The effect of university–industry collaboration on the scientific impact of publications : the Canadian case, 1980–2005

Previous research on university-industry collaboration in Canada concluded, using mean impact factors as a proxy, that the scientific impact of such research is not inferior to that of university research. Using field-normalized impact factors and citation counts, this paper reexamines the Canadian case. It shows that, when impact factors are field-normalized, university-industry papers are published, on average, in journals with lower impact factors than papers originating from universities only. However, field-normalized citation values reveal the opposite: the average scientific impact of university-industry papers is significantly above that of both university-only papers and industry-only papers. Collaboration with industries is, thus far from detrimental to the scientific impact of university research and even increases it significantly

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

Cities and the geografical deconcentration of scientific activity : A multilevel analysis of publications (1987-2007)

International audienceMost current scientific policies incorporate debates on cities and the geographic organisation of scientific activity. Research on 'world cities' develops the idea that interconnected agglomerations can better take advantage of international competition. Thus, the increasing concentration of activities in these cities at the expense of others could be observed by certain scholars using measures based on scientific publications. Others, however, show that an opposite trend is emerging: the largest cities are undergoing a relative decline in a country's scientific activities. To go beyond this seeming contradiction, this paper provides a global analysis of all countries with papers in the Web of Science over the period 1987-2007. The author's addresses were geocoded and grouped into agglomerations. Registering of papers was based on the fractional counting of multi-authored publications, and the results are unambiguous: deconcentration is the dominant trend both globally and within countries, with some exceptions for which explanations are suggestedBeijing (Pékin), Tokyo, Paris, New York, Séoul, Londres... les grands foyers de la science pèsent moins que par le passé du fait d'une déconcentration géographique au niveau mondial. Tel est le résultat de l'analyse statistique systématique menée par des scientifiques du Laboratoire interdisciplinaire solidarités, sociétés, territoires (CNRS/Université de Toulouse II-Le Mirail/EHESS) sur des millions d'articles de publications scientifiques, édités entre 1987 et 2007 dans des milliers de revues scientifiques recensées par le Web of Science. Ces travaux sont les premiers à s'intéresser à la géographie de la science au niveau de l'ensemble des villes mondiales

Multi-level computational methods for interdisciplinary research in the HathiTrust Digital Library

We show how faceted search using a combination of traditional classification systems and mixed-membership topic models can go beyond keyword search to inform resource discovery, hypothesis formulation, and argument extraction for interdisciplinary research. Our test domain is the history and philosophy of scientific work on animal mind and cognition. The methods can be generalized to other research areas and ultimately support a system for semi-automatic identification of argument structures. We provide a case study for the application of the methods to the problem of identifying and extracting arguments about anthropomorphism during a critical period in the development of comparative psychology. We show how a combination of classification systems and mixed-membership models trained over large digital libraries can inform resource discovery in this domain. Through a novel approach of “drill-down” topic modeling—simultaneously reducing both the size of the corpus and the unit of analysis—we are able to reduce a large collection of fulltext volumes to a much smaller set of pages within six focal volumes containing arguments of interest to historians and philosophers of comparative psychology. The volumes identified in this way did not appear among the first ten results of the keyword search in the HathiTrust digital library and the pages bear the kind of “close reading” needed to generate original interpretations that is the heart of scholarly work in the humanities. Zooming back out, we provide a way to place the books onto a map of science originally constructed from very different data and for different purposes. The multilevel approach advances understanding of the intellectual and societal contexts in which writings are interpreted

L’impact de la taille des firmes industrielles sur la courbe de Kuznets environnementale : le cas des émissions de SO2 en Chine

L’intensité de pollution inférieure des firmes de grande taille et leurs moindres coûts marginaux de réduction des émissions demeurent un fait largement documenté dans la littérature empirique. En poursuivant les intuitions de Merlevede et al. (2006), nous examinons l’hypothèse qu’avec l’accroissement du développement économique, la présence de firmes industrielles de taille supérieure (en moyenne) devient négativement associée aux émissions de SO2 en raison de l’avantage comparatif des grandes firmes à réduire leurs émissions polluantes à un moindre coût marginal. La courbe de Kuznets environnementale (CKE) est l’instrument par lequel nous comparons l’impact de la présence de grandes firmes sur les émissions de SO2 par habitant pour 29 provinces et villes chinoises. Pour vérifier la robustesse des résultats, trois différents indicateurs de taille sont retenus. Même si les estimations tendent à confirmer que les firmes de grande taille sont associées à une meilleure performance environnementale, les résultats demeurent fortement sensibles au choix de la forme fonctionnelle