This paper presents a method for classifying the varying degrees of interdependency between academic hospitals and universities in the context of the Leiden Ranking. A key question for ranking... Show moreThis paper presents a method for classifying the varying degrees of interdependency between academic hospitals and universities in the context of the Leiden Ranking. A key question for ranking universities is whether or not to allocate the publication output of affiliated hospitals to universities.Hospital nomenclatures vary worldwide to denote some form of collaboration with a university: academic hospitals, teaching hospitals, university hospitals, and academic medical centres do not correspond to universally standard definitions. Thus, rather than seeking a normative definition of academic hospitals, we are proposing a workflow that aligns the university-hospital relationship with one of three general models: full integration of the hospital and the medical faculty into a single organization; health science centres in which hospitals and medical faculty remain separate entities albeit within the same governance structure; and structures in which universities and hospitals are separate entities which collaborate with one another. This classification system provides a standard by which we can allocate publications which note affiliations with academic hospitals.Our three-step workflow effectively translates the three above-mentioned models into two types of instrumental relationships for the assignation of publications: “associate” and “component”. When a hospital and a medical faculty are fully integrated or when a hospital is part of a health science centre, the relationship is classified as component. When a hospital follows the model of collaboration and support, the relationship is classified as associate. The compilation of data following these standards allows for a more uniform comparison between worldwide educational and research systems. Show less
Purpose: This paper describes an alternative way of assessing journals considering a broader perspective of its impact. The Area-based connectedness (ABC) to society of journals applied here... Show morePurpose: This paper describes an alternative way of assessing journals considering a broader perspective of its impact. The Area-based connectedness (ABC) to society of journals applied here contributes to the assessment of the dissemination task of journals but with more data it may also contribute to the assessment of other missions.Design/ Methodology/ Approach: The ABC approach assesses the performance of research actors, in this case journals, considering the characteristics of the research areas in which they are active. Each paper in a journal inherits the characteristics of its area. These areas are defined by a publication-based classification. The characteristics of areas relate to 5 dimensions of connectedness to society (news, policy, industrial R&D, technology and local interest) and are calculated by bibliometric indicators and social media metrics. Findings: In the paper, I illustrate the approach by showing the results for a few journals. They illustrate the diverse profiles that journals may have. We are able to provide a profile for each journal in the Web of Science database. The profiles I present show an appropriate view on the journals’ societal connectedness.Research limitations: The classification I apply to perform the analyses is a CWTS in house classification based on Web of Science data. As such the application depends on the (updates of) that system. The classification is available at www.leidenranking.com.Practical implications: The dimensions of connectedness discussed in this paper relate to the dissemination task of journals but further development of this method may provide more options to monitor the tasks/mission of journals. Originality/ value: The ABC approach is a unique way to assess performance or impact of research actors considering the characteristics of the areas in which output is published and as such less prone to manipulation or gaming. Keywords: Non-scientific impact of research; ABC to society; Societal impact; Bibliometric mapping; Publication-level classification Show less
Purpose: To get a better understanding of the way in which university rankings are used.Design/methodology/approach: Detailed analysis of the activities of visitors of the website of the CWTS... Show morePurpose: To get a better understanding of the way in which university rankings are used.Design/methodology/approach: Detailed analysis of the activities of visitors of the website of the CWTS Leiden Ranking.Findings: Visitors of the Leiden Ranking website originate disproportionally from specific countries (regions). They are more interested in impact indicators than in collaboration indicators, while they are about equally interested in size-dependent indicators and size-independent indicators. Many visitors do not seem to realize that they should decide themselves which criterion they consider most appropriate for ranking universities.Research limitations: The analysis is restricted to the website of a single university ranking. Moreover, the analysis does not provide any detailed insights into the motivations of visitors of university ranking websites.Practical implications: The Leiden Ranking website may need to be improved in order to make more clear to visitors that they should decide themselves which criterion they want to use for ranking universities.Originality/value: This is the first analysis of the activities of visitors of a university ranking website. Show less
Purpose: First, to review the state-of-the-art in patent citation analysis, particularly characteristics of patent citations to scientific literature (scientific non-patent references,SNPRs).... Show morePurpose: First, to review the state-of-the-art in patent citation analysis, particularly characteristics of patent citations to scientific literature (scientific non-patent references,SNPRs). Second, to present a novel mapping approach to identify technology-relevant research based on the papers cited by and referring to the SNPRs. Design/methodology/approach: In the review part we discuss the context of SNPRs such as the time lags between scientific achievements and inventions. Also patent-to-patent citation is addressed particularly because this type of patent citation analysis is a major element in the assessment of the economic value of patents. We also review the research on the role of universities and researchers in technological development, with important issues such as universities as sources of technological knowledge and inventor-author relations. We conclude the review part of this paper with an overview of recent research on mapping and network analysis of the science and technology interface and of technological progress in interaction with science. In the second part we apply new techniques for the direct visualization of the cited and citing relations of SNPRs, the mapping of the landscape around SNPRs by bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis, and the mapping of the conceptual environment of SNPRs by keyword co-occurrence analysis. Findings: We discuss several properties of SNPRs. Only a small minority of publications covered by the Web of Science or Scopus are cited by patents, about 3%–4%. However, for publications based on university-industry collaboration the number of SNPRs is considerably higher, around 15%. The proposed mapping methodology based on a “second order SNPR approach” enables a better assessment of the technological relevance of research. Research limitations: The main limitation is that a more advanced merging of patent and publication data, in particular unification of author and inventor names, in still a necessity. Practical implications: The proposed mapping methodology enables the creation of a database of technology-relevant papers (TRPs). In a bibliometric assessment the publications of research groups, research programs or institutes can be matched with the TRPs and thus the extent to which the work of groups, programs or institutes are relevant for technological development can be measured. Originality/value: The review part examines a wide range of findings in the research of patent citation analysis. The mapping approach to identify a broad range of technology relevant papers is novel and offers new opportunities in research evaluation practices. Show less
