All posts by VPInstitute

Analyzing collaboration networks and developmental patterns of nano-enabled drug delivery (NEDD) for brain cancer

Network analysis, Research Examples, Research Type

The rapid development of new and emerging science & technologies (NESTs) brings unprecedented challenges, but also opportunities. In this paper, we use bibliometric and social network analyses, at country, institution, and individual levels, to explore the patterns of scientific networking for a key nano area – nano-enabled drug delivery (NEDD). NEDD has successfully been used clinically to modulate drug release and to target particular diseased tissues. The data for this research come from a global compilation of research publication information on NEDD directed at brain cancer. We derive a family of indicators that address multiple facets of research collaboration and knowledge transfer patterns. Results show that: (1) international cooperation is increasing, but networking characteristics change over time; (2) highly productive institutions also lead in influence, as measured by citation to their work, with American institutes leading; (3) research collaboration is dominated by local relationships, with interesting information available from authorship patterns that go well beyond journal impact factors. Results offer useful technical intelligence to help researchers identify potential collaborators and to help inform R&D management and science & innovation policy for such nanotechnologies.

Full-text article at http://www.beilstein-journals.org/bjnano/single/articleFullText.htm?publicId=2190-4286-6-169

author(s): Ying Huang, Jing Ma, Alan L Porter, Seokbeom Kwon, and Donghua Zhu
Organization(s): Beijing Institute of Technology
Source: Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology
Year: 2015

Technology roadmapping for competitive technical intelligence

CTI, Research Examples

Understanding the evolution and emergence of technology domains remains a challenge, particularly so for potentially breakthrough technologies. Though it is well recognized that emergence of new fields is complex and uncertain, to make decisions amidst such uncertainty, one needs to mobilize various sources of intelligence to identify known–knowns and known–unknowns to be able to choose appropriate strategies and policies. This competitive technical intelligence cannot rely on simple trend analyses because breakthrough technologies have little past to inform such trends, and positing the directions of evolution is challenging. Neither do qualitative tools, embracing the complexities, provide all the solutions, since transparent and repeatable techniques need to be employed to create best practices and evaluate the intelligence that comes from such exercises. In this paper, we present a hybrid roadmapping technique that draws on a number of approaches and integrates them into a multi-level approach (individual activities, industry evolutions and broader global changes) that can be applied to breakthrough technologies. We describe this approach in deeper detail through a case study on dye-sensitized solar cells. Our contribution to this special issue is to showcase the technique as part of a family of approaches that are emerging around the world to inform strategy and policy.d to inform strategy and policy.

Author(s): Yi Zhang, Douglas KR Robinson, Alan L Porter, Donghua Zhu, Guangquan Zhang, Jie Lu
Organization(s): Beijing Institute of Technology,  Université de Paris-Est
Source: Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Year: 2015

Funding Data from Publication Acknowledgements: Coverage, Uses and Limitations

Data Type, Funding, Research Examples

This article contributes to the development of methods for analysing research funding systems by exploring the robustness and comparability of emerging approaches to generate funding landscapes useful for policy making. We use a novel dataset of manually extracted and coded data on the funding acknowledgements of 7,510 publications representing UK cancer research in the year 2011 and compare these ‘reference data’ with funding data provided by Web of Science (WoS) and MEDLINE/PubMed. Findings show high recall (about 93%) of WoS funding data. By contrast, MEDLINE/PubMed data retrieved less than half of the UK cancer publications acknowledging at least one funder. Conversely, both databases have high precision (+90%): i.e. few cases of publications with no acknowledgement to funders are identified as having funding data. Nonetheless, funders acknowledged in UK cancer publications were not correctly listed by MEDLINE/PubMed and WoS in about 75% and 32% of the cases, respectively. ‘Reference data’ on the UK cancer research funding system are then used as a case-study to demonstrate the utility of funding data for strategic intelligence applications (e.g. mapping of funding landscape, comparison of funders’ research portfolios).

