Science and Technology Studies: Exploring the Knowledge Base

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is one of a number of new research fields to emerge over the last four or five decades. This paper attempts to identify its core academic contributions using the references that are most cited by the authors of chapters in a number of authoritative ‘handbooks’. The study then analyses the impact of these contributions by exploring the research fields, journals, and geographical location of the researchers that have cited these core contributions in their own work. Together, these two analyses reveal the various phases in the development of STS and the various aspects of convergence and divergence of the field as the quantitative studies of science and technology gradually separated from the main body of STS. The paper ends with some conclusions about the evolution of STS such as the role of ‘institution builders’ in developing new research fields and the structures required to hold them together.science studies, STS, knowledge base, handbooks, core contributions

Data extracted from PubMed records are not reliable

Bibliometrics on a research subject needs a careful selection of bibliographic records to be retrieved and downloaded. Whenever national production is evaluated or international output is compared, it is essential to have full information on institutional and country affiliation of every author. As Medline offers only the affiliation of the first author, it is mandatory to combine its results with other databases. Scopus is the obvious choice because it offers common elements in its data schema (such as PMID and Indexterms) and complete information on authors’ affiliation

Conducting pro-social research: cognitive diversity, research excellence and awareness about the social impact of research

Ingenio Working Paper SeriesWe propose the concept of pro-social research as reflecting the adoption of conducts that place social relevance as a critical goal of research. We argue that prosocial conducts represent a behavioural antecedent of the actual engagement of scientists in knowledge transfer activities. Our study investigates the impact that different cognitive aspects have on the development of pro-social research behaviour. In particular, we examine if certain types of research skills (i.e. cognitive diversity and research excellence) have a positive impact in shaping a pro-social research behaviour and, more critically, if they act as substitutes for prior experience in knowledge transfer activities. The main source of data comes from a large scale survey conducted on all scientists at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).N

Do University-Industry co-publication volumes correspond with university funding from business firms?

Trabajo presentado a la 19th Science and Technology Indicators Conference: "Context counts: Pathways to Master Big and Little Data" celebrada en leiden (Paises Bajos) del 3 al 9 de 2014.Analysts of university-industry interaction sometimes measure it through numbers of university-industry co-publications (UICs), because of their relative availability and international comparability. However, we do not know whether UICs correspond to a more direct measure of interaction: university funding from firms. We propose a conceptual model on four types of relationships between UICs and university funding from firms, emphasising the interactive nature of their relation. We test the model with UIC and income data from the Polytechnic University of Valencia at individual level: around 6-7% of researchers participating in projects with firms were authors of UICs published in 2008-2011; and around 27% of those UIC authors were participating in projects with firms during that period. Overall, we do not find evidence of any significant positive correlation between UIC output and university funding from the business sector in general. The one exception is a minority of authors who participate in business-funded projects, where we found a positive association of current UICs and business funding.Peer Reviewe

Do university-industry co-publication outputs correspond with university funding from firms?

[EN] Analysts of university-industry interaction sometimes measure it through numbers of university-industry co-publications (UICs), because of their relative availability and international comparability. However, we do not know whether UICs correspond to another measure of interaction: university funding from firms. We propose a conceptual model on four types of relationships between UICs and university funding from firms, emphasizing the interactive nature of their relation, e.g. not only funding can lead to UICs, but also UICs can signal competences that motivate funding. We test the model with UIC and income data from the Polytechnic University of Valencia at individual level: around 6-7% of researchers participating in projects with firms were authors of UICs published in 2008-11; and around 27% of those UIC authors were participating in projects with firms during that period. Overall, we do not find evidence of any significant positive correlation between UIC output and university funding from the business sector in general. The one exception is a minority of authors who participate in business-funded projects, where we find a positive association of current UICs and business funding.A.Y.Y. and R.J.W.T. received financial support from the CWTS-CHERPA research project (funded by the Netherlands Ministry for Education, Culture and Science).Yegros Yegros, A.; Azagra Caro, JM.; López Ferrer, MT.; Tijssen, RJ. (2016). Do university-industry co-publication outputs correspond with university funding from firms?. Research Evaluation. 25(2):136-150. doi:10.1093/reseval/rvv045S13615025

The many faces of mobility : using bibliometric data to measure the movement of scientists

This paper presents a methodological framework for developing scientific mobility indicators based on bibliometric data. We identify nearly 16 million individual authors from publications covered in the Web of Science for the 2008–2015 period. Based on the information provided across individuals’ publication records, we propose a general classification for analyzing scientific mobility using institutional affiliation changes. We distinguish between migrants--authors who have ruptures with their country of origin--and travelers--authors who gain additional affiliations while maintaining affiliation with their country of origin. We find that 3.7% of researchers who have published at least one paper over the period are mobile. Travelers represent 72.7% of all mobile scholars, but migrants have higher scientific impact. We apply this classification at the country level, expanding the classification to incorporate the directionality of scientists’ mobility (i.e., incoming and outgoing). We provide a brief analysis to highlight the utility of the proposed taxonomy to study scholarly mobility and discuss the implications for science policy

Does interdisciplinary research lead to higher citation impact? The different effect of proximal and distal interdisciplinarity

[EN] This article analyses the effect of degree of interdisciplinarity on the citation impact of individual publications for four different scientific fields. We operationalise interdisciplinarity as disciplinary diversity in the references of a publication, and rather than treating interdisciplinarity as a monodimensional property, we investigate the separate effect of different aspects of diversity on citation impact: i.e. variety, balance and disparity. We use a Tobit regression model to examine the effect of these properties of interdisciplinarity on citation impact, controlling for a range of variables associated with the characteristics of publications. We find that variety has a positive effect on impact, whereas balance and disparity have a negative effect. Our results further qualify the separate effect of these three aspects of diversity by pointing out that all three dimensions of interdisciplinarity display a curvilinear (inverted Ushape) relationship with citation impact. These findings can be interpreted in two different ways. On the one hand, they are consistent with the view that, while combining multiple fields has a positive effect in knowledge creation, successful research is better achieved through research efforts that draw on a relatively proximal range of fields, as distal interdisciplinary research might be too risky and more likely to fail. On the other hand, these results may be interpreted as suggesting that scientific audiences are reluctant to cite heterodox papers that mix highly disparate bodies of knowledge—thus giving less credit to publications that are too groundbreaking or challenging.Funding was provided by US National Science Foundation (Award #1064146 - "Revealing Innovation Pathways: Hybrid Science Maps for Technology Assessment and Foresight"), and EC Marie Curie Integration Grant.Yegros Yegros, A.; Rafols García, I.; Deste Cukierman, P. (2015). Does interdisciplinary research lead to higher citation impact? The different effect of proximal and distal interdisciplinarity. PLoS ONE. 10(8):1-21. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.01350S12110

A global map of technological inventions: mapping and characterizing SDG-related patent activity across the world

This chapter maps inventions that are of potential relevance for specific SDGs. Key findings include: • Only a tiny share (1.9%) of patented inventions between 2001 and 2017 were related to the SDGs • SDG-related inventions mainly focus on SDG 3, SDG 7 and SDG 6, and include market solutions such as drugs and solar panels • Most inventions are generated in high-income countries and in upper-middle income countries • Inventions filed in low-income countries often originate in higher-income countries • Most SDG-related inventions focus on a single SDG, with only a tiny fraction addressing synergies and trade-offs between SDGs • The use of patents can prevent others from using a particular innovation to address sustainability challenge