A comparison of the scientific performance of the U.S. and the European Union at the turn of the 21st century.

In this paper, scientific performance is identified with the impact that journal articles have through the citations they receive. In 15 disciplines, as well as in all sciences as a whole, the EU share of total publications is greater than that of the U.S. However, as soon as the citations received by these publications are taken into account the picture is completely reversed. Firstly, the EU share of total citations is still greater than the U.S. in only seven fields. Secondly, the mean citation rate in the U.S. is greater than in the EU in every one of the 22 fields studied. Thirdly, since standard indicators—such as normalized mean citation ratios—are silent about what takes place in different parts of the citation distribution, this paper compares the publication shares of the U.S. and the EU at every percentile of the world citation distribution in each field. It is found that in seven fields the initial gap between the U.S. and the EU widens as we advance towards the more cited articles, while in the remaining 15 fields—except for Agricultural Sciences—the U.S. always surpasses the EU when it counts, namely, at the upper tail of citation distributions. Finally, for all sciences as a whole the U.S. publication share becomes greater than that of the EU for the top 50% of the most highly cited articles. The data used refers to 3.6 million articles published in 1998–2002, and the more than 47 million citations they received in 1998–2007Research performance; Citation analysis; Scientific ranking; European paradox;

A comparison of the scientific performance of the U.S. and the European Union at the turn of the 21st century

In this paper, scientific performance is identified with the impact that journal articles have through the citations they receive. In 15 disciplines, as well as in all sciences as a whole, the EU share of total publications is greater than that of the U.S. However, as soon as the citations received by these publications are taken into account the picture is completely reversed. Firstly, the EU share of total citations is still greater than the U.S. in only seven fields. Secondly, the mean citation rate in the U.S. is greater than in the EU in every one of the 22 fields studied. Thirdly, since standard indicators—such as normalized mean citation ratios—are silent about what takes place in different parts of the citation distribution, this paper compares the publication shares of the U.S. and the EU at every percentile of the world citation distribution in each field. It is found that in seven fields the initial gap between the U.S. and the EU widens as we advance towards the more cited articles, while in the remaining 15 fields—except for Agricultural Sciences—the U.S. always surpasses the EU when it counts, namely, at the upper tail of citation distributions. Finally, for all sciences as a whole the U.S. publication share becomes greater than that of the EU for the top 50% of the most highly cited articles. The data used refers to 3.6 million articles published in 1998–2002, and the more than 47 million citations they received in 1998–2007European Community's Seventh Framework ProgramPublicad

Countries pushing the boundaries of knowledge: the US dominance, China rise, and the EU stagnation

Knowing which countries contribute the most to pushing the boundaries of knowledge in science and technology has social and political importance. However, common citation metrics do not adequately measure this contribution. This measure requires more stringent metrics appropriate for the highly influential breakthrough papers that push the boundaries of knowledge, which are very highly cited but very rare. Here I used the recently described Rk index, specifically designed to address this issue. I applied this index to 25 countries and the EU across 10 key research topics, five technological and five biomedical, studying domestic and international collaborative papers independently. In technological topics, the Rk indices of domestic papers show that overall, the USA, China, and the EU are leaders; other countries are clearly behind. The USA is notably ahead of China, and the EU is far behind China. The same approach to biomedical topics shows an overwhelming dominance of the USA and that the EU is ahead of China. The analysis of internationally collaborative papers further demonstrates the US dominance. These results conflict with current country rankings based on less stringent indicators.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, 6 table

National Scientific Performance Evolution Patterns: Retrenchment, Successful Expansion, or Overextension

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor and Francis in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology on 17/11/2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23969 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.National governments would like to preside over an expanding and increasingly high impact science system but are these two goals largely independent or closely linked? This article investigates the relationship between changes in the share of the world’s scientific output and changes in relative citation impact for 2.6 million articles from 26 fields in the 25 countries with the most Scopus-indexed journal articles from 1996 to 2015. There is a negative correlation between expansion and relative citation impact but their relationship varies. China, Spain, Australia, and Poland were successful overall across the 26 fields, expanding both their share of the world’s output and its relative citation impact, whereas Japan, France, Sweden and Israel had decreased shares and relative citation impact. In contrast, the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, and Denmark all enjoyed increased relative citation impact despite a declining share of publications. Finally, India, South Korea, Brazil, Taiwan, and Turkey all experienced sustained expansion but a recent fall in relative citation impact. These results may partly reflect changes in the coverage of Scopus and the selection of fields

Research on tribology in Southeastern Europe: A bibliometric study

In recent years there is a small but increasing number of articles presenting and/or analyzing the scientific production from discrete geographical regions on a certain scientific topic. These articles applied the so-called bibliometric methods in order to evaluate the contribution of different countries in a scientific research field. In the present work, the research output of all countries in Southeastern Europe (SEE) on the scientific field of tribology is presented by using bibliometric indices such as the total number of publications and citations as well as the h-index and the average number of citations per publication. Such a study is attempted, to the authors' knowledge, for the first time

Research on tribology in Southeastern Europe: A bibliometric study

In recent years there is a small but increasing number of articles presenting and/or analyzing the scientific production from discrete geographical regions on a certain scientific topic. These articles applied the so-called bibliometric methods in order to evaluate the contribution of different countries in a scientific research field. In the present work, the research output of all countries in Southeastern Europe (SEE) on the scientific field of tribology is presented by using bibliometric indices such as the total number of publications and citations as well as the h-index and the average number of citations per publication. Such a study is attempted, to the authors' knowledge, for the first time

Average-based versus high-and low-impact indicators for the evaluation of scientific distributions

Albarran et al. (2011a) introduced a novel methodology for the evaluation of citation distributions consisting of a pair of high- and a low-impact measures defined over the set of articles with citations below or above a critical citation level CCL. Albarran et al. (2011b) presented the first empirical applications to a situation in which the world citation distribution in 22 scientific fields is partitioned into three geographical areas: the U.S., the European Union, and the rest of the world. In this paper, we compare our results with those obtained with average-based indicators. For reasonable CCLs, such as the 80th percentile of the world citation distribution in each field, the cardinal differences between the results obtained with our high-impact index and the mean citation rate are of a large order of magnitude. When, in addition, the percentage in the top 5% of most cited articles or the percentage of uncited articles are used, there are still important quantitative differences with respect to the high- and low-impact indicators advocated in our approach when the CCL is fixed at the 80th or the 95th percentile.

DEVELOPMENT OF NEW FORMS OF SPATIAL-INTERACTION NETWORKING: RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL CENTERS

Background: The article considers the features, types, and forms of the spatial interaction network that arise during forming and functioning of world-class scientific and educational centers. Aim: The authors determine development scenarios of new forms of spatial-interaction network, which involve interaction within the framework of a research and educational center, and the development of regional, interregional spatial interaction network between research and educational centers in priority areas of the development of the science and technology complex of Russia. Results: A presented model of the spatial interaction network within the framework of research and educational centers assumes the active participation of society in the innovative activities of research and educational centers through social networks and public associations. The features of regional and interregional spatial-interaction networks are considered, and the effectiveness of these spatial network collaborations is evaluated. Conclusion: A proposed model of the spatial interaction network of research and educational centers consists of three main blocks of the spatial interaction network of research and educational centers which contribute to the development of a single innovation space and the spread of innovations in the country.