All posts by VPInstitute

A Strategic View for Rare Earths Production, in a Competitive and Sustainable form

Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type

The demand for rare earths (RE) has been intensified by their large use, especially in high technology sectors. Supply difficulties have forced RE users to seek alternative sources and invest in the development of recycling technologies and options of reuse for these elements. This article seeks to reveal the trends and ongoing changes in national and global prospects of RE. Additionally, it aims to analyze scientific collaboration networks in the area of industrial solid waste (ISW) and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) exploitation in Brazil, examining both researchers and institutions with greater representation in the field. For this purpose, social network analysis methods were used to build and analyze co-authorship networks based on scientific publications retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The results showed that the Brazilian collaboration network of ISW research was extremely fragmented and contained 105 different groups, which were not connected to each other. The institutional network of ISW research was composed of 125 institutions, 75.2% of them from Brazil. The Brazilian collaboration network of research in WEEE was small (37 researchers), but fragmented: researchers were divided into eight different groups that do not connect to each other. The institutional network of research in WEEE was composed by 12 institutions, nine of them from Brazil. Therefore, this article presents a network collaboration model to bring together actors involved in the management of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), emphasizing the potential for recovery of RE from these wastes, with the purpose of developing products and services.

For FULL-TEXT of article, go to

http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/enrr/article/viewFile/64760/34921

Author(s): Tereza Raquel Taulois Campos, Marcus Vinícius de Araújo Fonseca, Bruna de Paula Fonseca e Fonseca, Edison de Oliveira Martins
Organization(s): Nuclear Engineering Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
Source: Environment and Natural Resources Research
Year: 2016

Four decades of coupon research in pricing: Evolution, development, and practice

Research profiling, Research Type

Coupons are a sales promotion tool frequently used by marketers. While considerable research has been conducted on coupons such as its profitability, design, and redemption rate for increased sales, few attempts have been made to summarize the published literature in the form of a review. This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of research on coupons over the last four decades by examining the evident patterns via keywords, research themes, coupon types, and countries where the studies are based, authors, journals, and product categories utilizing coupon schemes. This mapping of the literature clarifies the evolution of research on coupons and identifies potential developments related to aspects such as coupon design and framing. More importantly, it contributes to the future research agenda by identifying gaps in extant knowledge and evidence.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-016-0076-7

Author(s): Neeraj Pandey, Vaibhav Maheshwari
Organization(s): National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE)
Source: Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management
Year: 2016

Calculating the Integration Score using WoS dataset

VP Macros

Integration scores are useful for calculating diversity among cited references.
Before calculating Integration scores you need the following files in the following directories:
1. CreateCitedWCs.vpm in your C:\Program Files\VantagePoint\Macros folder

Download CreateCitedWCs.vpm

2. Calculate Integration Only v2.vpm in your C:\Program Files\VantagePoint\Macros folder

Download Calculate_Integration_Only_v2.vpm

3. J-WC-Current.the in your C:\Program Files\VantagePoint\Thesaurus folder

Download J-WC-Current.the

4. Subject category correlations.xls in your C:\Program Files\VantagePoint\Macros\Resource folder

Download Subject_category_correlations.xls

To calculate Integration scores:
A. Open VantagePoint Web of Science data file. These can be for multiple papers (or aggregations thereof, e.g., multiple authors).
[We can calculate metrics on a per-paper or a per-author (or other grouping) basis.]
Make sure the VantagePoint file name is not too long (maybe 26 character max)
B. Check that the Cited Journal field with NAS F/R exists. If it doesn’t, import it
C. Check that the Cited WC’s field exists. If it doesn’t, run the CreateCitedWCs.vpm macro (if prompted for a field, point to the Cited Journal field with NAS F/R)
D. ** Check that each record has at least 3 Cited WC’s.
a. To check manually: in VantagePoint, generate matrix of Unique Article ID (or Author) by Cited WC INSTANCES. Paste into Excel; Sum Cited WC instances. Sort on Sum. Mark those with fewer than 3 for exclusion. I like to make a group in the ISI Unique Identifier List and check those for exclusion; then create a sub-dataset without those, and proceed using that new VantagePoint file.
E. Create a VantagePoint field that only contains the items (i.e., your set of authors) for which you want to calculate Integration scores.
** This runs on the ENTIRE field you select. You can use “create field from group” to trim down your author (or ISI Unique Identifier) field first (e.g., to select the target group of authors from among all their co-authors).
F. Run the Integration score macro. Look for the Window in which you select what to use for each input box:
a. Authors field – e.g., unique paper titles (ISI Unique Identifier works well; if you want scores for each paper in a set – a good starting point; alternatively, you can calculate an Integration score for the consolidated papers of an entity, such as an author).
b. Cited WC field (for Integration scores)
G. Results will appear in an Excel file named after the VantagePoint file and field analyzed. The “Summary” sheet will list the entity (paper ISI Unique ID or Author name, etc.) and the IDR metric(s). The Correlation Sheet is used in the calculations (see “B” above).
H. If you run again, make sure that output Excel file is first renamed or moved (the macro won’t run if it exists in place).

