Potential science-technology spillovers in regions: An insight on geographic co-location of knowledge activities in the EU

This article depicts some features of the geography of science and technology outputs in the EU, with a particular attention to regional “co-location” of these two pillars of the “knowledge-based society”. Economists have, for a decade, paid great attention to local “spillovers” stating that industrial firms often draw advantages from the presence of nearby academic centres. The presence in the same areas of strong academic and technological resources is both a condition and a result of science-technology interactions. Concentrating on publications and patents as proxies of the science and technology level in regions, we built a typology of regions according to their commitment to the two knowledge-base activities and then analysed the co-locations of science and technology from several points of view. A fine-grain lattice, mainly based on standard Nuts3 level, was used. Co-location, at the EU level, is not a general rule. A strong potential for spillover/ interaction does exist in the top-class regions which concentrate a high proportion of European S and T output. But for regions with a small/medium level of S&T activity, a divergence of orientations appears between a science-oriented family and a technology-oriented family, indicating an imbalance between local S and T resources. If we look at the S-oriented regions, whilst controlling for underlying factors, such as population and regional economic product, a significant geographic linkage between T and S appears. This suggests a trajectory of science-based technological development. A careful examination of S&T thematic alignments and specialisation is necessary to develop the hypothesis that fostering academic resources could increase the technological power along a growth path. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Science macro-indicators: some aspects of ost experience

We report OST experience on macro-indicators producing, especially on academic science and ISI sources. This task requires a combination of organizational choices for data handling and processing, and of bibliometric choices for a selection of indicators appropriate to the missions. Both aspects are briefly studied: the OST database, which also contains nonbibliometric datasets, is organized on the relational principle (RDBMS). Bibliometric indicators selected are classical ones, with a stress on overall coherence. In conclusion, standardization issue is briefly discussed. Standardization may not be desirable at the same extent for different targets (data, nomenclatures, indicators, procedures, etc.) and must not hinder further research. Natural process of communication and explication may also lead to fruitful convergences, without freezing supposed best ways.     

The journal impact factor: angel, devil, or scapegoat? A comment on J.K. Vanclay’s article 2011

J.K. Vanclay’s article is a bold attempt to review recent works on the journal impact factor (JIF) and to call for alternative certifications of journals. The too broad scope did not allow the author to fulfill all his purposes. Attempting after many others to organize the various forms of criticism, with targets often broader than the JIF, we shall try to comment on a few points. This will hopefully enable us to infer in which cases the JIF is an angel, a devil, or a scapegoat. We shall also expand on a crucial question that Vanclay could not really develop in the reduced article format: the field-normalization. After a short recall on classical cited-side or ex post normalization and of the powerful influence measures, we will devote some attention to the novel way of citing-side or ex ante normalization, not only for its own interest, but because it directly proceeds from the disassembling of the JIF clockwork.     

Aggregation properties of relative impact and other classical indicators: Convexity issues and the Yule-Simpson paradox

Among classical bibliometric indicators, direct and relative impact measures for countries or other players in science are appealing and standard. Yet, as shown in this article, they may exhibit undesirable statistical properties, or at least ones that pose questions of interpretation in evaluation and benchmarking contexts. In this article, we address two such properties namely sensitivity to the Yule-Simpson effect, and a problem related to convexity. The Yule-Simpson effect can occur for direct impacts and, in a variant form, for relative impact, causing an apparent incoherence between field values and the aggregate (all-fields) value. For relative impacts, it may result in a severe form of ‘out-range’ of aggregate values, where a player’s relative impact shifts from ‘good’ to ‘bad’, or conversely. Out-range and lack of convexity in general are typical of relative impact indicators. Using empirical data, we suggest that, for relative impact measures, ‘out-range’ due to lack of convexity is not exceptional. The Yule-Simpson effect is less frequent, and especially occurs for small players with particular specialisation profiles.     

