Category Archives: Data Type

Do Nobel Laureates Create Prize-Winning Networks? An Analysis of Collaborative Research in Physiology or Medicine

Network analysis, Research Examples, S&T lit

Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine who received the Prize between 1969 and 2011 are compared to a matched group of scientists to examine productivity, impact, coauthorship and international collaboration patterns embedded within research networks. After matching for research domain, h-index, and year of first of publication, we compare bibliometric statistics and network measures. We find that the Laureates produce fewer papers but with higher average citations. The Laureates also produce more sole-authored papers both before and after winning the Prize. The Laureates have a lower number of coauthors across their entire careers than the matched group, but are equally collaborative on average. Further, we find no differences in international collaboration patterns. The Laureates coauthor network reveals significant differences from the non-Laureate network. Laureates are more likely to build bridges across a network when measuring by average degree, density, modularity, and communities. Both the Laureate and non-Laureate networks have “small world” properties, but the Laureates appear to exploit “structural holes” by reaching across the network in a brokerage style that may add social capital to the network. The dynamic may be making the network itself highly attractive and selective. These findings suggest new insights into the role “star scientists” in social networks and the production of scientific discoveries.

Author(s): Caroline S. Wagner , Edwin Horlings, Travis A. Whetsell, Pauline Mattsson, and Katarina Nordqvist
Organization(s): Battelle Center for Science and Technology Policy, Ohio State University; Rathenau Institute
Source: PLoS One http://www.plosone.org/article/Authors/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0134164
Year: 2015

LESSONS LEARNED ABOUT TECHNOLOGY MONITORING IN THE SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC ENERGY SEGMENT

Patents, Research profiling, Research Type, S&T lit, Strategic planning, , , ,

The practice of using technology monitoring to keep track of technological advances is increasingly valued, and its systematic use is understood as essential to business in the new knowledge economy. The structuring of the technological monitoring process has become a growing need for organizations to keep up with the significant and rapid changes of technology in their core business and to better understand its business impact in order to support the decision‐making process of companies. An effective technology monitoring process should be based on a company’s business needs and on the information required for the fitting to strategic guidelines. This encompasses the right selection of databases, the establishment of the search strategy and keywords to be applied, the screening of the retrieved information, the analysis and consolidation of this information, and the right format and display of the relevant data and future trends to help the management decision. Photovoltaic solar energy reached the capacity of 139 GW in 2013, being an expanding market with a high number of government funding projects in the United States and in the European Union. Therefore, a survey was carried out about the new technologies and related business scenarios for this kind of power generation, using technology monitoring tools. Energy generation via photovoltaic cells has been known for a long time, since the Becquerel studies in the XIX century. Solar photovoltaic energy enables the generation of distributed electric energy, preventing long transmission and distribution lines, besides being a silent energy source that can be easily integrated into buildings without the need of additional installation areas; for these reasons, its application is being fostered by government programs.   The main step of the technology monitoring methodology is discussed, and the peculiarities and difficulties encountered in the process are pointed out. A survey of the scientific and technological developments in this area of knowledge was carried out, using patents and scientific papers with the time frame from the beginning of 2008 to the end of 2013. The lessons learned in this process and the major facilitating factors and difficulties for the retrieval, screening and analysis of the information collected are reported.

Author(s): Luiz Fernando Leite , Flavia Maria Lins Mendes, and Suzanne De Oliveira Rodrigues Schumacher
Organization: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Source: IAMOT 2015 Conference Proceedings http://iamot2015.com/2015proceedings/documents/P310.pdf
Year: 2015

Patento-scientometric indicators for the selection of projects by investment funds

CTI, Patents, Research Examples, Strategic planning,

Purpose
This paper aims to assess a method that applies scientometric and patentometric indicators in the selection process of projects by seed capital funds. There is increasing interest in technology-based enterprises, for their capacity to contribute to economic and social development. Nevertheless, in practice, there is some difficulty in assessing non-financial criteria associated with technology for the purposes of choosing investment opportunities.

Design/methodology/approach
The literature has presented various methods to instrumentalize the process of evaluation and selection of investment projects. This study focuses on an enterprise that received an investment by the largest seed capital fund in Brazil, to assess to what extent scientific and technological indicators can contribute to understanding the market potential of the firm’s technology.

Findings
The results show that the use of scientometric and patentometric indicators favors the process of judging non-financial criteria, in particular those related to technology, market, divestment and team.

Originality/value
The originality of this paper is in the evaluation of a patento-scientometric approach for the selection process of projects by seed capital funds.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/VINE-10-2014-0056

Author(s): Gustavo da Silva Motta, Rogério Hermida Quintella, Pauli Adriano de Almada Garcia
Organization(s):Universidade Federal Fluminense, Universidade Federal da Bahia
Source: VINE
Year: 2015

Microalgal biofuel revisited: An informatics-based analysis of developments to date and future prospects

Patents, Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type, S&T lit, , ,

Highlights

  • Microalgal biofuel studies between 1900 and mid-2015 were analyzed informatically.
  • Burst interest since 2006–2012 stimulated mass culture and biotechnology studies.
  • Unremitting study and investment is expected for better understanding of microalgae.
  • Integrated application of energy microalgae could be a possible solution.
  • Recent advances of approaches to bypass the production bottleneck were reviewed.

