Bibliometric analysis of bioeconomy research in South Africa

This document provides an analysis of bioeconomy research in South Africa and it discusses sources of growth in the country’s bioeconomy literature in general. We performed bibliometric analysis as indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) for number of South African authored publications and citations in bioeconomy, and compared them with Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICS) and selected countries for the period 2008 to 2018. The WoS is used for research dealing with the scientific dynamic of a particular topic in most widely diffused journals and for citation analysis. The results highlight South Africa ranked last in the BRICS group in terms of number of bioeconomy publications produced in the selected period, and has a world share of 0.8%, which is higher than the national research average of 0.5%. The citations growth for South Africa bioeconomy publication increased by 6.8%, higher than Brazil, Russia and world citations during the period under review. The University of Cape Town is a leader in bioeconomy publications in South Africa followed by University of Stellenbosch and the University of KwaZulu Natal, with majority of the publications on environmental sciences ecology. South Africa collaborates the most with institutions from the United States of America in bioeconomy research, and the percent of international collaboration is similar with that of national scientific publications. However, South Africa experienced a decline in bioeconomy industry collaboration publications during this period.http://link.springer.com/journal/111922021-07-20hj2020Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM

Bibliometrics and scientometrics in India: An overview of studies during 1995-2014Part II: Contents of the articles in terms of disciplines and their bibliometric aspects

This part of the study highlights the contents of the published articles in terms of various disciplines or sub-disciplines and the bibliometric aspects discussed in these articles. The analysis of 902 papers published by Indian scholars during1995-2014 indicates that the main focus of bibliometrics/scientometrics is on assessment of science and technology in India in different sub-disciplines including contributions by Indian states and other individual countries followed by bibliometric analysis of individual journals. Papers dealing with bibliometric laws received a low priority as compared to other subdisciplines of bibliometrics/scientometrics. The analysis of data indicates that the share of theoretical studies using mathematical and statistical techniques which were missing in the earlier period (1970-1994) has increased during 1995-2014. The field of medicine as a discipline received the highest attention as compared to other disciplines

Chercheurs universitaires, financement et innovation : Comparaison entre nanotechnologie et biotechnologie

« RÉSUMÉ : L’implication des milieux industriels, académiques et gouvernementaux et leur collaboration sont devenues indispensables pour le développement de l’innovation en nanotechnologie et en biotechnologie. Gardant l’importance de ces liens en tête, notre étude évalue la portée du financement public et privé des chercheurs universitaires pour l’innovation en utilisant les flux monétaires provenant du Système d’information sur la recherche universitaire (SIRU) et des données de brevets extraites de la United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nous trouvons que les fonds octroyés, peu importe leur source, n’ont pas une grande incidence sur le nombre d’inventions brevetées. De plus, puisque le modèle d’innovation employé dans la biotechnologie est souvent utilisé comme référence pour innover en nanotechnologie, nous abordons une comparaison statistique de diverses mesures pour vérifier leur similarité. Les éléments compilés sont, entre autres, les intervalles de temps entre le dépôt et l’octroi du brevet, le nombre de chercheurs par brevet, les moyennes d’investissement financier par chercheur, le nombre de revendications, le nombre de citations, les moyennes des degrés d’application, etc. Le tout nous permet de voir que malgré certaines similarités, la nanotechnologie et la biotechnologie n’ont pas autant en commun que ce que l’on pourrait croire. Par ailleurs, nos résultats suggèrent que certains des facteurs définissant la qualité des brevets sont contradictoires. Nous menons une analyse économétrique pour évaluer l’impact du financement sur le brevetage et explorer cette divergence des mesures de qualité de brevets pour les inventeurs universitaires. Le tout se fait en tenant compte de la position du chercheur dans le réseau de collaboration académique, de ses affiliations universitaires et de ses caractéristiques personnelles. Nous trouvons que certains éléments favorisent le brevetage de la part d’universitaires en nanotechnologie et d’autres favorisent le brevetage en biotechnologie. Aussi, la qualité déterminée par le nombre de revendications associées à un brevet est dépendante de différents facteurs de celle associée au nombre de citations.»----------« ABSTRACT : The involvement of industry, academia and government and their interactions have become of great importance for innovation development in both nanotechnology and biotechnology. Keeping this in mind, using funding data provided by the Système d’information sur la recherche universitaire (SIRU) and patenting data extracted from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), our study evaluates the importance of private and public funding of university researchers for innovation. We find that awarded funds, whether they are of a public or private origin, do not have much of an effect on subsequent patenting. Furthermore, since the innovation model used in biotechnology is often taken as a reference for efficient innovation in nanotechnology, we compile comparison statistics of various metrics to verify their similarity. Some of the compiled measures include: time intervals between patent application and granting, the number of researchers per patent, the average financial investment per researcher, the number of claims associated to each patent, the number of forward citations, the degree of application, etc. This enables us to see that despite their similarities, nanotechnology and biotechnology do not have as much in common as one might think. Moreover our results suggest contradictory findings as far as quality indicators are concerned, underlining a potential unreliability of one or the other. We conduct an econometric analysis to evaluate the impact of funding on university researcher patenting and to obtain better insight into this divergence of patent quality indicators. In doing this, we also take into account the researcher’s position in the academic network, university affiliations and other personal characteristics. We find that certain factors increase innovation output of university researchers in nanotechnology, while others are more useful for innovation in biotechnology. Also the quality of a patent as defined by its claims depends on certain key points that differ from the quality associated with its citation rate.