This paper studies Spanish scientific production in Economics from 1994 to 2004. It focuses on aspects that have received little attention in other bibliometric studies, such as the impact of research and the role of scientific collaborations in the publications produced by Spanish universities. Our results show that national research networks have played a fundamental role in the increase in Spanish scientific production in this discipline.Bibliometric techniques, scientific production in Economics, research networks.

Juan Carlos Duque

Raul Ramos

Vicente Royuela

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
 
 
 
 
Institut  de Recerca en Economia Aplicada 2007                            Documents de Treball  2007/01, 10 pages 
 
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Research networks and scientific production 
in Economics: The recent Spanish Experience 
 
 
 
Juan Carlos Duque
a, Raúl Ramos
b, Vicente Royuela
c 
 
a Regional Analysis Laboratory (REGAL), Department of Geography, San Diego State 
University. Email:jduque@rohan.sdsu.edu 
 
b Corresponding author. 
Grup d’Anàlisi Quantitativa Regional (AQR-IREA), Universitat de Barcelona 
Departament d’Econometria, Estadística i Economia Espanyola 
Avda. Diagonal, 690. 08034 Barcelona (Spain) 
Tel. +34934024310 Fax. +34 934021821. Email: rramos@ub.edu  
 
c Grup d’Anàlisi Quantitativa Regional (AQR-IREA), Universitat de Barcelona. 
Email: vroyuela@ub.edu 
 
 
 
Abstract. 
This paper studies Spanish scientific production in Economics from 
1994 to 2004. It focuses on aspects that have received little attention 
in other bibliometric studies, such as the impact of research and the 
role of scientific collaborations in the publications produced by 
Spanish universities. Our results show that national research 
networks have played a fundamental role in the increase in Spanish 
scientific production in this discipline. 
 
Keywords. 
Bibliometric techniques, scientific production in Economics, 
research networks. 
  
 
 
 
 
Institut  de Recerca en Economia Aplicada 2007                            Documents de Treball  2007/01, 10 pages 
 
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Research networks and scientific production in Economics: The recent 
Spanish experience 
 
 
1. Introduction and objectives 
 
According to data from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), in 1995 Spanish 
research in Economics represented 1.76% of worldwide production. This figure rose to 
2.64% by 2005. Previous studies have noted Spain’s upward trend in economic production, 
but few have analysed the impact of this research and its determinants (Ramos et al., 2007). 
The main aim of this paper is to analyse the role of scientific collaborations on rates of 
publication. To do so, we first provide new evidence on the impact of the scientific 
production by Spanish universities and then test the importance of research networks in this 
activity. Our claim is that research networks (national and international) have played a key 
part in the increase in Spanish scientific production in Economics. 
 
To test our claim, we collected information on articles published by authors affiliated to 
Spanish universities between 1994 and 2004, and on the citations received by these articles. 
The data were obtained from the ISI Web of Knowledge. In particular, we focused on 
refereed articles published in journals that have appeared in at least one year of our period 
in the Social Science Citation Index database under at least one of the following categories 
of the "aim and scopes" section: demography, economics, environmental studies, 
geography, planning and development, transportation and urban studies, and where at least 
one co-author reported an affiliation to one of the 62 Spanish universities offering degrees 
in Economics or Management programs. We thus obtained a data set of 2,631 articles from 
54 of the 62 universities. In this period, 1,204 of these articles were cited by 7,699 other 
articles. This means that Spanish scientific production in Economics received 2.93 citations 
per published article, a figure some way below the worldwide average of citations per 
article in this period (4.73). 
  
 
 
 
 
Institut  de Recerca en Economia Aplicada 2007                            Documents de Treball  2007/01, 10 pages 
 
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In the following section we provide evidence of the impact and diffusion of Spanish 
research in Economics between 1994 and 2005. The third section focuses on the role of 
research networks as one of the potential explanatory factors of the increase in Spanish 
research. 
 
 
2. The impact of Spanish research in Economics 
 
As we noted in the introduction, the impact of Spanish research (measured as the number of 
citations per published paper) improved between 1994 and 2005, but it was still below 
international standards. However, the impact of research can also be estimated using other 
indicators. First, to broaden our understanding of the citations generated by Spanish 
publications, for each year we calculated immediacy – the average year when the articles 
started to be cited – and life of the article – the average year when the articles generated 
their last citation. The results are shown in figure 1. 
 
