In the post-industrial economy, the efficiency of scientific knowledge generation becomes crucial. Researchers began to interpret knowledge as a factor of economic growth in the second half of the... Show moreIn the post-industrial economy, the efficiency of scientific knowledge generation becomes crucial. Researchers began to interpret knowledge as a factor of economic growth in the second half of the 20th century; since then, within the theory of economics and management, various approaches have been developed to study the impact of knowledge on economic growth and performance. With time, the focus of knowledge-based theories shifted from corporate management to macrosystems and economic policy. The article describes the main stages in the development of socio-economic concepts of knowledge and analyzes the theoretical and methodological aspects of each approach. The authors have also formulated the critical problems in the analysis of the economic category of knowledge at the present stage and suggested ways of overcoming them. The article may be of interest both to researchers and practitioners in the sphere of corporate strategies and economic policy. Show less
Kaltenbrunner, W.; Birch, K.; Amuchastegui, M. 2021
Disagreement is essential to scientific progress but the extent of disagreement in science, its evolution over time, and the fields in which it happens remain poorly understood. Here we report the... Show moreDisagreement is essential to scientific progress but the extent of disagreement in science, its evolution over time, and the fields in which it happens remain poorly understood. Here we report the development of an approach based on cue phrases that can identify instances of disagreement in scientific articles. These instances are sentences in an article that cite other articles. Applying this approach to a collection of more than four million English-language articles published between 2000 and 2015 period, we determine the level of disagreement in five broad fields within the scientific literature (biomedical and health sciences; life and earth sciences; mathematics and computer science; physical sciences and engineering; and social sciences and humanities) and 817 meso-level fields. Overall, the level of disagreement is highest in the social sciences and humanities, and lowest in mathematics and computer science. However, there is considerable heterogeneity across the meso-level fields, revealing the importance of local disciplinary cultures and the epistemic characteristics of disagreement. Analysis at the level of individual articles reveals notable episodes of disagreement in science, and illustrates how methodological artifacts can confound analyses of scientific texts. Show less
The increasing popularity of Twitter in both scholarly communication and public engagement with science has triggered widespread Twitter interactions around scientific information, thus giving rise... Show moreThe increasing popularity of Twitter in both scholarly communication and public engagement with science has triggered widespread Twitter interactions around scientific information, thus giving rise to the emergence of scholarly Twitter metrics which aim to measure and characterize Twitter interactions related to scholarly objects. For the sake of more advanced scholarly Twitter metrics, the overarching aim of this PhD dissertation is to characterize diverse forms of Twitter interactions around scientific papers to understand in greater-depth the Twitter reception of scientific information and improve scholarly Twitter metrics. To this end, this dissertation starts with large-scale analyses of how many and how fast scientific papers are mentioned on Twitter in comparison with other types of social media metric data sources, to unravel the broadness and speed of Twitter presence of scientific papers. Then, focusing on scholarly tweets of scientific papers per se, this dissertation investigates the characteristics of diverse user interaction behaviors around scholarly tweets, shedding light on their potential value in developing more advanced indicators for measuring deeper levels of Twitter reception of scientific information. Finally, based on the main findings, this dissertation further discusses the possibility to approach a more fine-grained indicator system of scholarly Twitter metrics. Show less
This study investigates the scientific mobility and international collaboration networks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region between 2008 and 2017. By using affiliation metadata... Show moreThis study investigates the scientific mobility and international collaboration networks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region between 2008 and 2017. By using affiliation metadata available in scientific publications, we analyze international scientific mobility flows and collaboration linkages. Three complementary approaches allow us to obtain a detailed characterization of scientific mobility. First, we uncover the main destinations and origins of mobile scholars for each country. Results reveal geographical, cultural and historical proximities. Cooperation programs also contribute to explain some of the observed flows. Second, we use the academic age. The average academic age of migrant scholars in MENA was about 12.4 years. The academic age group 6-10 years is the most common for both emigrant and immigrant scholars. Immigrants are relatively younger than emigrants, except for Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey. Scholars who migrated to Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Jordan, and Morocco were on average younger than emigrants by 1.5 years from the same countries. Third, we analyze gender differences. We observe a clear gender gap: Male scholars represent the largest group of migrants in MENA. We conclude by discussing the policy relevance of the scientific mobility and collaboration aspects. Show less
CWTS just published its open science policy. The development of this policy was coordinated by Thed van Leeuwen and Ludo Waltman. In this blog post, they reflect on the journey CWTS is making... Show moreCWTS just published its open science policy. The development of this policy was coordinated by Thed van Leeuwen and Ludo Waltman. In this blog post, they reflect on the journey CWTS is making toward more open ways of working. Show less
Social scientists and geoscientists must work together to critically evaluate and develop feasible visions for a sustainable future. Is a clean-energy economy more viable than a degrowth future?
Scientific software is a fundamental player in modern science, participating in all stages of scientific knowledge production. Software occasionally supports the development of trivial tasks, while... Show moreScientific software is a fundamental player in modern science, participating in all stages of scientific knowledge production. Software occasionally supports the development of trivial tasks, while at other instances it determines procedures, methods, protocols, results, or conclusions related with the scientific work. The growing relevance of scientific software as a research product with value of its own has triggered the development of quantitative science studies of scientific software. The main objective of this study is to illustrate a link-based webometric approach to characterize the online mentions to scientific software across different analytical frameworks. To do this, the bibliometric software VOSviewer is used as a case study. Considering VOSviewer's official website as a baseline, online mentions to this website were counted in three different analytical frameworks: academic literature via Google Scholar (988 mentioning publications), webpages via Majestic (1,330 mentioning websites), and tweets via Twitter (267 mentioning tweets). Google scholar mentions shows how VOSviewer is used as a research resource, whilst mentions in webpages and tweets show the interest on VOSviewer's website from an informational and a conversational point of view. Results evidence that URL mentions can be used to gather all sorts of online impacts related to non-traditional research objects, like software, thus expanding the analytical scientometric toolset by incorporating a novel digital dimension. Show less
The use of indicators is generally associated with a reduction of perspectival diversity in evaluation that often facilitates making decisions along dominant framings – effectively closing down... Show moreThe use of indicators is generally associated with a reduction of perspectival diversity in evaluation that often facilitates making decisions along dominant framings – effectively closing down debate. In this chapter we will argue that while this is indeed often the case, indicators can also be used to help support more plural evaluation and foster more productively critical debate. In order to achieve this shift, it is necessary equally to change understandings, forms and uses of indicators in decision making. These shifts involve, first, broadening out the range of ‘inputs’ taken into account; and second, opening up the ‘outputs’, in the sense of developing methodologies for indicator-based analyses to help in considering plural perspectives. In practice, this means a move towards more situated and participatory use of quantitative evidence in evaluation, a shift from universal indicators to contextualized indicating. Show less
Rijcke, S. de; Waltman, L.R.; Leeuwen, T.N, van 2021
Using the h-index in research evaluation? Rather not. But why not, actually? Why is using this indicator so problematic? And what are the alternatives anyway? Our authors walk you through an... Show moreUsing the h-index in research evaluation? Rather not. But why not, actually? Why is using this indicator so problematic? And what are the alternatives anyway? Our authors walk you through an infographic that addresses these questions and aims to highlight some key issues in this discussion. Show less
Costas Comesana, R.; Rijcke, S. de; Marres, N.S. 2021
