The nature and trends of agricultural research development in Africa : an informetric study

The study recognizes Agriculture as the mainstay activity of most economies in Africa and analyses research nature and trends in the discipline by using descriptive informetrics and focusing on seven indicators, by using the AGRICOLA and ISI-E databases from 1991 to 2005. We observed that research output in the discipline is much higher in South Africa and Kenya, and research collaboration is greater than non-collaborative research output and collaboration is less among African countries. The most popular research domains were found to exist in environmental science, soil science, plant/crop production and [agricultural] economics. Helpful conclusions and recommendations for an Agricultural policy, capacity and research orientation have been made

The structure of the Arts & Humanities Citation Index: A mapping on the basis of aggregated citations among 1,157 journals

Using the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) 2008, we apply mapping techniques previously developed for mapping journal structures in the Science and Social Science Citation Indices. Citation relations among the 110,718 records were aggregated at the level of 1,157 journals specific to the A&HCI, and the journal structures are questioned on whether a cognitive structure can be reconstructed and visualized. Both cosine-normalization (bottom up) and factor analysis (top down) suggest a division into approximately twelve subsets. The relations among these subsets are explored using various visualization techniques. However, we were not able to retrieve this structure using the ISI Subject Categories, including the 25 categories which are specific to the A&HCI. We discuss options for validation such as against the categories of the Humanities Indicators of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the panel structure of the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), and compare our results with the curriculum organization of the Humanities Section of the College of Letters and Sciences of UCLA as an example of institutional organization

Analysis of heterogeneous collaboration in the German research system with a focus on nanotechnology

The German research system is functionally differentiated into various institutional pillars, most importantly the university system and the extra-university sector including institutes of the Helmholtz Association, the Max Planck Society, the Leibniz Association and the Fraunhofer Society. While the research organisations heterogeneous institutional profiles are widely regarded as a key strength of the German research landscape, tendencies towards segmentation and institutional self-interests have increasingly impeded inter-institutional collaboration. Yet, in young and highly dynamic fields, many research breakthroughs are stimulated at the intersection of established scientific disciplines and across fundamental and applied technological research. Therefore, inter-institutional collaboration is an important dimension of the performance of the German research system. There is tension between the need for effective inter-institutional collaboration on the one hand, and the governance structures in the public research sector on the other hand. The paper presents preliminary results of an ongoing DFG project on collaborations between the various research institutions in Germany, particularly in the field of nano S&T. It introduces key facts of the German research system including institutional dynamics between 1990 and 2002. It discusses rationales for cooperative research relationships and elaborates on institutional factors that either facilitate or interfere with the transfer of knowledge and expertise between research organizations. For this purpose, the paper refers to a governance cube as a heuristic tool that captures three institutional dimensions which are important in facilitating heterogeneous research cooperation. --

On the significance of economic structure and regional innovation systems for the foundation of knowledge-intensive business services

The shift to new forms of knowledge creation reflects a remarkable increase in the number of knowledge-intensive business service firms (KIBS). KIBS are believed to be one of the main drivers of technological change and economic progress and can be described as users, carriers and sources of innovation (Miles et al. 1995). In addi-tion to macroeconomic implications, newly founded KIBS are considered to play an important role within regional production and innovation systems. As firm founders in early stages of their firms development mostly draw on regional resources and as KIBS acquire knowledge in the course of the interactive process that takes place when the service is provided, an intense interdependency between the regional economic, technological and institutional set-up and newly founded KIBS can be supposed. Within these processes of inter-relationship, proximity between the different actors of the particular innovation and production system clearly matters.However, as entrepreneurship research has hardly ever investigated KIBS and re-search into the role of KIBS in processes of regional change has just begun, this con-tribution analyses the inter-relationships between KIBS foundations and actors within the respective innovation and production system. In a qualitative and conceptual way, in-depth studies of three German metropolitan regions with regard to the foundation of KIBS will be outlined. The results indicate that the necessity to adapt regional structures goes hand in hand with an exploitation of regional knowledge and the crea-tion of bridging institutions in the shape of KIBS foundations. --

Cooperation with public research institutions and success in innovation: Evidence from France and Germany

