Scientometric Perspective Research Articles

Indo-Korean Co-Publications: An Analysis Using Asymmetric (α) Index

This paper concerns about the development and use of an asymmetric index (α) for the computation of the co-publications between two countries in a scientometric perspective. Korea and India are selected as assessing cases for illustrating the application of the ‘α’ index on co-publication analysis against several parameters such as growth in a number of the scholarly communications, document types, subject areas, and sources for the period 1994 to 2013. A total of 8823 co-publications were published by Indo-Korean researchers during the aforementioned period of time. The asymmetric index of Indo-Korean co-publications of India with Korea (αIndia-Korea) and vice versa (αKorea-India) were obtained and the values were 0.099 and 0.114, respectively. The results suggest that the overall efforts of Korean researchers have more effective co-operation with Indian researchers. In addition, a comparison with the best-known Salton’s (cosine) measures is provided and the results show that its value (0.11) is independent of the relative size of the collaborative systems.

Evolution of DFT studies in view of a scientometric perspective.

BackgroundThis bibliometric study aims to analyze the publications in which density functional theory (DFT) plays a major role. The bibliometric analysis is performed on the full publication volume of 114,138 publications as well as sub-sets defined in terms of six different types of compounds and nine different research topics. Also, a compound analysis is presented that shows how many compounds with specific elements are known to be calculated with DFT. This analysis is done for each element from hydrogen to nobelium.ResultsWe find that hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen occur most often in compounds calculated with DFT in terms of absolute numbers, but a relative perspective shows that DFT calculations were performed rather often in comparison with experiments for rare gas elements, many actinides, some transition metals, and polonium.ConclusionsThe annual publication volume of DFT literature continues to grow steadily. The number of publications doubles approximately every 5–6 years while a doubling of publication volume every 11 years is observed for the CAplus database (14 years if patents are excluded). Calculations of the structure and energy of compounds dominate the DFT literature.

“Sleeping beauty” and her restless sleep: Charles Dotter and the birth of interventional radiology

Charles Dotter has been described as the father of interventional radiology, a medical specialty born at the interface between radiology and cardiology. Before 1979, it was relatively difficult to find citations to a landmark paper that Dotter had first published in 1964--qualifying this study, from a scientometric perspective, as a sleeping beauty. Sleeping beauties are texts that suffer due to delayed recognition. The present paper explores the Dotter case study's bibliometric characteristics while analyzing the Van Raan criteria's usefulness for defining sleeping beauties in science. Citation network analysis using CitNetExplorer has proven helpful in identifying the "Prince" in this fairy tale. The duration of sleep is viewed here as a period of restlessness marked by science and social controversies that are often documented in publication databases using a wide range of bibliographic references. Hence the idea of introducing alongside this sleeping beauty construct the idea of "restless sleep". These observations should open new avenues in identifying sleeping beauties while nurturing scientific controversy studies revolving around the use of scientometric approaches.

Latin American scientific output in Public Health: combined analysis using bibliometric, socioeconomic and health indicators

This study characterizes the volume and visibility of Latin American scientific output in the area of Public Health, through a combined analysis of bibliometric, socioeconomic and health indicators of the top 10 Latin American producers of documents. The information was obtained from the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) portal, based on Scopus data, in the category Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, of the area Medicine, for the period 2003–2011. Our scientometric analysis involved a set of quantitative indicators (based on document recount), plus performance ones to measure impact and excellence (based on citation recount) and international collaboration. The socioeconomic indicators measured investment in health and in research, and the number of researchers. Basic health indicators were used, along with the inequity indicator known as INIQUIS. The main results reveal that the research systems with the greatest capacity to communicate scientific results are those of Brazil and Mexico, and potentially Colombia and Argentina. The best visibility was demonstrated by Uruguay, Puerto Rico and Peru, countries with high rates of collaboration. No single country stands out as having a perfectly balanced relationship regarding all the dimensions analyzed. A relative balance is achieved by Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, though with different levels of scientific output. The tangible achievements in health attained by Cuba and Chile do not appear to be related with the results of research published in the area of Public Health. There is clearly a need to find methods that would allow us to evaluate the transfer of research knowledge into practice, by means of the scientometric perspective.

