IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aeg/report/2013-010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Quantitative Measure to Compare the Disciplinary Profiles of Research Systems and Their Evolution Over Time

Author

Listed:
  • Irene Bongioanni

    (Department of Physics, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza")

  • Cinzia Daraio

    (Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza")

  • Giancarlo Ruocco

    (Department of Physics, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza")

Abstract

We model Science and Technology (S&T) systems as complex systems and propose to use the mathematical tools developed within the spin-glasses literature to evaluate similarity within systems and between systems in a unified manner. Our measure is based on the ‘overlap’ of disciplinary profiles of a set of S&T systems. The investigation of the distribution of the overlaps provides useful insights on the dynamics of the general system, that is whether it converges towards a unique disciplinary structure or to a differentiated pattern. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach by investigating the dynamics of disciplinary profiles of European countries from 1996 to 2011. We analyse several bibliometric indicators (including publications and citations) of European countries in the 27 Scopus subject categories. We compare the disciplinary profiles of European countries i) among them; ii) with respect to the European standard; and iii) to the World reference. We find that there is a convergence towards a unique European disciplinary profile of the scientific production even if large differences in the scientific profiles still remain. The investigation of the dynamics by year shows that developing countries are converging towards the European model whilst some developed countries are departing from it.

Suggested Citation

  • Irene Bongioanni & Cinzia Daraio & Giancarlo Ruocco, 2013. "A Quantitative Measure to Compare the Disciplinary Profiles of Research Systems and Their Evolution Over Time," DIAG Technical Reports 2013-010, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    • Handle: RePEc:aeg:report:2013-010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.dis.uniroma1.it/~bibdis/RePEc/aeg/report/2013-10.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2013
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andy Stirling, 2007. "A General Framework for Analysing Diversity in Science, Technology and Society," SPRU Working Paper Series 156, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    2. Qiuju Zhou & Ronald Rousseau & Liying Yang & Ting Yue & Guoliang Yang, 2012. "A general framework for describing diversity within systems and similarity between systems with applications in informetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 93(3), pages 787-812, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maxim Kotsemir & Tatiana Kuznetsova & Elena Nasybulina & Anna Pikalova, 2015. "Identifying Directions for Russia’s Science and Technology Cooperation," Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), National Research University Higher School of Economics, vol. 9(4), pages 54-72.
      • Maxim Kotsemir & Tatiana Kuznetsova & Elena Nasybulina & Anna Pikalova, 2015. "Identifying Directions for Russia’s Science and Technology Cooperation," Foresight-Russia Форсайт, CyberLeninka;Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики», vol. 9(4 (eng)), pages 54-72.
    2. Maxim N. Kotsemir & Tatiana E. Kuznetsova & Elena G. Nasybulina & Anna G. Pikalova, 2015. "Empirical Analysis of Multinational S&T Collaboration Priorities –The Case of Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 53/STI/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lin Zhang & Ronald Rousseau & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2016. "Diversity of references as an indicator of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Taking similarity between subject fields into account," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(5), pages 1257-1265, May.
    2. Ronald Rousseau, 2018. "The repeat rate: from Hirschman to Stirling," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 645-653, July.
    3. Yury Dranev & Maxim Kotsemir & Boris Syomin, 2018. "Diversity of research publications: relation to agricultural productivity and possible implications for STI policy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1565-1587, September.
    4. Kim, Hyeyoung & Park, Hyelin & Song, Min, 2022. "Developing a topic-driven method for interdisciplinarity analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    5. Andrea Zielinski, 2022. "Impact of model settings on the text-based Rao diversity index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7751-7768, December.
    6. Bongioanni, Irene & Daraio, Cinzia & Ruocco, Giancarlo, 2014. "A quantitative measure to compare the disciplinary profiles of research systems and their evolution over time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 710-727.
    7. Xuefeng Wang & Zhinan Wang & Ying Huang & Yun Chen & Yi Zhang & Huichao Ren & Rongrong Li & Jinhui Pang, 2017. "Measuring interdisciplinarity of a research system: detecting distinction between publication categories and citation categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 2023-2039, June.
    8. Loet Leydesdorff, 2018. "Diversity and interdisciplinarity: how can one distinguish and recombine disparity, variety, and balance?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2113-2121, September.
    9. Loet Leydesdorff, 2015. "Can technology life-cycles be indicated by diversity in patent classifications? The crucial role of variety," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 1441-1451, December.
    10. Gangan Prathap, 2019. "Balance: a thermodynamic perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(1), pages 247-255, April.
    11. Sander Zwanenburg & Maryam Nakhoda & Peter Whigham, 2022. "Toward greater consistency and validity in measuring interdisciplinarity: a systematic and conceptual evaluation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 7769-7788, December.
    12. Stephen Carley & Alan L. Porter, 2012. "A forward diversity index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(2), pages 407-427, February.
    13. Jian Xu & Yi Bu & Ying Ding & Sinan Yang & Hongli Zhang & Chen Yu & Lin Sun, 2018. "Understanding the formation of interdisciplinary research from the perspective of keyword evolution: a case study on joint attention," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(2), pages 973-995, November.
    14. Diego Chavarro & Puay Tang & Ismael Rafols, 2014. "Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 195-209.
    15. Su, Hsin-Ning & Moaniba, Igam M., 2017. "Investigating the dynamics of interdisciplinary evolution in technology developments," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 12-23.
    16. Loet Leydesdorff & Dieter Franz Kogler & Bowen Yan, 2017. "Mapping patent classifications: portfolio and statistical analysis, and the comparison of strengths and weaknesses," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1573-1591, September.
    17. Filippo Corsini & Rafael Laurenti & Franziska Meinherz & Francesco Paolo Appio & Luca Mora, 2019. "The Advent of Practice Theories in Research on Sustainable Consumption: Past, Current and Future Directions of the Field," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, January.
    18. Lorenz, Steffi, 2015. "Diversität und Verbundenheit der unternehmerischen Wissensbasis: Ein neuartiger Messansatz mit Indikatoren aus Innovationsprojekten," Discussion Papers on Strategy and Innovation 15-01, Philipps-University Marburg, Department of Technology and Innovation Management (TIM).
    19. Battke, Benedikt & Schmidt, Tobias S. & Stollenwerk, Stephan & Hoffmann, Volker H., 2016. "Internal or external spillovers—Which kind of knowledge is more likely to flow within or across technologies," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 27-41.
    20. Timo Boppart & Kevin E. Staub, 2012. "Online accessibility of academic articles and the diversity of economics," ECON - Working Papers 075, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    diversity/similarity; disciplinary profiles; spin glasses; overlap; overlap distribution; European science;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aeg:report:2013-010. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Antonietta Angelica Zucconi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dirosit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.