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Assessing national strengths and weaknesses in research fields

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  • Abramo, Giovanni
  • D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea

Abstract

National policies aimed at fostering the effectiveness of scientific systems should be based on reliable strategic analysis identifying strengths and weaknesses at field level. Approaches and indicators thus far proposed in the literature have not been completely satisfactory, since they fail to distinguish the effect of the size of production factors from that of their quality, particularly the quality of labor. The current work proposes an innovative “input-oriented” approach, which permits: (i) estimation of national research performance in a field and comparison to that of other nations, independent of the size of their respective research staffs; and, for fields of comparable intensity of publication, (ii) identification of the strong and weak research fields within a national research system on the basis of international comparison. In reference to the second objective, the proposed approach is applied to the Italian case, through the analysis of the 2006–2010 scientific production of the Italian academic system, in the 200 research fields where bibliometric analysis is meaningful.

Suggested Citation

  • Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea, 2014. "Assessing national strengths and weaknesses in research fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 766-775.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:8:y:2014:i:3:p:766-775
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2014.07.002
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    3. Lina M. Cortés & Andrés Mora-Valencia & Javier Perote, 2016. "The productivity of top researchers: a semi-nonparametric approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 891-915, November.
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    5. Jung Ho Park & Kwangsoo Shin, 2018. "Efficiency of Government-Sponsored R&D Projects: A Metafrontier DEA Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    6. Štěpán Jurajda & Stanislav Kozubek & Daniel Münich & Samuel Škoda, 2017. "Scientific publication performance in post-communist countries: still lagging far behind," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 315-328, July.
    7. Hiran H. Lathabai & Abhirup Nandy & Vivek Kumar Singh, 2021. "x-index: Identifying core competency and thematic research strengths of institutions using an NLP and network based ranking framework," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(12), pages 9557-9583, December.
    8. Mohsen Fazeli-Varzaneh & Pete Bettinger & Erfan Ghaderi-Azad & Marcin Kozak & Davood Mafi-Gholami & Abolfazl Jaafari, 2021. "Forestry Research in the Middle East: A Bibliometric Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-19, July.
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    10. Miguel R. Guevara & Marcelo Mendoza, 2016. "Publishing Patterns in BRIC Countries: A Network Analysis," Publications, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-14, July.

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