x-index: Identifying core competency and thematic research strengths of institutions using an NLP and network based ranking framework

Scientometrics - The currently prevailing international ranking systems for institutions are limited in their assessment as they only provide assessments either at an overall level or at very broad...     

Mapping a research area at the micro level using co-word analysis

The present study investigates the use of co-word analysis method to understand the micro structure of a research speciality. This study is done in the area of Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) taking two time-periods, 1990 and 1995. Based on concurrent set of journals occurring in the subject heading list of CMP in these two time-periods, a database is created after downloading articles present in these journals from the INSPEC database. Using words extracted from the titles from the created database, suitable co-word pairs are constructed. These words, and co-word pairs are explored further to understand their linkages with each other through network analysis methods. Dynamics, within the CMP across 1990 and 1995, are investigated through the comparison of the words, co-word pairs and structurally equivalent blocks. The results are projected using multi-dimensional scaling. The important conclusions of this study are discussed.     

A research framework to explore knowledge evolution and scholarly quantification of collaborative research

Scientometrics - Most of the present research problems require the participation of scientists who can bring complementary skills. For this reason, research collaboration among scientists from...     

An introduction to Chinese manufacturing research institutions

The manufacturing environment has dramatically changed in the last few years. Worldwide competition among manufacturers and the development of new manufacturing technologies have contributed to today's competitive situation in many manufacturing areas. Advanced computer technology is the driver that has made global manufacturing competition possible. In this paper, the current research of advanced manufacturing technology at major institutions in China is introduced.     

Shaping the European research collaboration in the 6th Framework Programme health thematic area through network analysis

This paper aims to analyse the collaboration network of the 6th Framework Programme of the EU, specifically the “Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health” thematic area. A collaboration network of 2,132 participant organizations was built and several variables were added to improve the visualization such as type of organization and nationality. Several statistical tests and structural indicators were used to uncover the main characteristic of this collaboration network. Results show that the network is constituted by a dense core of government research organizations and universities which act as large hubs that attract new partners to the network, mainly companies and non-profit organizations.     

How to interpret the position of private sector institutions in bibliometric rankings of research institutions

This paper analyzes the positions of institutions from the private domain in bibliometric rankings of as many as 27,000 research institutions and highlights factors that are crucial for a proper interpretation of such positions. It was found that among the institutions with the largest output in terms of published research articles, private firms are underrepresented, whereas in the top quartile of institutions with the largest citation impact firms are overrepresented. A firm’s publication output is not a good indicator of its R&D investment: big firms in Pharmaceutics are both heavy investors in R&D and frequent publishers of scientific articles, whereas in Automobiles firms tend to invest heavily in R&D but their publication output is low. This is ascribed to the fact that the former need a validation of their results by the scientific community, while the latter do less so. Private institutions generating the largest citation impact tend to collaborate with the best public research institutions. This reflects the crucial importance of publicly funded research for the private sector.     

National-scale research performance assessment at the individual level

There is an evident and rapid trend towards the adoption of evaluation exercises for national research systems for purposes, among others, of improving allocative efficiency in public funding of individual institutions. However the desired macroeconomic aims could be compromised if internal redistribution of government resources within each research institution does not follow a consistent logic: the intended effects of national evaluation systems can result only if a ??funds for quality?? rule is followed at all levels of decision-making. The objective of this study is to propose a bibliometric methodology for: (i) large-scale comparative evaluation of research performance by individual scientists, research groups and departments within research institution, to inform selective funding allocations; and (ii) assessment of strengths and weaknesses by field of research, to inform strategic planning and control. The proposed methodology has been applied to the hard science disciplines of the Italian university research system for the period 2004?C2006.     

Influence of fine-grained structure and superplastic deformation on the strength of aluminium alloys

Samples of 1560 (Al-Mg-Mn) and 1960 (Al-Zn-Mg-Cu) alloys have been used to investigate the nature of the effect of grain size and superplastic treatment on the strength of aluminium alloys. The observed increase in the work needed for crack formation with the transition from coarse-grained (CG) to fine-grained (FG) structure is connected to a greater homogeneity of the plastic deformation in the material volume. This leads to a reduction in local stress concentrations at the sites of preferential crack initiation. The easier crack growth in FG alloys is mainly caused by a reduction in the energy for plastic deformation at the head of a long crack and also for the formation of free fracture surfaces.Deceased.     

A critical framework for methodological research in architecture

This paper reviews a cross-section of methodological studies undertaken in architecture since the Second World War. Despite a variety of orientations, technically, conceptually and philosophically, most studies reflect an understanding of people and objects as discrete entities interacting in an passive and unilateral manner. This dominant dualist understanding is concluded to be the essential cause of the ‘implementation gap' between architectural research and practice. For the gap to close, the development and institution of a critical framework is needed which encourages researchers to acknowledge explicitly the ontological and epistomological issues associated with architectural practice, education and research. Underlying this recommendation is a dialectic appreciation of person-world interaction; one which accepts as a holistic theme for inquiry, the experiential and interpretative quality of human thinking, feeling and action.     