A Bibliometric Analysis of Fuzzy Decision Research During 1970–2015

Research Examples

Fuzzy set just past its 50-year anniversary and different fuzzy associations and organizations hold different forms of conferences and activities to celebrate this epoch-making scientific discovery. As an important branch of fuzzy theory, fuzzy decision has attracted scholars from almost all fields from psychologists, economists, to computer scientists. In this paper, we conduct a bibliometric analysis on fuzzy decision-related research to find out some underlying patterns and dynamics in this research direction. A total of 13,901 fuzzy decision-related publication records from Web of Science are analyzed with the aid of the text-mining software Vantage Point. Many interesting results with regard to the annual trends, the top players in terms of country level, time dynamic as well as institutional level, the publishing journals, the highly cited papers, and the research landscape are yielded and explained in-depth. It is observed that some small or developing economies (such as China, Iran, Taiwan, and Turkey) are quite active in fuzzy decision research. The fuzzy decision theories and methods have increasingly be utilized in various fields evidenced by the growing number of disciplines involved in the fuzzy decision research.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40815-016-0272-z

Author(s): Weishu Liu, Huchang Liao
Organization(s): Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Sichuan University
Source: International Journal of Fuzzy Systems
Year: 2016

Big Data and Business: Tech Mining to Capture Business Interests and Activities around Big Data

Biz lit, Data Type, Research Examples

Innovations around “Big Data” can be characterized in terms of rapid technology development and deployment dynamics. For this purpose, combining “tech mining” (extraction of usable intelligence) from publication and patent databases with tech mining of business-related databases can elucidate activities and interests of business communities regarding Big Data innovation pathways. In this paper, we focus on commercially oriented databases — ABI/INFORM as a source from which to extract business intents. We select the database to help gauge “hot topics” in industry with regard to Big Data. Our results show that certain types of firms can be clustered into thematic groups relating to Big Data discussions and activities. In the paper we demonstrate that such analyses can illuminate themes being pursued by businesses. Like social media analyses, this text mining can provide useful intelligence to inform more in-depth investigation mobilizing other data sources and techniques.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7723686/

Author(s):  Ying Huang ; Jan Youtie ; Alan L. Porter ; Douglas K.R. Robinson ; Scott W. Cunningham ; Donghua Zhu
Organization(s): Beijing Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Source: 2016 IEEE International Conferences on Big Data and Cloud Computing (BDCloud), Social Computing and Networking (SocialCom), Sustainable Computing and Communications (SustainCom) (BDCloud-SocialCom-SustainCom)
Year: 2016

Text mining to gain technical intelligence for acquired target selection: A case study for China’s computer numerical control machine tools industry

CTI, Data Type, Patents, Research Examples, Research Type

Technology strategy plays an increasingly important role in today’s Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Informing that strategy with empirical intelligence offers great potential value to R&D managers and technology policy makers. This paper proposes a methodology, based on patent analysis, to extract technical intelligence to identify M&A target technologies and evaluate relevant target companies to facilitate M&A target selection. We apply the term clumping process and a trend analysis together with policy and market information to profile present R&D status and capture future development signals and trends in order to grasp a range of significant domain-based technologies. Furthermore, a comparison between a selected acquirer and leading players is used to identify significant technologies and sub-technologies for specific strategy-oriented technology M&A activities. Finally, aiming to recommend appropriate M&A target companies, we set up an index-based system to evaluate the acquired target candidates from both firms-side perspective and target firm-side perspective and differentially weigh for specific M&A situations. We provide an empirical study in the field of computer numerical control machine tools (CNCMT) in China to identify technology M&A targets for an emerging Chinese CNCMT company — Estun Automation under different M&A strategies.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162516305364

Author(s): Tingting Ma, Yi Zhang, Lu Huang , Lining Shang, Kangrui Wang, Huizhu Yu, Donghua Zhu
Organization(s):  Beijing Wuzi University; Beijing Institute of Technology
Source: Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Year: 2016

A Mapping of Marine Biodiversity Research Trends and Collaboration in the East Asia Region from 1996–2015

Research Examples

Many countries define policies to manage oceans and coastal areas in order to utilize marine ecosystems strategically. When we reviewed the strategies and policies of various countries in relation to ocean sustainability, we found that biodiversity preservation is a key issue for policies related to sustainable marine development. We investigated the research trends and collaboration status of China, Japan and South Korea regarding marine biodiversity through the analysis of scientific articles using bibliometric analysis. The results showed that Japan collaborated the most with other countries compared to China and South Korea. All three countries collaborated with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries frequently. South Korea showed the strongest inter-collaboration amongst China, Japan and South Korea. Microorganism research is a common research topic in China, Japan and South Korea. Each country demonstrated its own prominent research area, such as local region research in China, deep-sea research in Japan and aquaculture research in South Korea.

http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/10/1075

Author(s): Jungjoon Kim, Sangpil Lee, We Shim, and Jongseok Kang
Organization(s): Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Korea University of Science and Technology
Source: Sustainability
Year: 2016

Climate Change and Our Future: Anticipating Trends and Challenges Using Media Data

Data Type, novel source, Research Examples

This paper proposes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the future perspectives of climate change. First, it analyzes the possibilities of using the media as an information source for anticipating trends and challenges in this area through exploring the topics that have been actively discussed in the news in the recent 5 years. Second, qualitative and quantitative approaches are combined in this study in order to identify trends of different categories: social, technological, economic, environmental, political and values/culture. It allows integrating the results of trends monitoring obtained from qualitative and quantitative sources and create a complex map of trends. Qualitative approach is based on the literature review and consultations with the experts, while quantitative analysis includes collecting the news from Factiva database and processing it in Vantage Point software using bibliometric analysis, natural language processing, statistical analysis and principal component analysis. The results shown that 58% of trends were validated by the news and its contribution to the final trends list accounts for 25% on average, which means that the media can be considered as a useful additional data source for validating and updating trends. The results of this multidisciplinary study can be of interest to researchers, economists, business representatives and policy makers that are involved in the climate change related activities.

Author(s): Nadezhda Mikova
Organization(s): National Research University Higher School of Economics
Source: Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 65/STI/2016.
Year: 2016