Douglas K.R. Robinson

Nano-enabled drug delivery: A research profile

UNLABELLED Nano-enabled drug delivery (NEDD) systems are rapidly emerging as a key area for nanotechnology application. Understanding the status and developmental prospects of this area around the world is important to determine research priorities, and to evaluate and direct progress. Global research publication and patent databases provide a reservoir of information that can be tapped to provide intelligence for such needs. Here, we present a process to allow for extraction of NEDD-related information from these databases by involving topical experts. This process incorporates in-depth analysis of NEDD literature review papers to identify key subsystems and major topics. We then use these to structure global analysis of NEDD research topical trends and collaborative patterns, inform future innovation directions. FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR This paper describes the process of how to derive nano-enabled drug delivery-related information from global research and patent databases in an effort to perform comprehensive global analysis of research trends and directions, along with collaborative patterns.

Constructive Technology Assessment and the Methodology of Insertion

Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA) started out (in the Netherlands in the late 1980s) as an attempt to broaden technology developments by including more aspects and more actors, and has been further positioned as a way to overcome the institutionalised division of labour between promotion and control of technology. For newly emerging technologies like nanotechnology, which live on promises, CTA has to address uncertain futures. It does so by analysing dynamics and emerging irreversibilities in a technology domain, identifying “endogenous futures” and creating socio-technical scenarios exploring what could happen. Such scenarios are a platform for interaction between stakeholders in strategy-articulation workshops. Organizing such workshops by CTA agents constitutes a soft intervention in ongoing developments, and contributes to make ongoing co-evolution of science, technology and society more reflexive. The CTA analyst inserts herself in ongoing developments in the domain that is being addressed, to identify what is at stake. This is not just data collection, but already interaction, as a knowledgeable visitor. Such a role has to be earned, for example by offering useful (but also critical) insights based on circulation in the domain and social-science analysis. This constitutes a methodology of inquiry-in-interaction, which increases reflexivity of the developments. It is an essential part of the CTA enterprise

Early insights on the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI): an overlay map-based bibliometric study

With rapid advances and diversifications in new fields of science and technology, new journals are emerging as a location for the exchange of research methods and findings in these burgeoning communities. These new journals are large in number and, in their early years, it is unclear how central these journals will be in the fields of science and technology. On one hand, these new journals offer valuable data sources for bibliometric scholars to understand and analyze emerging fields; on the other hand, how to identify important peer-reviewed journals remains a challenge—and one that is essential for funders, key opinion leaders, and evaluators to overcome. To fulfill growing demand, the Web of Science platform, as the world’s most trusted research publication and citation index, launched the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in November 2015 to extend the universe of journals already included in the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. This paper profiles ESCI, drawing some comparisons against these three established indexes in terms of two questions: (1) Does ESCI cover more regional journals of significant importance and provide a more balanced distribution of journals? (2) Does ESCI offer earlier visibility of emerging fields and trends through upgraded science overlay maps? The results show that the ESCI has a positive effect on research assessment and it accelerates communication in the scientific community. However, ESCI brings little impact to promoting the inferior role of non-English countries and regions. In addition, medical science, education research, social sciences, and humanities are emerging fields in recent research, reflected by the lower proportion of traditional fundamental disciplines and applied science journals included in ESCI. Furthermore, balancing the selection of journals across different research domains to facilitate cross-disciplinary research still needs further effort.

Nanodistricts: Between Global Nanotechnology Promises and Local Cluster Dynamics

Since the early 2000s, investment into research and development in the nanosciences and nanotechnologies has been increasing, leading to a diverse array of research centres, dedicated firms, and hubs around the world. They might be analysed as industrial districts, but there is still little actual production involved. In any case, they are sites to trace three local-global interactions (in nanotechnology as a domain of research and application) that have not always been looked at this way: (1) global promises and work towards realizing them; (2) technological platforms; (3) institutional entrepreneurs realizing things locally inspired by the global promise and using it as a resource. We might still speak of nanodistricts, but it would be a new kind of district compared with the classical Marshallian notion.

Workshops of the Sixth International Brain–Computer Interface Meeting: brain–computer interfaces past, present, and future

The Sixth International Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) Meeting was held 30 May–3 June 2016 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California, USA. The conference included 28 workshops covering topics in BCI and brain–machine interface research. Topics included BCI for specific populations or applications, advancing BCI research through use of specific signals or technological advances, and translational and commercial issues to bring both implanted and non-invasive BCIs to market. BCI research is growing and expanding in the breadth of its applications, the depth of knowledge it can produce, and the practical benefit it can provide both for those with physical impairments and the general public. Here we provide summaries of each workshop, illustrating the breadth and depth of BCI research and highlighting important issues and calls for action to support future research and development.

The European Marine Biological Research Infrastructure Cluster: An Alliance of European Research Infrastructures to Promote the Blue Bioeconomy

Marine biotechnology is the key to harness the huge economic potential of the unique biodiversity of marine organisms. This potential remains largely underexploited due to three major issues: (1) lack of connectivity between research services, (2) practical and cultural difficulties in connecting science with industry and (3) uneven regional development and innovation policies throughout Europe. The European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC) is a distributed Research Infrastructure (RI) with facilities located in renowned marine biological stations and institutes across Europe. On its way to become a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, EMBRC will be the reference RI for marine biology and ecology research. Yet, EMBRC recognizes the necessity to interface with other RIs to enable specialized workflow services in, e.g. chemical biology, bioinformatics and social sciences. The European Marine Biological Research Infrastructure Cluster (EMBRIC, INFRA DEV 4 2014–2015) was designed to connect EMBRC with cognate RI, i.e. MIRRI, EU-OPENSCREEN, ELIXIR and AQUAEXCEL. The cluster combines the RIs services into discovery pipelines through which academic and private research users can run their projects. EMBRIC also relies on the Integrating Activity of RISIS to analyse regional innovation ecosystems in marine biology and ecology and to develop a methodology to measure the impact of the project. The EMBRIC alliance provides workflows on a variety of marine bioresources, a strategy that will boost EMBRC expert centres into regional innovation clusters. This will reconcile the need for marrying scientific and technological excellence with territorial development, resulting in the promotion of the blue bioeconomy.

Devices of Responsibility: Over a Decade of Responsible Research and Innovation Initiatives for Nanotechnologies

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has come to represent a change in the relationship between science, technology and society. With origins in the democratisation of science, and the inclusion of ethical and societal aspects in research and development activities, RRI offers a means of integrating society and the research and innovation communities. In this article, we frame RRI activities through the lens of layers of science and technology governance as a means of characterising the context in which the RRI activity is positioned and the goal of those actors promoting the RRI activities in shaping overall governance patterns. RRI began to emerge during a time of considerable deliberation about the societal and governance challenges around nanotechnology, in which stakeholders were looking for new ways of integrating notions of responsibility in nanotechnology research and development. For this reason, this article focuses on nanotechnology as the site for exploring the evolution and growth of RRI.