The Act on inventions at public research institutions: Danish universities' patenting activity

Summary This paper focuses on the Danish Act No. 347 of 1999, which granted IPRs on inventions at public research institutions to the institutions themselves. After summarizing the situation in Denmark prior to the new law, I describe the Act's main features and then I turn my attention to the solutions adopted by Danish academia to face the opportunities and challenges posed by the new situation. Finally, using a unique dataset including all patents filed by Danish universities from 1982 to 2003, I describe university patenting activity.     

A new approach to the analysis and evaluation of the research output of countries and institutions

Scientometrics - A plethora of bibliometric indicators is available nowadays to gauge research performance. The spectrum of bibliometric based measures is very broad, from purely size-dependent...     

Tensile ductility behaviour of fine-grained alumina at elevated temperature

High-temperature tensile ductility behaviour of polycrystalline fine-grained alumina is shown to be classified into four regimes, depending on flow stress: (1) fast-crack growth regime, (2) single-crack growth regime, (3) microcracks growth regime, and (4) superplastic-crack growth regime, in the order of decreasing flow stress. The unique tensile ductility behaviour observed for each fracture regime is related to the type of damage accumulation. A fracture mechanics model is applied to interpret the tensile ductility of alumina in the superplastic-crack growth regime. The model correctly predicts the observed linear decrease in the true fracture strain with an increase in the logarithm of flow stress. In addition, the model is in quantitative agreement with the increase in the true fracture strain with decreasing grain size when compared at a given stress. The enhancement of tensile ductility in alumina by dilute MgO additions is attributed to an increase in the surface energy and/or decrease in the grain-boundary energy which resists the fracture process. On the other hand, the enhancement of tensile ductility in alumina by addition of a second phase of zirconia is attributed to an increase in the amount of alumina–zirconia grain boundaries which have a low grain-boundary energy. © 1998 Chapman & Hall     

Introduction to the thematic issue on valuing research: theory,research, policy and practice of return on investment

Abstract

Increasingly, research enterprises in government, academia and industry are tasked with demonstrating the value of their undertakings. From the perspective of finite resources, like time, money and people, this is a reasonable request. Government researchers are duty-bound to demonstrate value to their nations’ citizens, academic researchers are obliged to demonstrate value to their departments, and industry researchers are compelled to demonstrate value to shareholders and stakeholders. Yet, quantifying the “value” of research is a complex undertaking, with subjective advocacy often standing in place of objective analysis. Recent efforts demonstrate that it is possible to develop and apply methods for valuing research. This thematic issue provides a sampling of recent developments in the underlying theory and application of Return on Investment measurement and assessment.     

Using acknowledgement data to characterize funding organizations by the types of research sponsored: the case of robotics research

Funded research has been linked to academic production and performance. While the presence of funding acknowledgements may serve as an indicator of quality to some extent, we still lack tools to evaluate whether funding agencies allocate resources to novel and innovative research rather than mature fields. We address this issue in the present study by using bibliometrics. In particular, we exploit the citation network properties of academic articles to classify specific research fields into four categories: change maker, breakthrough, incremental, and matured. We then use funding acknowledgement information to identify the sponsors involved in each research type to characterize funding agencies. We focus our analysis on the robotics field in order to reveal international trends of financial acknowledgements. We find that the incremental and matured research areas show the highest counts of funding acknowledgements. Moreover, although research funded by some agencies is mostly recognized as incremental-type research, those in other categories may perform better in terms of the number of citations. Additionally, we analyze the interest of selected funding agencies in granular subject categories. The characterization of funding agencies in this study may help policymakers and funding organizations assess or adjust their strategies, benchmark with other key players, and obtain an overview of local and global acknowledgement trends.     

Information co-modelling of a network of research institutions

A method of measuring the communication in a network of research institutions i presented. The method is based on the determination of the subject similarity of research reports. The requests of the users are taken into account. The hierarchic cluster analysis of communication in the network is fulfilled on the base of the fuzzy binary relations of similarity between objects.     

Benchmarking research performance at the university level with information theoretic measures

This paper presents a new method for comparing universities based on information theoretic measures. The research output of each academic institution is represented statistically by an impact-factor histogram. To this aim, for each academic institution we compute the probability of occurrence of a publication with impact factor in different intervals. Assuming the probabilities associated with a pair of academic institutions our objective is to measure the Information Gain between them. To do so, we develop an axiomatic characterization of relative information for predicting institution-institution dissimilarity. We use the Spanish university system as our scenario to test the proposed methodology for benchmarking three universities with the rest as a case study. For each case we use different scientific fields such as Information and Communication Technologies, Medicine and Pharmacy, and Economics and Business as we believe comparisons must take into account their disciplinary context. Finally we validate the Information Gain values obtained for each case with previous studies.     

A framework for assessing and rewarding a scientist's research productivity

A contest for world leadership in science and technology exists. New ways to motivate scientists seem as important to contest outcome as new sources of funds. A framework formed by cross-tabulating question difficulty and answer generality should help to identify the contribution of a research scientist. A reward relationship based on this framework should help to ensure that scientists will work on the most difficult research problems, a necessity for a high quality research program.