FIGURE 1 
 
Two interesting findings emerge from this figure. First, the time between the year of 
publication and the moment when the article starts to generate citations fell dramatically 
over the period analysed, from around three years in the mid-nineteen nineties to less than 
half a year by the end. There are many factors that might explain this trend; the large-scale 
development of communication media such as the Internet; the availability of articles in 
electronic format before they are published on paper; and the increase in the number of 
databases that facilitate access to publications all over the world. The second finding is that 
the time between the first and the last citation tends to be shorter. It is clear that articles 
published in recent years are at a disadvantage with respect to articles published at the 
beginning of the period analysed. In order to reduce the effects of the cutting year, we 
included articles published until 2004 and citations received until 2005. 
  
 
 
 
 
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A second indicator of the impact and diffusion of the research is the geographical origin of 
citations. We analysed the country of the institutions included in the 7,699 articles that have 
cited at least one Spanish contribution published between 1994 and 2004. Eighty-three 
countries have cited Spanish contributions between 1994 and 2005. Sixty-six per cent of 
the citations are concentrated in three countries: 29.0% of the citations are generated by 
institutions in the US, 21.4% by Spanish institutions, and 15.5% by British institutions. 
Figure 2 shows the 83 countries categorized by level of citations.  
 
FIGURE 2 
 
The analysis of citations over time provides interesting results. The list of countries that cite 
Spanish contributions increased from 38 between 1994 and 1999 to 82 between 2000 and 
2004, and the total number of citations more than doubled: 2,433 between 1994 and 1999 
and 5,266 between 2000 and 2004.  
 
Summarizing, the results in this section indicate that Spanish research in Economics has 
increased both from a quantitative point of view (i.e. more articles) and from a qualitative 
perspective (i.e. more citations, higher immediacy, and broader geographical scope). 
 
 
3. The role of research networks 
 
Collaborative networks represent an important component in the process of scientific 
production. Articles derived from interdisciplinary cooperation tend to increase the quality, 
impact and diffusion of a study. For example, Sutter and Kocher (2004) analyse the effects 
of collaborations with other institutions in departments of Economics in American 
universities and concluded that these collaborations have a significant impact on scientific 
production. Has this also been the case in Spanish research? 
  
 
 
 
 
Institut  de Recerca en Economia Aplicada 2007                            Documents de Treball  2007/01, 10 pages 
 
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Table 1 shows the number of published articles by subperiods (1994-1999 and 2000-2004) 
and the share of co-authored articles, distinguishing between those deriving from 
international collaborations, those from collaborations with other Spanish institutions and 
those from collaborations within the same institution. As the table shows, the increase in 
published articles is accompanied by an increase in co-authored articles. Between 1994 and 
1999, most relevant collaborations were with other Spanish institutions and this was also 
the case between 2000 and 2004, although there was a slight fall in relative terms. 
International collaborations and collaborations within the same institution are the reason for  
the increase in total collaborations. 
 
TABLE 1 
 
To establish whether the increase observed in scientific production by Spanish universities 
can be attributed to a higher participation in research networks, we estimated a panel data 
model with the number of published articles per university and period as the endogenous 
variable. To avoid excessive variation in yearly data, we estimated the panel aggregating 
the information into four subperiods (1994-95, 1996-98, 1999-2001 and 2002-04). The 
model was specified as follows: 
 
  ij ij ij V Y Y U U X Y + + + + ⋅ + + ⋅ + ⋅ = − − 04 02 4 95 94 1 54 54 1 1 · ... · ... γ γ α α β  (1) 
 
where Yij is the number of published articles by university i in each subperiod j, Xij is the 
number of co-authored articles produced by university i in subperiod j (within the same 
institution or with other Spanish or international institutions), and Ui and Yj are dummies 
accounting respectively for university and time fixed effects. Finally Vij includes all non-
observable characteristics. The OLS estimates of model (1) are shown in table 2. As we see 
in column 1 of table 2, the coefficient associated with co-authored articles is positive and 
statistically significant. The results in column 2 show the relative importance of 
international collaborations and collaborations with other Spanish institutions and within 
the same institution. The associated coefficients are, again, positive and statistically  
 
 
 
 
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significant. In all cases the coefficients are significantly higher than one. The results 
obtained with this model show that the positive impact of collaborations varies depending 
on the type: collaborations between different universities have a greater impact on the 
production level than those carried out within the same university.  
 