We evaluate the impact of cooperation with public research institutions on firms' inno-vative activities in France and Germany, using data from the fourth Community Innova-tion Survey (CIS4). We propose an original econometric methodology, which explicitly takes into account potential estimation biases arising from self-selection and endoge-neity, and apply it to both process and product innovation. We find a positive effect of cooperation on both types of innovation. This effect is significant in both countries, but much higher in Germany than in France. Drawing on a comparison of the institutional context of cooperation across both countries, we interpret this difference as a conse-quence of the more diffusion-oriented German science policy. Finally, our robustness checks confirm the importance of controlling for selection and endogeneity. We show that these problems can be serious, and may lead to inconsistent estimates if ne-glected. --Public/private research partnerships,University/industry linkages,Innova-tiveness,Heckit procedure with endogenous regressors

"Needless to Say My Proposal Was Turned Down": The Early Days of Commercial Citation Indexing, an "Error-making" Activity and Its Repercussions Till Today

In today’s neoliberal audit cultures university rankings, quantitative evaluation of publications by JIF or researchers by h-index are believed to be indispensable instruments for “quality assurance” in the sciences. Yet there is increasing resistance against “impactitis” and “evaluitis”. Usually overseen: Trivial errors in Thomson Reuters’ citation indexes produce severe non-trivial effects: Their victims are authors, institutions, journals with names beyond the ASCII-code and scholars of humanities and social sciences. Analysing the “Joshua Lederberg Papers” I want to illuminate eventually successful ‘invention’ of science citation indexing is a product of contingent factors. To overcome severe resistance Eugene Garfield, the “father” of citation indexing, had to foster overoptimistic attitudes and to downplay the severe problems connected to global and multidisciplinary citation indexing. The difficulties to handle different formats of references and footnotes, non-Anglo-American names, and of publications in non-English languages were known to the pioneers of citation indexing. Nowadays the huge for-profit North-American media corporation Thomson Reuters is the owner of the citation databases founded by Garfield. Thomson Reuters’ influence on funding decisions, individual careers, departments, universities, disciplines and countries is immense and ambivalent. Huge technological systems show a heavy inertness. This insight of technology studies is applicable to the large citation indexes by Thomson Reuters, too

Co-authorship networks in Swiss political research

Co-authorship is an important indicator of scientific collaboration. Co-authorship networks are composed of sub-communities, and researchers can gain visibility by connecting these insulated subgroups. This article presents a comprehensive co-authorship network analysis of Swiss political science. Three levels are addressed: disciplinary cohesion and structure at large, communities, and the integrative capacity of individual researchers. The results suggest that collaboration exists across geographical and language borders even though different regions focus on complementary publication strategies. The subfield of public policy and administration has the highest integrative capacity. Co-authorship is a function of several factors, most importantly being in the same subfield. At the individual level, the analysis identifies researchers who belong to the “inner circle” of Swiss political science and who link different communities. In contrast to previous research, the analysis is based on the full set of publications of all political researchers employed in Switzerland in 2013, including past publications

Emergence of nano S&T in Germany : network formation and company performance

This article investigates the emergence of nano S&T in Germany. Using multiple longitudinal data sets, we describe the complete set of research institutions and companies that entered this science-based technology field and the development of their inter-organisational networks between 1991 and 2000. We demonstrate that the co-publication network is a core-periphery structure in which some companies were key players at an early stage of field formation, whereas later universities and other extra-university institutes took over as the central drivers of scientific progress. Further differentiating among types of firms and research organisations, we find that in the co-patent network collaboration is most intense between high-technology firms and use-inspired basic research institutes. While many companies co-patent with several universities or other public institutes, some succeed in establishing almost exclusive relationships with public research units. It is shown that co-patent and co-publication ties are most effective at strengthening the technological performance of firms, that multiple interaction channels increase company performance, and that companies benefit from collaborating with scientifically central universities and institutes. --nanotechnology,network analysis,company performance,public research sector,innovation system,science industry cooperation,Germany

Gender-specific patterns in patenting and publishing

It is the core argument of this paper that technological development in China is not suffering from a lack of innovative capacity or human resources, but from a mismatch of research supply and demand. It is suggested that the expansion of successful domestic knowledge generation beyond a limited number of highly publicised S&T 'mega projects' depends on an improved management system for the interface between public applied research and technological development. The empirical analy-sis brings together data on the Chinese innovation system with evidence from the electronics industry in Guangdong province. --