention aimed at reducing accidents among cyclists. The sample included 1133 male subjects aged 20 years or more, and who used a bicycle for commuting. Crude and adjusted analyses were carried out using Poisson regression. We recorded a total of 152 reported traffic accidents in the 12 months preceding the interview, involving 10.8% of subjects. Most risk behaviors studied and the use of safety equipment showed no significant association with accidents. Only commuting by bicycle seven days per week, as opposed to five or six, and a combination of extremely imprudent behaviors such as zigzagging through traffic, riding after ingesting alcohol, and high-speed riding were found to be risk factors for accidents. Our findings suggest that in the context where the study was done (poor road signaling, limited policing, aggressive driving) changing cyclist behavior may not have substantial impact in terms of accident reduction before other road traffic interventions are implemented.     

Editorial gatekeeping patterns in international science journals. A new science indicator

Significant correlations were found between the number of science journal editors from different countries, on the one hand, and the number of scientists, the number of science journals and the number of science papers produced by these countries on the other. We argue for using the extent of participation in the editorial board of international science journals as a new science indicator. The deviations from the regression lines between the new indicator and other publication indicators allow one to assess the open or closed character of the scientific life of a given country.     

A small country in a world of big science a preliminary bibliometric study of science in Singapore

An analysis of 258 papers published from Singapore and covered inScience Citation Index (SCI) 1979 and 1980 indicates that (1) much of R&D in Singapore pertains to medical research, (2) almost all the papers are published in English language periodicals published from the western world, (3) nearly two-thirds of Singapore's publication output is accounted for by the University of Singapore, and (4) by and large papers from Singapore are rarely cited, even if many of them have appeared in journals having impact factor greater than one.     

A comparative study of interdisciplinary changes between information science and library science

This study employs the method of direct citation to analyze and compare the interdisciplinary characteristics of the two disciplines of library science and information science during the period of 1978–2007. Based on the research generated by five library science journals and five information science journals, library science researchers tend to cite publications from library and information science (LIS), education, business/management, sociology, and psychology, while researchers of information science tend to cite more publications from LIS, general science, computer science, technology, and medicine. This means that the disciplines with larger contributions to library science are almost entirely different from those contributing to information science. In addition, researchers of library science frequently cite publications from LIS; the rate is as high as 65.61%, which is much higher than the rate for information science, 49.50%. However, a decreasing trend in the percentage of LIS in library science indicates that library science researchers tend to cite more publications from non-LIS disciplines. A rising trend in the proportion of references to education sources is reported for library science articles, while a rising trend in the proportion of references to computer science sources has been found for information science articles. In addition, this study applies an interdisciplinary indicator, Brillouin’s Index, to measurement of the degree of interdisciplinarity. The results confirm that the trend toward interdisciplinarity in both information science and library science has risen over the years, although the degree of interdisciplinarity in information science is higher than that in library science.     

A bibliometric measure of translational science

Scientometrics - Science funders are increasingly requiring evidence of the broader impacts of even basic research. Initiatives such as NIH’s CTSA program are designed to shift the research...     

A hybrid mapping of information science

Previous studies have shown that hybrid clustering methods that incorporate textual content and bibliometric information can outperform clustering methods that use only one of these components. In this paper we apply a hybrid clustering method based on Fisher’s inverse chisquare to integrate full-text with citations and to provide a mapping of the field of information science. We quantitatively and qualitatively asses the added value of such an integrated analysis and we investigate whether the clustering outcome is a better representation of the field by comparing with a text-only clustering and with another hybrid method based on linear combination of distance matrices. Our data set consists of almost 1000 articles and notes published in the period 2002–2004 in 5 representative journals. The optimal number of clusters for the field is 5, determined by using a combination of distance-based and stability-based methods. Term networks present the cognitive structure of the field and are complemented by the most representative publications. Three large traditional sub-disciplines, particularly, information retrieval, bibliometrics/scientometrics, and more social aspects, and two smaller clusters about patent analysis and webometrics, can be distinguished.     

A systemic view of British science

Systemic analyses of national research systems are now within the reach of bibliometricians. By systemic we mean comprehensive, time series, institutionally based, sectoral level analyses of national research output. This paper describes such an analysis for the UK, a system comprising 8% of world scientific output. The paper analyses publishing size and the number of publishing institutions for each sector. Then each sector's intra-sectoral, inter-sectoral and international collaboration is assessed. The paper then examines the data by field, looking at sector publishing profiles across fields, and at how the collaborative patterns vary between fields. It concludes with a summary profile of each institutional sector.     