TABLE 2 
 
Collaborations with other Spanish universities have the highest coefficient in the 
disaggregated model. It is particularly interesting to look at the shape of these networks. 
Figures 3, 4 and 5 describe the networks, with nodes representing universities and links 
indicating collaborations in more than two articles between 1994 and 2004 (figure 3), and 
for the subperiods 1994-1999 and 2000-2004 (figures 4 and 5 respectively). Four 
universities stand out in figure 3 as important "collaborative nodes": Universidad Carlos III 
de Madrid (UC3M), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Universidad Complutense 
de Madrid (UCM) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Some links that show a strong 
relationship between pairs of universities, for example between Universidad de Zaragoza 
(UNIZAR) and Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPN) with 17 joint articles, between 
Universidad Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and Universidad Carlos III (UC3M) with 12, and 
between Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and Universidad Carlos III (UC3M) 
with ten. 
 
A comparison between figures 4 and 5 indicates that these collaborations were more intense 
during the period 2000-2004. Between 1994 and 1999 only eight universities participated in 
collaborative publications. Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPN) and Universidad de 
Zaragoza (UNIZAR) are the most prolific overall, with eight collaborations. The network 
looks very different for the period 2000-2004, where the relationships between universities 
become more intricate and intense; however the universities which stood out initially 
maintain their predominant positions. This reinforces the argument of the key role of 
collaborations in the production of scientific articles. 
  
 
 
 
 
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4. Acknowledgements 
 
Authors wish to thank Jordi Suriñach for his helpful suggestions and comments. The usual 
disclaimer applies. The results presented in this study were partially obtained within the 
framework of the project “The impact of Spanish scientific publications on Economics and 
Business: A bibliometric analysis” (EA2005-0142) by the Spanish Ministry of Education 
and Science. Raúl Ramos and Vicente Royuela also acknowledge the support of CICYT 
SEJ2005-04348/ECON and SEJ2006-07665 projects respectively. 
 
 
5. References 
 
Ramos, R., Royuela, V., Suriñach, J. (2007), “An analysis of the determinants in 
Economics and Business publications by Spanish Universities between 1994 and 2004”, 
Scientometrics, 71 (1), forthcoming. 
Sutter, M., Kocher, M. (2004), “Patterns of co-authorship among economics departments in 
the USA”, Applied Economics, 36, pp. 327-333. 
  
 
 
 
 
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6. Tables and figures 
 
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of research collaborations 
 1994-2004  1994-1999  2000-2004 
Published  articles  2631 797 1834 
Co-authored articles  73.5%  66.4%  76.6% 
International collaborations  25.2%  21.5%  26.8% 
Collaborations with other Spanish institutions  29.5%  29.7%  29.4% 
Collaborations within the same institution  18.7%  15.2%  20.3% 
 
Table 2. Panel estimates of model (1) 
 Published  articles 
Share of co-authored articles  1.208   
 (0.021)   
Share of international collaborations    1.233 
   (0.041) 
Share of collaborations with other Spanish institutions    1.304 
   (0.076) 
Share of collaborations within the same institution    1.139 
   (0.047) 
Adjusted R2  0.9859  0.9858 
Estimated coefficients and standard errors in parentheses. All models include time and 
university-fixed effects. 
 
Figure 1. Publication year and average year when the 
articles receive their first and last citation 
 
Note: The lower end of the vertical line indicates the publication year, the lower edge of the 
rectangle indicates the average year when the contributions start generating citations, and the upper 
edge of the rectangle indicates the average last year in which the contributions generate the last 
citation.  
 
 
 
 
Institut  de Recerca en Economia Aplicada 2007                            Documents de Treball  2007/01, 10 pages 
 
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Figure 2. Countries that have cited Spanish contributions 
 
 
Figure 3. Coauthorship networks of scientific collaborations 
between Spanish universities (1994-2004) 
  
 
 
 
 
Institut  de Recerca en Economia Aplicada 2007                            Documents de Treball  2007/01, 10 pages 
 
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Figure 4. Co-authorship networks of scientific collaborations 
between Spanish universities (1994-1999) 
 
 
Figure 5. Co-authorship networks of scientific collaborations 
between Spanish universities (2000-2004) 
 
 

An analysis of the determinants

Patterns of co-authorship among economics departments in the USA”,

Recerca en Economia Aplicada

Research networks and scientific production in Economics, The recent Spanish Experience.

http://www.ub.edu/irea/working_papers/2007/200701.pdf

Research networks and scientific production in Economics, The recent Spanish Experience.

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