Internationalization of communication a view on the evolution of scientific journals

Starting from a characterization of the level of internationalization of SCI journals, based on their authoring scope, the process of internationalization of scientific communication throughout the period 1981–97 is described. The growth of the classes of international journals at the expense of national-oriented ones, appears as a general trend in all disciplines. A kindred measure of internationalization at the country-level is proposed, based on the balance of country-authored publications between national-oriented and international-oriented journals. A typology of countries is sketched. The general trend towards internationalization is also clear at the country level. It can be generally interpreted as a positive evolution, with some exceptions as Russia in the recent period, where it appears together with the output decline, a counterpart of the disappearance of many journals from SCI. Some other examples of shocks with a covariation of internationalization and output are given. Country internationalization indexes also express the sensitivity of the country output indicators to the possible restriction of SCI sample to the international fraction. Considering evolutions of internationalization may be helpful for a comprehensive study of scientific long-term evolutions at the country level.     

Delineation of the genomics field by hybrid citation-lexical methods: interaction with experts and validation process

In advanced methods of delineation and mapping of scientific fields, hybrid methods open a promising path to the capitalisation of advantages of approaches based on words and citations. One way to validate the hybrid approaches is to work in cooperation with experts of the fields under scrutiny. We report here an experiment in the field of genomics, where a corpus of documents has been built by a hybrid citation-lexical method, and then clustered into research themes. Experts of the field were associated in the various stages of the process: lexical queries for building the initial set of documents, the seed; citation-based extension aiming at reducing silence; final clustering to identify noise and allow discussion on border areas. The analysis of experts’ advices show a high level of validation of the process, which combines a high-precision and low-recall seed, obtained by journal and lexical queries, and a citation-based extension enhancing the recall. This findings on the genomics field suggest that hybrid methods can efficiently retrieve a corpus of relevant literature, even in complex and emerging fields.     

Shadows of the Past in International Cooperation: Collaboration Profiles of the Top Five Producers of Science

This article aims at a characterization of the cooperation behavior among five large scientific countries (France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States of America) from 1986 to 1996. It looks at the cooperation profiles of these countries using classical measures such as the Probabilistic Affinity. The results show the major influence which historical, cultural and linguistic proximities may have on patterns of cooperation, with few changes over the period of time studied.A lack of specific affinities among the three largest European countries is revealed, and this contrasts with the strong linkage demonstrated between United States and Japan. The ensuing discussion raises some questions as to the process of Europeanization in science. The intensity of bilateral cooperation linkages is then studied with regard to field specialization by country, and this analysis yields no general patterns at the scale studied. Specific bilateral behaviors are also analyzed.     

Behind citing-side normalization of citations: some properties of the journal impact factor

A new family of citation normalization methods appeared recently, in addition to the classical methods of “cited-side” normalization and the iterative measures of intellectual influence in the wake of Pinski and Narin influence weights. These methods have a quite global scope in citation analysis but were first applied to the journal impact, in the experimental Audience Factor (AF) and the Scopus Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP). Analyzing some properties of the Garfield’s Journal Impact Factor, this note highlights the rationale of citing-side (or source-level, fractional citation, ex ante) normalization.     

A simple method for dynamic scientometrics using lexical analysis

Techniques for studying problematic networks in science and technology are principally derived either from citation analyses or from lexical methods. The former have been the object of many developments and improvements. A considerable range of applications exists within the practical constraint of their being limited to fields covered by the ISI databases. For the latter, the co-word method has a register of applications that up until now have been more specialized in the sociology of science as it is done, but it has in principle no field limitations. An important question is whether we can extend the application range of this analytical method to take in longer periods, and in particular to deal with historiography either on a large scale (at the level of a research field) or on a small scale (at the level of a process of discovery or invention). Here we propose a way of rendering lexical methods dynamic, more particularly through developing a rudimentary but precise technique to aid historiographical analysis. This method ofcritical variations is illustrated in a working example.     

Indicators in a research institute: A multi-level classification of scientific journals

Indicators in a research Institute ought to be readable at several decision levels, and particularly with different break-downs of the publication set chosen as reference. Citation transactions between journals have been widely used to structure scientific subfields in ISI databases. We tried a seed-free structuration of SCI/CMCI journals (a) to test convergence of pure citation-built specialties (roughly 150) on SCI/CMCI journals with existing classifications at the subfield level (b) to explore the interest and the limits of this approach for upper levels of aggregation (roughly 30 fields). A few limits of journal-level classification are addressed. At the subfield level, the convergence is large with some discrepancies worth noticing. At the subdiscipline level, the method is not sufficient to achieve a satisfactory 30-level delineation, but gives a good basis for informed expert validation.