Nanoscale research in South Africa: A mapping exercise based on scientometrics

This article reports the findings of a scientometric analysis of nanoscale research in South Africa during the period 2000–2005. The ISI databases were identified as the most appropriate information platform for the objectives of the investigation and have been interrogated for the identification of South African authors publishing in the field. The article identifies trends over time, major institutional contributors, journals in which South African authors publish their research, international collaborators and performance in comparison to four comparator countries (India, Brazil, South Korea and Australia). The major findings of the investigation are as follows: nanoscale research in South Africa is driven by individual researchers interests up to date and it is in its early stages of development; the country’s nanoscale research is below what would one expect in light of its overall publication output; the country’s nano-research is distributed to a number of Universities with subcritical concentration of researchers.     

Standardizing formats of corporate source data

This paper describe an approach for improving the data quality of corporate sources when databases are used for bibliometric purposes. Research management relies on bibliographic databases and citation index systems as analytical tools, yet the raw resources for bibliometric studies are plagued by a lack of consistency in fied formatting for institution data. The present contribution puts forth a Natural Language Processing (NLP)-oriented method for the identification of the structures guiding corporate data and their mapping into a standardized format. The proposed unification process is based on the definition of address patterns and the ensuing application of Enhanced Finite-State Transducers (E-FST). Our procedure was tested on address formats downloaded from the INSPEC, MEDLINE and CAB Abstracts. The results demonstrate the helpfulness of the method as long as close control of errors is exercised as far as the formats to be unified. The computational efficacy of the model is noteworthy, due to the fact that it is firmly guided by the definition of data in the application domain.     

Bibliometric analysis of tsunami research

The use of the bibilometric analytical technique for examining tsunami research does not exist in the literature. The objective of the study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of all tsunami-related publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI). Analyzed parameters included document type, language of publication, publication output, authorship, publication patterns, distribution of subject category, distribution of author keywords, country of publication, most-frequently cited article, and document distribution after the Indonesia tsunami. The US and Japan produced 53% of the total output where the seven major industrial countries accounted for the majority of the total production. English was the dominant language, comprising 95% of articles. A simulation model was applied to describe the relationship between the number of authors and the number of articles, the number of journals and the number of articles, and the percentage of total articles and the number of times a certain keyword was used. Moreover the tsunami publication patterns in the first 8 months after the Indonesia tsunami occurred on 26 December 2004 indicated a high percentage of non-article publications and more documents being published in journals with higher impact factors.     

International contribution to library and information science in Poland: A bibliometric analysis

This article reports findings from the study of the international contribution to the system of library and information science communication in Poland in the years 2003–2005. The sample consists of articles published both in selected journals and collective works. Two important dimensions determining the internationalization of local scholarly communication are considered: direct contribution (foreign authors’ articles and papers and their translations published in Poland) and indirect contribution (citedness of foreign authors’ documents in articles and papers published in Poland). Bibliographic data about the geographical distribution and affiliation of foreign authors are gathered and analyzed. Furthermore, the findings of citation analysis are presented to determine the percentage share of citations received by foreign documents as well as to find out what is the structure of such citations regarding the language and form, which thematic areas are most replete with such citations and which foreign journals are most cited in Poland.     

The global institutionalization of nanotechnology research: A bibliometric approach to the assessment of science policy

Based on bibliometric methods, this paper describes the global institutionalization of nanotechnology research from the mid-1980s to 2006. Owing to an extremely strong dynamics, the institutionalization of nanotechnology is likely to surpass those of major disciplines in only a few years. A breakdown of the relative institutionalizations strengths by the main geographical regions, countries, research sectors, disciplines, and institutional types provides a very diverse picture over the time period because of different national science policies. The results allow a critical assessment of the different science policies based on the relative institutionalizations strengths as well as the conclusion that the institutionalization process has run out of control of individual governments who once induced the development.     

The frequencies of multinational papers in various sciences

Multinational papers are defined here as ones written by authors who reside in different countries during the course of research. For each of 16 fields of science, I scanned the first 200 papers in 2005 in four major journals publishing original research papers. Those journals produced 40% of all the citations among those journals with Impact Factors greater than 1.0. The frequencies of multinational papers ranged from 13% in surgery to 55% in astronomy. Although one can list a dozen factors which might contribute toward multinational papers, I lack the data to test most of those. There are only minor correlations with team sizes and Impact Factors, inadequate to explain the range. There is a larger, but not convincing, dependence upon the fractions of single-author papers and its cause, if real, is unclear. However, the most prominent factor seems to be the nature of the objects studied; if they are usually local (e.g. in one hospital or in one laboratory), the papers tend to be domestic but if most of the objects are available simultaneously to scientists in many countries (e.g. the sky in astronomy or the oceans and the Earth’s atmosphere in geosciences or widespread diseases in the area of infectious diseases or plants and animals widely distributed in biology), the papers are often international. Auxiliary results for 2005 are an average of 5.5 ± 0.3 authors per paper and 6.6 ± 1.0% one-author papers.     

Innovation assessment in traditional industries. A proposal of aesthetic innovation indicators

Innovative activities are fundamental to the competitiveness strategies of the firms in a globalized market. Their assessment, using indicators such as those utilized in the Community Innovation Survey (CIS), shows significant sectoral dispersion. Traditional industries are in a weak position because the innovation they are involved in is mainly aesthetic, which is not really addressed in innovation surveys. In this work, we review the various criticisms levelled at existing indicators and propose some new indicators that would capture the types of innovations that are conducted by the traditional industries. This work is based on a study of the features of traditional industries and the concept of aesthetic novelty. The proposed indicators are tested in the Spanish footwear industry.     

What do we know about innovation in nanotechnology? Some propositions about an emerging field between hype and path-dependency

This contribution formulates a number of propositions about the emergence of novel nanoscience and nanotechnology (N&N). Seeking to complement recent work that aims to define a research agenda and draws on general insights from the innovation literature, this paper aims to synthesize knowledge from innovation-related studies of the N&N field. More specifically, it is suggested that N&N is often misconstrued as either a field of technology or an area of (broadly) converging technologies while evidence to date suggests rather that N&N be considered a set of inter-related and overlapping about not necessarily merging technologies. The role of instrumentation in connecting the various N&N fields is underlined. Finally, the question is raised whether change in N&N tends to be incremental rather than discontinuous, being the result of technological path-dependencies and lock-ins in industry-typical search regimes that are only slowly giving way to more boundary-crossing activities.     

The reporting of the risks from genetically modified organisms in the mass media, 2002–2004

This paper describes an analysis of coverage of the risks from agricultural and food genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) from April 2002 to April 2004 in 14 news media from six countries (Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the UK and the USA) which was conducted as part of a review for the European Commission of the management of risk communication. A total of 597 relevant news articles were found and coded for their presentational tone, the types of risk (environmental, financial, health and political, in that order), the organisms described (mainly maize, rape and beet crops), and the documents, people and organisations cited. UK news media tended to be the most “scary” and Spanish ones the most “robust”. Articles quoting public perceptions, non-governmental environmental organisations and politicians tended to emphasize the risks of GMOs; those quoting scientists tended to downplay the risks and describe their potential benefits. Some suggestions for possible action by the European Commission are put forward, such as the facilitation of contact between journalists and scientists, but it is recognized that for some newspapers, their editorial wish to campaign will inevitably over-ride their reporters’ wish to present the truth.