A comparative study of research performance in computer science

The paper compares the research performance in computer science of four major Western countries, India and China, based on the data abstracted from INSPEC database during the period 1993–2002. A total of 9,632 computer science papers recorded in INSPEC database were used for the comparison. The findings indicate that, on the one hand, the number of papers produced in China has considerably increased in the past few years. Particularly, in recent years, China occupies a remarkable high position in terms of counts of papers indexed by the INSPEC database. On the other hand, Chinese scientists preferred to publish in domestic journals and proceedings and shares of SCI-papers to the total journal papers for China have still remained the lowest. This indicates that the research activities of Chinese scientists in computer science are still rather “local” and suffer from a low international visibility. Various scientometric indicators, such as Normalized Impact Factor, ratio of papers in high quality journals are further adopted to analyze research performance and diverse finding are obtained. Nevertheless, for these surrogate indicators, China has optimistically achieved great progress, characterized with “low level of beginning and high speed of developing”. The policy implication of the findings lies in that China, as well as other less developed countries in science, can earn relative competitive advantages in some new emerging or younger disciplines such as computer science by properly using catch-up strategy. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A study of collaboration in laser science and technology

An analysis of 3174 papers published in journals in the field of laserscience and technology indicate that only 401 papers were single authoredand the rest 2773 were co-authored papers. Of the 2773 papers, only 687 werewritten in local (inter-departmental), domestic (inter-institutional) andinternational collaboration. As reflected by the values of collaborative coefficientand co-authorship index, it is observed that the proportion of mega-authoredpapers for Japan, France, Italy, and the Netherlands was more, while for Canada,China, and Australia the proportion of single authored papers was more. Mostof the collaborative papers had bilateral domestic and international collaboration.Domestic collaborations were higher for USA, Japan, France and Australia,while international collaboration was higher for China, Israel, the Netherlands,and Switzerland. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Surface science of plasma exposed surfaces: A challenge for applied plasma science

This article introduces a deterministic approach to using low-temperature, thermally non-equilibrium plasmas to synthesize delicate low-dimensional nanostructures of a small number of atoms on plasma exposed surfaces. This approach is based on a set of plasma-related strategies to control elementary surface processes, an area traditionally covered by surface science. Major issues related to balanced delivery and consumption of building units, appropriate choice of process conditions, and account of plasma-related electric fields, electric charges and polarization effects are identified and discussed in the quantum dot nanoarray context. Examples of a suitable plasma-aided nanofabrication facility and specific effects of a plasma-based environment on self-organized growth of size- and position-uniform nanodot arrays are shown. These results suggest a very positive outlook for using low-temperature plasma-based nanotools in high-precision nanofabrication of self-assembled nanostructures and elements of nanodevices, one of the areas of continuously rising demand from academia and industry.     

巴西制造

同样是发展中国家的巴西，近些年来的设计行业也逐渐升级，尤其得到国家政府的支持。而巴西本土公司对于设计的重视也日益凸现出来，并且在导入设计的不久赢得了市场效益。[编者按]     

A semiparametric profile monitoring via residuals

Profile monitoring is a vast area of research underneath the statistical process monitoring (SPM). Several methods for univariate and multivariate process control are found in literature to monitor the profile data, including parametric, nonparametric, and some semiparametric methods. The main idea behind monitoring the linear profiles in mixed effects is to model the possible individual differences between similar set of profiles for future monitoring. In this paper, nonparametric and semiparametric approaches are proposed to model the profile data in a linear mixed effect setting by considering the residuals from a parametric model. A simulation study was carried out to compare the efficiency of the proposed methods. At first step, the residuals from a parametric linear mixed model are obtained. A nonparametric approach (NPR) is then used to model these residuals. Finally, a semiparametric method (MMRRPM) is proposed as a convex combination of the parametric (P) and nonparametric estimations based on the residuals (NPR) to model the profile data in mix effects. Two Hoteling's T² statistics were computed for each technique based on fitted values and the estimated random effects. The results show that the proposed methods are most effective to monitor the autocorrelated profile data compared with the state‐of‐the‐art.     

A concise review on the role of author self-citations in information science, bibliometrics and science policy

Summary  The objective of the present study is twofold: (1) to show the aims and means of quantitative interpretation of bibliographic features in bibliometrics and their re-interpretation in research policy, and (2) to summarise the state-of-art in self-citation research. The authors describe three approaches to the role of author self-citations and possible conflicts arising from the different perspectives. From the bibliometric viewpoint we can conclude that that there is no reason for condemning self-citations in general or for removing them from macro or meso statistics; supplementary indicators based on self-citations are, nonetheless, useful to understand communication patterns.     

A comparison of citation classics in three fields of science

A sample of Citation Classics in three scientific fields was studied to uncover citing motivations. The classics were classified into basic research, methods and reviews. Number of citations received per classic, number of authors, and age of classic per category and scientific field were the parameters studied. Journals and countries accounting for the highest incidence of classics were examined. A striking parallelism was found in the parameters applied to the categories in the scientific fields studied. This parallelism suggests similar citing habits of scientists in the fields studied which should be reflected in the structures of science obtained through citation grounded bibliometric models.