Selected critical examples of scientometric publication analysis

Objective: This paper selects and outlines factors of central importance in the calculation, presentation and interpretation of publication analysis results from a scientometric perspective. The paper focuses on growth, world share analyses and the logic behind the computation of average numbers of authors, institutions or countries per publication indexed by Web of Science.

Innovation as a nonlinear process, the scientometric perspective, and the specification of an ‘innovation opportunities explorer’

The process of innovation follows nonlinear patterns across the domains of science, technology, and the economy. Novel bibliometric mapping techniques can be used to investigate and represent distinctive, but complementary perspectives on the innovation process (e.g. ‘demand’ and ‘supply’) as well as the interactions among these perspectives using animations. In a map, the different perspectives can be represented as ‘continents’ of data related to varying extents over time. For example, the different branches of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in the Medline database provide sources of such perspectives (e.g. ‘Diseases’ vs ‘Drugs and Chemicals’). The multiple-perspective approach enables us to reconstruct facets of the dynamics of innovation, in terms of selection mechanisms shaping localisable trajectories and/or resulting in more globalised regimes. By expanding the data with patents and scholarly publications, we demonstrate the use of this multi-perspective approach in the case of RNA Interference (RNAi). The possibility to develop an ‘Innovation Opportunities Explorer’ is specified.

Analysis of oncology research from 2001 to 2010: A scientometric perspective

Over the past half-century, the incidence of tumours has increased, resulting in cancer becoming one of the most lethal diseases in humans. In the present study, we elucidated the status of oncology research from 2001 to 2010. Studies published in 30 representative oncology journals were retrieved from the Web of Science (2001-2010) to compose our dataset. Knowledge domain visualisation, co-citation analysis and social network analysis methods were used. By mapping the oncology research performed from 2001 to 2010, we identified the primary research centres, including the top 20 institutions and countries and the 4 major oncology research fronts: i)the mechanism of abnormal oncogene expression; ii) tumour metastasis and angiogenesis; iii) the relationship between cancer cells and apoptosis; and iv) tumour vaccines. We also identified the 36 most collaborative academic communities, and multiple myeloma, angiogenesis and acute lymphocytic leukaemia were found to be the focuses of collaborative research in oncology from 2001 to 2010. Over the past 10 years, America has led oncology research, while China is the sole developing country to be ranked in the top 10. Analyses of the main research centres and forefronts may assist researchers in addressing these forefronts and ascertaining the developing trends in oncology. Analysis of the academic communities performing oncology research may provide scientific evidence and suggestions for policymakers to select the most prolific academic groups and leaders and to effectively manage and finance future oncology research. These selected groups and individuals will carry out additional joint undertakings and solve complex problems encountered in oncology research.

The knowledge domain of the academy of international business studies (AIB) conferences: a longitudinal scientometric perspective for the years 2006–2011

Conferences play a major role for the development of scientific domains. While journal and article contributions in the field of international business (IB) are a general and well researched area of scientometric studies, conferences are not. The absence of a systematic assessment of international business conferences as a reference to the collective status of the Academy of International Business (AIB) community is astonishing. Whatever reasons are accountable for that fact, this paper starts to fill that gap. It establishes a knowledge network composed of the last six years AIB conferences. We collected all the contributions in full text with their abstracts and keywords from 2006 to 2011. All the data have been organized in a data system and we used the information-theoretic clustering method which allows different analytical views through the entire knowledge corpus. The results indicate significant statistical differences between topic modules and keyword threads of the yearly conferences. There are three keywords which dominate as a leitmotif between 2006 and 2011, but the detailed structure changes from conference to conference significantly.

