The Geographical Deconcentration of Scientific Activity (1987-2007)

Texte intégral à l'adresse : http://sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Grossetti_Geographical_348.pdfTraditional research on "world cities" tends to develop the idea that large, inter-connected agglomerations can better take advantage of international competition. This suggests that we should observe an increasing concentration of activities in these cities at the expense of smaller ones. Among analyses using measures based on scientific publications, certain studies support this hypothesis. Others however, show that in certain countries such as China, an opposite trend is emerging; the largest cities are undergoing a relative decline in the country's scientific activities. To go beyond this seeming contradiction, this paper provides a global analysis of all countries having papers in Thomson Reuters 'Web of Science' over the period 1987-2007. The addresses -present in each article- were geo-coded and then grouped into agglomerations. The result of our analysis is unambiguous: deconcentration is clearly the dominant trend -both: globally and within countries-, despite some rare exceptions for which explanations are suggested

Factors Influencing Cities' Publishing Efficiency

Recently, a vast number of scientific publications have been produced in cities in emerging countries. It has long been observed that the publication output of Beijing has exceeded that of any other city in the world, including such leading centres of science as Boston, New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Researchers have suggested that, instead of focusing on cities' total publication output, the quality of the output in terms of the number of highly cited papers should be examined. However, in the period from 2014 to 2016, Beijing produced as many highly cited papers as Boston, London, or New York. In this paper, I propose another method to measure cities' publishing performance; I focus on cities' publishing efficiency (i.e., the ratio of highly cited articles to all articles produced in that city). First, I rank 554 cities based on their publishing efficiency, then I reveal some general factors influencing cities' publishing efficiency. The general factors examined in this paper are as follows: the linguistic environment, cities' economic development level, the location of excellent organisations, cities' international collaboration patterns, and the productivity of scientific disciplines

Az európai városok tudományos kibocsátásának feltérképezése: egy területi tudománymetria elemzés a Scopus adatbázis alapján

Napjainkban a tudomány látványos globalizációjával párhuzamosan fokozatosan gyarapodik a területi tudománymetriai kutatások száma is. Ezen kutatásoknak egy része a városok, vagy városrégiók tudományos kibocsátását vizsgálja különböző szempontok alapján, és arra keresnek választ, hogy mely városok nevezhetők a tudomány globális, regionális központjainak, és milyen tényezők állnak kiemelkedő tudományos kibocsátásuk hátterében. Ebben a cikkben a Scopus adatbázisban található adatok alapján azt vizsgálom meg, hogy 1986 és 2015 között, tehát egy 30 éves periódust figyelembe véve mekkora volt az európai városok tudományos kibocsátása, és milyen jellemező tendenciák mutathatók ki. Továbbá megvizsgálom, hogy a városoknak mely országokkal a legintenzívebb a nemzetközi együttműködése, és a városokban mely tudományterületeken történik a legnagyobb kibocsátás. Az elemzésbe 753 európai várost vontam be, a tudománymetriai adatokat pedig a szabadon elérhető GPS Visualizer program segítségével ábrázoltam térképen. Az eredmények azt mutatják, hogy Európa legnagyobb tudományos kibocsátással rendelkező városai a méretükben is legnagyobb metropoliszok (London, Párizs és Moszkva), a fővárosok (pl. Róma, Madrid, Berlin) és változó mértékben a tipikus egyetemi városok (Cambridge, Oxford, Heidelberg, stb.). A kibocsátás ütemében általában lassulás tapasztalható, ám egyes kelet-európia városok esetében (Moszkva, Kijev, Minszk) ez különösen látványos. Az Egyesült Államok hegemóniáját a tudományokban világosan tükrözi az a tény, hogy az európai városok kétharmadának az Egyesült Államok a legfontosabb együttműködő partnere, hiányában viszont a nyelvi és a történelmi szempontok jelentik a kapcsolódási pontot. A globális trendekkel összhangban, Európában is az orvostudományok a legnagyobb kibocsátással rendelkező tudományterület, ám földrajzi eloszlásában nem mutatható ki jellemző minta. Ezzel szemben más tudományterületeken a legnagyobb kibocsátással rendelkező városok földrajzi eloszlása mögött jól magyarázható okok húzódnak meg

On the challenges ahead of spatial scientometrics focusing on the city level

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Quantity versus quality in publication activity: knowledge production at the regional level

This study contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the balance between quality and quantity in research productivity and publication activity. Using empirical regional knowledge production functions, we establish a significant correlation between R&D spending and research output, specifically publication productivity, while controlling for patenting activity and socioeconomic factors. Our focus is on the dilemma of research quantity versus quality, which is analysed in the context of regional thematic specialization using spatial lags. When designing policies and making forecasts, it is important to consider the quality of research measured by established indicators. In this study, we examine the dual effect of research quality on publication activity. We identify two groups of quality factors: those related to the quality of journals and those related to the impact of publications. On average, these factors have different influences on quantitative measures. The quality of journals shows a negative relationship with quantity, indicating that as journal quality increases, the number of publications decreases. On the other hand, the impact of publications can be approximated by an inverse parabolic shape, with a positive decreasing slope within a common range of values. This duality in the relationship between quality factors and quantitative measures may explain some of the significant variations in conclusions found in the literature. We compare several models that explore factors influencing publication activity using a balanced panel dataset of Russian regions from 2009 to 2021. Additionally, we propose a novel approach using thematic scientometric parameters as a special type of proximity measure between regions in thematic space. Incorporating spatial spillovers in thematic space allows us to account for potential cross-sectional dependence in regional data

A spatial scientometric analysis of the publication output of cities worldwide

In tandem with the rapid globalisation of science, spatial scientometrics has become an important research sub-field in scientometric studies. Recently, numerous spatial scientometric contributions have focused on the examination of cities’ scientific output by using various scientometric indicators. In this paper, I analyse cities’ scientific output worldwide in terms of the number of journal articles indexed by the Scopus database, in the period from 1986 to 2015. Furthermore, I examine which countries are the most important collaborators of cities. Finally, I identify the most productive disciplines in each city. I use GPS Visualizer to illustrate the scientometric data of nearly 2,200 cities on maps. Results show that cities with the highest scientific output are mostly located in developed countries and China. Between 1986 and 2015, the greatest number of scientific articles were created in Beijing. The international hegemony of the United States in science has been described by many studies, and is also reinforced by the fact that the United States is the most important collaborator to more than 75 percent of all cities. Medicine is the most productive discipline in two-thirds of cities. Furthermore, cities having the highest scientific output in specific disciplines show well-defined geographical patterns