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On Scaling of Scientific Knowledge Production in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

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  • Önder Nomaler
  • Koen Frenken
  • Gaston Heimeriks

Abstract

Using data on all scientific publications from the Scopus database, we find a superlinear scaling effect for U.S. metropolitan areas as indicated by the increase of per capita publication output with city size. We also find that the variance of residuals is much higher for mid-sized cities (100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants) compared to larger cities. The latter result is indicative of the critical mass required to establish a scientific center in a particular discipline. Finally, we observe that the largest cities publish much less than the scaling law would predict, indicating that the largest cities are relatively unattractive locations for scientific research.

Suggested Citation

  • Önder Nomaler & Koen Frenken & Gaston Heimeriks, 2014. "On Scaling of Scientific Knowledge Production in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-6, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0110805
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110805
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Leporia, Benedetto & Geuna, Aldo & Mira, Antonietta, 2018. "Scientific Output of US and European Universities Scales Super-linearly with Resources," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis LEI & BRICK - Laboratory of Economics of Innovation "Franco Momigliano", Bureau of Research in Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge, Collegio 201806, University of Turin.
    2. Hoekman, Jarno & Rake, Bastian, 2024. "Geography of authorship: How geography shapes authorship attribution in big team science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(2).
    3. Anthony F J van Raan & Gerwin van der Meulen & Willem Goedhart, 2016. "Urban Scaling of Cities in the Netherlands," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, January.
    4. Frenken, Koen & Heimeriks, Gaston J. & Hoekman, Jarno, 2017. "What drives university research performance? An analysis using the CWTS Leiden Ranking data," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 859-872.
    5. Hongguang Dong & Menghui Li & Ru Liu & Chensheng Wu & Jinshan Wu, 2017. "Allometric scaling in scientific fields," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(1), pages 583-594, July.
    6. Benedetto Lepori & Aldo Geuna & Antonietta Mira, 2019. "Scientific output scales with resources. A comparison of US and European universities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-18, October.
    7. David Emanuel Andersson & Åke E. Andersson & Björn Hårsman & Xiyi Yang, 2020. "The geography of science in 12 European countries: a NUTS2-level analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1099-1125, August.

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