Abstract
Cloud computing has the capacity to transform many parts of the research ecosystem, from particular research areas to overall strategic decision making and policy. Scientometrics sits at the boundary between research and the decision-making, policy-making, and evaluation processes that underpin research. One of the biggest challenges in research policy and strategy is having access to data in a way that allows for analysis that can respond in an iterative way to inform decisions. Many decisions are based on “global” measures such as benchmark metrics that are hard to source and hence are often nonspecific or outdated. The use of cloud technologies may be promising in addressing this area of providing data for research strategy and policy decisions. A novel visualisation technique is introduced and used as a means to explore the potential for scaling scientometrics by democratising both access to data and compute capacity using the cloud.
Highlights
In recent years cloud technologies have become used more extensively in research
We argue that cloud technologies applied in the context of scientometrics do have the capacity to democratise access to data and to democratise access to analysis
We believe that the analysis presented here is entirely novel in a bibliometric or scientometric context
Summary
In recent years cloud technologies have become used more extensively in research. The combination of cost-efficient storage and on-demand compute capability have lowered barriers for many who are either not technically savvy or who lack the financial resources to create and maintain large-scale real-world computer infrastructure. Data volumes are relatively small (at least compared with familiar big data fields such as particle physics) while on the other, the costs and complexity of arranging access to bibliometric data sources, processing raw data and maintaining analysis-ready datasets have been prohibitive for all but the best funded researchers, analysts and policymakers. We argue that cloud technologies applied in the context of scientometrics do have the capacity to democratise access to data and to democratise access to analysis. Data licence agreements typically do not make arrangements for the delivery of an oftenupdated analysis-ready database, but rather give access either to a raw flat-file data that needs to be processed, structured and mounted into a database format with regular updates that must be applied
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