Fernanda Morillo

An approach to interdisciplinarity through bibliometric indicators

Interdisciplinarity has become of increasing interest in science in the past few years. Thispaper is a case study in the area of Chemistry, in which a series of different bibliometric indicatorsfor measuring interdisciplinarity are presented. The following indicators are analysed: a) ISI multiclassificationof journals in categories, b) patterns of citations and references outside category andc) multi-assignation of documents in Chemical Abstracts sections. Convergence between thedifferent indicators is studied. Depending on the size of the unit analysed (area, category orjournal) the most appropriate indicators are determined.

Analysis of Cross-Disciplinary Research Through Bibliometric Tools

A review of interdisciplinarity in science is presented from the point of view of quantitative studies of science. The main objectives pursued and methodologies used in publications on cross-disciplinary research are pointed out, as well as the most relevant results obtained. The study of cross-disciplinary collaboration between authors, co-classification analysis, interdisciplinary nature of publication journals and cross-disciplinary references and/or citations are the most useful approaches to the topic. Results about a global analysis of scientific areas and disciplines based on ISI multi-assignation indicators are presented.

Structure and research performance of Spanish universities

The aim of this paper is to describe Spanish universities by means of structural, input and output indicators, to explore the relationship between those indicators and to analyse university behaviour in different dimensions. Seniority of the universities and environmental conditions are taken into account, together with input and output indicators, as well as others related to the networks and links established. Our results will contribute to the knowledge of the university research system in Spain, producing data that could be useful for research management at the institutional, regional and national level.

Towards the automation of address identification

A new semi-automatic method is presented to standardize or codify addresses, in order to produce bibliometric indicators from bibliographic databases. The hypothesis is that this new method is very trustworthy to normalize authors’ addresses, easy and quick to obtain. As a way to test the method, a set of already hand-coded data is chosen to verify its reliability: 136,821 Spanish documents (2006–2008) downloaded previously from the Web of Science database. Unique addresses from this set were selected to produce a list of keywords representing various institutional sectors. Once the list of terms is obtained, addresses are standardized with this information and the result is compared to the previous hand-coded data. Some tests are done to analyze possible association between both systems (automatic and hand-coding), calculating measures of recall and precision, and some statistical directional and symmetric measures. The outcome shows a good relation between both methods. Although these results are quite general, this overview of institutional sectors is a good way to develop a second approach for the selection of particular centers. This system has some new features because it provides a method based on the previous non-existence of master lists or tables and it has a certain impact on the automation of tasks. The validity of the hypothesis has been proved taking into account not only the statistical measures, but also considering that the obtaining of general and detailed scientific output is less time-consuming and will be even less due to the feedback of these master tables reused for the same kind of data. The same method could be used with any country and/or database creating a new master list taking into account their specific characteristics.

Do networking centres perform better? An exploratory analysis in Psychiatry and Gastroenterology/Hepatology in Spain

Science has become progressively more complex, requiring greater integration and collaboration between individuals, institutions and areas. Networking research establishes common rules and offers a suitable framework for this cooperation. Therefore, it is a good choice for both scientists and policy-makers. The objective of this study is to know whether the scientists perform better within these structures than outside them. As an example, we analysed the Biomedical Research Networking Centres in Spain and, for the exploratory investigation, we selected two disciplines (Psychiatry and Gastroenterology/Hepatology). The results showed that in every situation of networking research there were higher collaboration and impact rates. Furthermore, the main differences found between disciplines were related to the scope of cooperation, carried out at a more local level in Gastroenterology/Hepatology. Besides, HJ-Biplot technique allowed us to conclude that the outcomes may vary somewhat depending on the types of centres where the scientists work. Although further investigation is needed, the findings of this study might anticipate possible scenarios in which networking research could be the most natural way of collaboration.

Internacionalización de la producción científica de España en Radiología y Neuroimagen (1996-2003)