Are CIVETS the next BRICs? A comparative analysis from scientometrics perspective

Based on the concept that scientific research is an important component of a country's knowledge-based economy, this study aims to answer the question "Are CIVETS the next BRICs" by comparing a series of scientometrics indicators using data from the Essential Science Indicators database and the World Bank Report 2009. The main findings are that at the country group level, there is no significant difference between CIVETS and BRICs in knowledge-based economy performance, scientific research quality and scientific research structure and that the number of scientific research papers is the clear gap between them. The results may be of use to find the answer to the question "Are CIVETS the next BRICs" at least from the perspective of scientometrics.

Scientometrics of big science: a case study of research in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Large-scale scientific projects have become a major impetus of scientific advances. But few studies have specifically analyzed how those projects bolster scientific research. We address this question from a scientometrics perspective. By analyzing the bibliographic records of papers relevant to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we found that the SDSS helped scientists from many countries further develop their own research; investigators initially formed large research groups to tackle key problems, while later papers involved fewer authors; and the number of research topics increased but the diversity of topics remains stable. Furthermore, the entropy analysis method has proven valuable in terms of analyzing patterns of research topics at a macroscopic level.

The impact of the socio-economic crisis of 2001 on the scientific system of Argentina from the scientometric perspective

In recent years a number of studies have focused on Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis and its political, social, and institutional repercussions. To date, however, no studies have analyzed its effects upon the country’s scientific system from a scientometric perspective, in terms of resources dedicated to scientific activity and the final output and impact. The present study does so by means of a set of scientometric indicators that reflect economic effort, human resources dedicated to research, publications, collaborative relations, and the international visibility of scientific contributions.

Patent activity on water pollution and treatment in China—a scientometric perspective

This research intends to investigate the patent activity on water pollution and treatment in China (1985-2007), and then compares the results with patents data about Triadic patents, South Korea, Brazil and India over the same periods, patents data were collected from Derwent World Patents Index between 1985 and May 2008. For this study, 169,312 patents were chosen and examined. Total volume of patents, technology focus, assignee sector, priority date and the comparison with other countries are analyzed. It is found that patents on water pollution and treatment filed at China have experienced a remarkable increase and the increase rate of patents filed at China change simultaneous with the percentage of domestic applications. However, the number of high quality Triadic patents with priority country as China remains small. Furthermore, in addition to individual patent assignees, both Chinese universities and enterprises also play important roles in patent activity of water pollution and treatment. In addition, the pattern of South Korea's development can provide short-term implications for China and the regularity in Triadic patents' development can provide some guidance to China's long-term development. In contrast, the development pattern of Brazil and India is less influential to China's devel- opment. Furthermore, China's technology focuses on water pollution and treatment seem to parallel global and triadic patent trends. This research provides a comprehensive picture of China's innovation capability in the area of water pollution and treatment. It will help China's local governments to improve their regional S&T capability and will provide support the National Water Pollution Control and Treatment Project in China.

Macro-level indicators of the relations between research funding and research output

In response to the call for a science of science policy, we discuss the contribution of indicators at the macro-level of nations from a scientometric perspective. In addition to global trends such as the rise of China, one can relate percentages of world share of publications to government expenditure in academic research. The marginal costs of improving one's share are increasing over time. Countries differ considerably in terms of the efficiency of turning (financial) input into bibliometrically measurable output. Both funding schemes and disciplinary portfolios differ among countries. A price per paper can nevertheless be estimated. The percentages of GDP spent on academic research in different nations are significantly correlated to historical contingencies such as the percentage of researchers in the population. The institutional dynamics make strategic objectives such as the Lisbon objective of the EU – that is, spending 3% of GDP for R&D in 2010 – unrealistic.

The Scientometric, Social Network and Scientographic Analysis of an Industrial Engineering Department

This dissertation examines the twenty-year publication output (from 1986 to 2005) of the National University of Singapore Industrial Engineering Department (NUS-ISE) based on three perspectives namely scientometrics, social network analysis, and multidimensional scaling. The scientometrics perspective allows the evaluation of the productivity and impact of the NUS-ISE faculties, as well as the collaboration trend in publishing, while the social network analysis and multidimensional scaling techniques allow a holistic understanding of the evolutions of the NUSISE co-authorship networks and the disciplinary roots of NUS-ISE.