Analysing Institutions Interdisciplinarity by Extensive Use of Rao-Stirling Diversity Index

<div><p>This paper shows how the Rao-Stirling diversity index may be extensively used for positioning and comparing institutions interdisciplinary practices. Two decompositions of this index make it possible to explore different components of the diversity of the cited references in a corpus of publications. The paper aims at demonstrating how these bibliometric tools can be used for comparing institutions in a research field by highlighting collaboration orientations and institutions strategies. To make the method available and easy to use for indicator users, this paper first recalls a previous result on the decomposition of the Rao-Stirling index into multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity components, then proposes a new decomposition to further explore the profile of research collaborations and finally presents an application to Neuroscience research in French universities.</p></div

Article interdisciplinarity index <i>STa</i> and number of citations in a 3 year window for Aix-Marseille, Strasbourg and Paris 7 Universities.

<p>Displayed articles are in the top 20% percentile of the most cited publications. A polynomial curve with degree 3 is fitted for each university.</p

Contributions of categories to the overall interdisciplinarity indicator for Aix-Marseille, Strasbourg and Paris 7 universities.

<p>Contributions of categories to the overall interdisciplinarity indicator for Aix-Marseille, Strasbourg and Paris 7 universities.</p

Number of publications with identified research units for Aix-Marseille, Strasbourg and Paris 7 Universities.

<p>Number of publications with identified research units for Aix-Marseille, Strasbourg and Paris 7 Universities.</p

Average number of citations for University publications related with their <i>within</i> interdisciplinarity index.

<p>A fixed citation window of three year is chosen for citation counts. Citation counts are available in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0170296#pone.0170296.s003" target="_blank">S1 Table</a>.</p

Statistics for the comparison of universities interdisciplinarity indicators.

<p>Statistics for the comparison of universities interdisciplinarity indicators.</p

Comparison of category contributions for 8 universities.

<p>Red cells correspond to positive values of the centred contributions, while blue cells correspond to negative values. White cells correspond to contributions with p-values larger than 0.1. Categories are displayed only if the centred contribution is greater than 0.5 or smaller than -0.5 for at least one of the eight universities. Data in <i>data_integer/stat_results</i> files in <a href="https://github.com/turckheim/interdisciplinarity" target="_blank">https://github.com/turckheim/interdisciplinarity</a>.</p

Overall Interdisciplinarity index for 8 French universities.

<p>Indexes are centred on the world indexes and multiplied by 100.</p

Interdisciplinarity centred indicators and their standard errors for 8 French universities, Neuroscience, 2008–2012.

<p>Interdisciplinarity centred indicators and their standard errors for 8 French universities, Neuroscience, 2008–2012.</p

Overlay maps of reference categories in Neuroscience publications A: Aix-Marseille, B: Strasbourg and C: Paris 7.

<p>Bubble sizes are proportional to the absolute value of the (world centred) contribution of each category, red when the university contribution is larger than the world, blue if it is smaller. Categories are labelled if their contribution is significantly different from the world (level 1%). Input data for VOSviewer in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0170296#pone.0170296.s005" target="_blank">S2 Table</a>.</p