Se desea analizar la situacion de la investigacion en Radiologia en Espana a traves de las publicaciones de autores espanoles en revistas de amplia difusion internacional. Se analiza la produccion cientifica de Espana en revistas recogidas por la base de datos Science Citation Index (SCI) en los temas de Radiologia, Medicina Nuclear y de la Imagen y «Neuroimagen» durante los anos 1996-2003. Durante dicho periodo la produccion ascendio a 1.562 documentos (3,5% de la Medicina Clinica espanola), y experimento un incremento superior al mostrado por el total del pais (40% frente al 24%). Se observa una concentracion de la produccion en las comunidades de Cataluna (35%), Madrid (28%) y Comunidad Valenciana (10%). Al relativizar la produccion segun la poblacion, destacan las comunidades de Navarra y Cantabria con una alta produccion relativa. El sector sanitario es el mas activo, destacando el Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, el Hospital Clinic de Barcelona y la Ciutat Sanitaria Vall D’Hebron de Barcelona, que no solo tienen la mayor produccion sino que ademas publican en revistas de mas factor de impacto que el promedio del pais. Entre los centros no hospitalarios destacan el Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas y la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Se observa una alta actividad en colaboracion: 68% de los documentos cuentan con mas de 1 centro, en el 20% participa algun centro extranjero, y los documentos estan firmados por una media de 6 autores. Los datos senalan que la Radiologia espanola esta experimentando una creciente internacionalizacion, que sin embargo esta todavia en una fase inicial, siendo el porcentaje de documentos publicados en las revistas mas prestigiosas de la especialidad inferior al observado en otras disciplinas. La actividad e impacto relativos de Espana en el area estan todavia ligeramente por debajo de los correspondientes al promedio de la UE, pero el pais muestra una tendencia ascendente en su produccion e impacto.

Regionalisation of science and technology data in Spain

The scientific and technological performance of the 17 Spanish regions is studied through bibliometric and socio-economic indicators, to identify scientifically or technologically oriented regions, their specialities and characteristics. A descriptive typology of the Spanish regions based on R&D input and output indicators, as well as on social and economic indicators, is presented. The influence of regional policies in research and technological activities is discussed. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Funding acknowledgments in the Web of Science: completeness and accuracy of collected data

The study of acknowledgments as a source of data on research funding is gaining ground in science, as exemplified by the present inclusion of this information in bibliographic databases such as Web of Science (WoS). The objective of this paper is to explore the completeness and accuracy of WoS in extracting and processing funding acknowledgment data. With this purpose, a random sample of articles published in eight thematic areas and selected from the scientific output of Spain in 2014 are analyzed. Funding information that appears in original articles is recorded by WoS in the “funding text” field, but is also extracted to the “funding agency” and “grant number” subfields. In the extraction process, some funding information was lost in 12% of the articles and the distribution of agencies and grant numbers by subfield was not always consistent. In addition, funding support is often incompletely reported by authors: in about half of the articles we studied, the country of origin of the funder or the grant number(s) were not mentioned. We propose and discuss the need to develop more detailed guidelines on how to acknowledge funding. More accurate documentation of funding sources in published articles would benefit researchers, funders and journals, and enhance the reliability and usefulness of studies on funding acknowledgments.

Public---private interactions reflected through the funding acknowledgements

Partnership between the public and private sectors has been studied using different methodologies; among them, scientific articles offer an objective way to quantify and assess some of these public–private interactions. The present paper takes advantage of the funding acknowledgements (FA) section included in WoS articles written in English and studies some features of the funded research, such as impact and collaboration. For this purpose, articles with Spain in the address field are selected and retrieved (years 2008–2013), dividing them in two sets: articles with or without FA. Besides, given the large volume of items, the study is focused on groups of articles of each area selected by stratified random sampling. Additionally, those items with a FA section are analysed to identify three types of funding sources: only public, only private, or both sectors. The results show differences between areas in terms of presence of FA and types of funding sectors. On the one hand, in general, articles funded by both the public and private sectors present the best impact, as well as the highest number of authors and organisations. On the other hand, there are important variations in impact and collaboration between areas depending on types of funding sectors. Thus, items funded by both the public and private sectors show the highest significant impact in Clinical Medicine, Life Sciences and Physics, having also greater international collaboration, in most areas, than articles funded only by the public sector. Finally, some limitations of this study are identified and some recommendations for funders and authors are offered.

A bibliometric analysis of Technology Centres

Technology Centres (TCs) are non-profit organisations created to contribute to the improvement of the productive sector, providing RTD support, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Given TCs’ main function, most authors present an industrial perspective of their performance. However, the bibliometric techniques can offer not only an overview of these centres, but also additional information about their features: the evolution of their publications, the degree of national and international collaboration, the Spanish institutional sectors and the main disciplines involved, the regional differences and their connections. In this article, Spanish TCs’ documents downloaded from the Web of Science (2008–2012) are analysed, along with other indicators that can characterise these centres. The results show that national collaboration is important for TCs and even more when those links are local. This is in line with that stated by other authors, considering that geographical proximity is essential for knowledge transfer. Regarding the Spanish institutional sectors, the strongest relations are established with universities. For their part, firms have low participation in publications, although they show an upward trend over the years. Nevertheless, TCs’ documents are mainly issued on industrial related topics, in agreement with their primary mission as promoters of firms’ innovation. Finally, as expected, differences between regions’ performance are seen, explained in part by disparities between regional systems. Notwithstanding, top producers establish connections with regions without TCs, mainly collaborating in documents related to engineering, medicine and environmental topics.