FULL-TEXT at http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.04896.pdf

Author(s): Nicola Grassano, Daniele Rotolo, Joshua Hutton, Frederique Lang, and Michael M. Hopkins
Organization(s): Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
Source: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Year: 2016

Human Optimization Research: International Activity (Full-Text)

Research Examples, Research profiling

The present scientometric study was commissioned by the Chief Scientist Network of Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). It provides an overview of international research activity and collaboration networks in the field of human optimization. This is the second study in a series on human optimization, where the first was focused on the Canadian landscape. To identify major players, their collaboration networks and key research topics in the international landscape, 7,656 references, dated 2005-2015, to relevant unclassified publications were retrieved and analyzed using text mining software and a variety of visualization tools. 114 research topics were categorized into five (non-mutually exclusive) metagroups including Ethics, Physiological issues,
Computational/Cognitive issues, Automation/Robotics and Means of Enhancement. Internationally, research is most focused on Computational/Cognitive issues.
Visualizations of the 114 research topics showed great interconnection between them, displaying three main clusters; which speaks to the fact that research in this domain is quite interdisciplinary. Examining the research momentum of the topics reveals that 33 of the topics can be considered to be emerging (i.e. growing at a notable rate despite a relatively low publication count). While these emerging topics (e.g. transcranial stimulation or neurophysiology), in and of themselves, are not necessarily emerging topics in the broader picture of scientific research, it may be that within the field of human optimization, these topics represent an emerging angle of research. An analysis of the geographic distribution of the publications revealed that the US dominates the field in terms of total number of publications. However, Switzerland has both the greatest rate of collaboration (82%) as well as the highest average annual growth rate for 2012-2015 (70%). Most of the top countries are collaborating with each other. International collaboration networks are rather sparse amongst the top collaborating countries in that the top affiliations may have many different international colleagues but with very few repeated co-publications. Notable exceptions are described in the report. Recommendations for further study include, among others, a formal comparison with the Canadian landscape, additional analysis of the Means of enhancement metagroup, and a deeper exploration of the top countries’ collaboration networks.

FULL-TEXT at NCR paper

Author: Erica Wiseman
Organization: National Research Council of Canada
Source: NRC-CNRC Knowledge Management
Year: 2016

How Multidisciplinary are the Multidisciplinary Journals Science and Nature?

Interdisciplinarity, Research Examples

Interest in cross-disciplinary research knowledge interchange runs high. Review processes at funding agencies, such as the U.S. National Science Foundation, consider plans to disseminate research across disciplinary bounds. Publication in the leading multidisciplinary journals, Nature and Science, may signify the epitome of successful interdisciplinary integration of research knowledge and cross-disciplinary dissemination of findings. But how interdisciplinary are they? The journals are multidisciplinary, but do the individual articles themselves draw upon multiple fields of knowledge and does their influence span disciplines? This research compares articles in three fields (Cell Biology, Physical Chemistry, and Cognitive Science) published in a leading disciplinary journal in each field to those published in Nature and Science. We find comparable degrees of interdisciplinary integration and only modest differences in cross-disciplinary diffusion. That said, though the rate of out-of-field diffusion might be comparable, the sheer reach of Nature and Science, indicated by their potent Journal Impact Factors, means that the diffusion of knowledge therein can far exceed that of leading disciplinary journals in some fields (such as Physical Chemistry and Cognitive Science in our samples).

FULL-TEXT at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0152637

Author(s): Gregg E. A. Solomon , Stephen Carley, and Alan L. Porter
Organization(s): Harvard University, Georgia Institute of Technology
Source: PlosONE
Year: 2016

Collaboration and change in the research networks of five Energy Frontier Research Centers

Research evaluation, Research Examples

Emphasizing the university research center model, from 2009 to 2014 the US Department of Energy (DOE) funded a first round of over 40 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) spread out among 100 institutions. Early in its implementation, however, the EFRC model received criticism from scholars warning that the arrangements of the EFRCs did not provide adequate governance structures for coordinating research efforts. In this article, we seek to begin answering a call for ‘systematic and rigorous study of the implementation of EFRCs’ by studying a sample of five EFRCs and their individual members. We find that despite lacking formal mechanisms for coordinating research, EFRCs increase coauthorships among EFRC members, especially new coauthorships. Moreover, EFRC members’ research quality increases after each EFRC is formed. Through negative-binomial regression analysis on individual researcher outcomes, we find that stronger preexisting networks increase coauthorship among EFRC members. This finding supports the idea that preexisting research collaboration networks are indicative of research coordination mechanisms that researchers have discovered or established for themselves prior to becoming members of a research center. We posit that new research centers may leverage research coordination mechanisms embedded in preexisting coauthorship relations, rather than imposing new research coordination mechanisms.

http://rev.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/22/reseval.rvw006.abstract#aff-2

Author(s): Alexander M. Smith, Samson Yuxiu Lai, Jonah Bea-Taylor, Rebecca B. M. Hill and Nabil Kleinhenz
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Source: Research Evaluation
Year: 2016

Science system path-dependencies and their influences: nanotechnology research in Russia

Research evaluation, Research Examples, ST&I policy

In this paper, we study the influence of path dependencies on the development of an emerging technology in a transitional economy. Our focus is the development of nanotechnology in Russia in the period between 1990 and 2012. By examining outputs, publication paths and collaboration patterns, we identify a series of factors that help to explain Russia’s limited success in leveraging its ambitious national nanotechnology initiative. The analysis highlights four path-dependent tendencies of Russian nanotechnology research: publication pathways and the gatekeeping role of the Russian Academy of Sciences; increasing geographical and institutional centralisation of nanotechnology research; limited institutional diffusion; and patterns associated with the internationalisation of Russian research. We discuss policy implications related to path dependence, nanotechnology research in Russia and to the broader reform of the Russian science system.

Full-text available http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-016-1916-3/fulltext.html

Author(s): Maria Karaulova, Abdullah Gök, Oliver Shackleton, Philip Shapira
Organization(s): National Research University Higher School of Economics, University of Manchester
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2016

S-Curve analysis and technology life cycle. Application in series of data of articles and patents

CTI, Future-oriented technology analysis, Research Examples

In this article, the methodology of curves in S is applied in series of data on articles in Biotechnology and Nanotechnology since 1956 obtained from the ISI Web of Science and of patents since 1962 (year of priority) and 1970 (year of publication). Belonging to controlled release, of the medical context, the data was obtained from a Tech Mining approach using the Vantage Point software tool. With the accumulated data, in time, nonlinear regression was achieved and the inflection point in the two series was calculated, taking into account the statistical parameters like Fitted R2, Value T, Value P, and Durbin Watson. The data of the articles and patents were analyzed under the following models: Weibull, Gompertz, Logistic and Sigmodial, among others, for a total of 13 models analyzed. The models with the best fit in the inflection point were selected. In the series of data from the articles, one of the models that had the best fit was the Sigmoidal model. The Sigmoidal model contained three parameters which generated a value of 33.4 for the inflection point for the year of the studied series. With the obtained values for the inflection points in the series of articles and patents, the uncertainty can be reduced in the making of decisions about the Technology Life Cycle (TLC), especially in the following aspects: the identification of the kind of technology (before and after of the inflection point), the determination of the suitable moment to apply technological rights and intellectual property, and the establishment of strategies for monitoring (when the technology is emerging) and investment.

Full-text available at http://www.revistaespacios.com/a16v37n07/16370719.html

Author(s): Jhon Wilder ZARTHA Sossa; Fernando PALOP Marro; Bibiana ARANGO Alzate; Fabián Mauricio VELEZ Salazar; and Andres Felipe AVALOS Patiño
Organization(s): Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana,  Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Source: Espacios
Year: 2015

A selected literature review on the changing role of stakeholders as value creators

Research Examples

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing role of stakeholders in value creation since the inception of literature on stakeholders and sustainability from 1984 and 1987, respectively until 2015 and to understand interrelationships among key terms of stakeholder and sustainability literature. We explore the changing role of stakeholders as a source of value creation through extensive literature review by adopting text mining approach. VantagePoint is the tool used to facilitate text mining literature of sustainability and stakeholder and related literature from 1984 to 2015.

Findings
This paper reveals that the major trends in firm’s approach towards stakeholders has changed over the years from demonstration of compliance in 1984-1994, safeguarding of reputation from 1994 to 2004, to finally co-creating value with stakeholders from the period of 2004-2014.

Research limitations/implications
There have been extensive literature reviews done on stakeholder and sustainability literature, but only few have studied the integration of stakeholder and sustainability literature. This paper has used a novel approach, i.e. VantagePoint software to analyse the sustainability and stakeholder literature.

Originality/value
The changing role of stakeholders as a value creator have provided new research avenues in value creation process. The emerging challenge that firms now face is to co-create sustainable value by engaging both internal and external stakeholders.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/WJSTSD-01-2016-0002

Author(s): Shridhar M Samant and Shirish Sangle
Organization(s): National Institute of Industrial Engineering
Source: World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development
Year: 2016