Abstract
Microalgae have reported to be one of the most promising feedstock for biofuel production. To obtain a comprehensive and systematic overview of the current state of microalgal research, particularly microalgal biofuel research, we retrieved and analyzed manuscripts and patents related to this topic and published between 1900 and mid-2015. We found that there was a burst in microalgal biofuel research from 2006 to 2011 that significantly stimulated the development of microalgal biotechnology for the production of high value-added commodities and for environmental applications and microalgal mass culturing, in an attempt to make the entire process of biofuel production economically viable for industrialization. However, a lag in basic microalgal research has kept production costs high, resulting in a decline in investments, funding, and research efforts in the fields of microalgal biofuel production, microalgal biotechnology, and mass culturing since 2012. Based on a review of the challenges/problems of microalgae biofuel production and recent advances of their solution, the perspective view of the future R&D needs and trends were proposed. To bypass the price bottleneck of microalgae-based biofuel production, it has been proposed that energy-producing microalgal biotechnological applications be synergistically combined with microalgal biofuel production. Future investments and funding will most likely be directed toward basic studies that aim to elucidate the microorganisms’ characteristics and toward the development of microalgal biotechnology and its environmental applications, which have potential economic and social benefits. This review represents a theoretical reference for both algal researchers and decision makers regarding the future directions of microalgal research, particularly that involving microalgal-based biofuel production.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261915008132

Author(s): Hui Chen, Tian Qiu, Junfeng Rong, Chenliu He, and Qiang Wang
Organization(s): Chinese Academy of Sciences
Source: Applied Energy
Year: 2015

Technological Landscape and Collaborations in Hybrid Vehicles Industry

Patents, Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type

Production of hybrid vehicles has experienced intense growth in recent years. Carmakers invest significant resources into the development of advanced hybrid drives. The global perspectives of this process can be estimated by systematically analyzing patents outlined in international patent databases.

The paper assesses the state-of-art and future of the industry. Evidence from leaders in the development of hybrid vehicles demonstrates the productivity of the methodology developed by the authors for analyzing patent data .

http://ecsocman.hse.ru/hsedata/2015/06/30/1082514598/01-Rodriguez.pdf

Author(s): Marisela Rodríguez and Francisco Paredes
Organization: Centro de Innovación en Diseño y Tecnología, Tecnológico de Monterrey
Source: Foresight-Russia
Year: 2015

Using the wayback machine to mine websites in the social sciences: A methodological resource

novel source, Research Examples, Research profiling

Websites offer an unobtrusive data source for developing and analyzing information about various types of social science phenomena. In this paper, we provide a methodological resource for social scientists looking to expand their toolkit using unstructured web-based text, and in particular, with the Wayback Machine, to access historical website data. After providing a literature review of existing research that uses the Wayback Machine, we put forward a step-by-step description of how the analyst can design a research project using archived websites. We draw on the example of a project that analyzes indicators of innovation activities and strategies in 300 U.S. small- and medium-sized enterprises in green goods industries. We present six steps to access historical Wayback website data: (a) sampling, (b) organizing and defining the boundaries of the web crawl, (c) crawling, (d) website variable operationalization, (e) integration with other data sources, and (f) analysis. Although our examples draw on specific types of firms in green goods industries, the method can be generalized to other areas of research. In discussing the limitations and benefits of using the Wayback Machine, we note that both machine and human effort are essential to developing a high-quality data set from archived web information.

FULL-TEXT http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23503/full

Author(s): Sanjay K. Arora, Yin Li, Jan Youtie, and Philip Shapira
Organization(s): Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Manchester
Source: Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Year: 2015

Green Energy Prospects: Trends and Challenges

Biz lit, Future-oriented technology analysis, novel source, Patents, Research Examples, Research Type, S&T lit, Strategic planning,

The transition of energy systems moving from non-renewable fossil-nuclear to renewable sources is a key challenge of climate mitigation and sustainable development. Green energy technologies can contribute to solutions of global problems such as climate change, growth of energy consumption, depletion of natural resources, negative environmental impacts, and energy security. In this article the prospective directions of technology development in green energy are studied and analyzed using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative research involves participation of key experts in the field of green energy, while quantitative analysis includes collecting and processing data from different information sources (scientific publications, patents, news, Foresight projects, conferences, projects of international organizations, dissertations, and presentations) with a help of Vantage Point software. In addition, key challenges for green energy as well as its relationships with other technological and non-technological areas are identified and briefly described on the basis of expert and analytical results.

http://www.igi-global.com/article/green-energy-prospects/129675

Author(s): S. Filippov, N. Mikova, and A. Sokolova
Organization(s): Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Higher School of Economics
Source: International Journal of Social Ecology and Sustainable Development (IJSESD)
Year: 2015

The Impact of Research Funding on Scientific Outputs: Evidence from Six Smaller European Countries

Citation analysis, Data Type, Funding, Research Examples, Research Type

We investigate the relationships between the citation impacts of scientific papers and the sources of funding which are acknowledged as having supported those publications. We examine several relationships potentially associated with funding including first citation, total citations and the chances of becoming highly cited. Furthermore, we explore evidence on the links between citations and types of funding by organization and also with combined measures of funding. In particular, we examine the relationship between funding intensity and funding variety and citation. Our empirical work focuses on six small advanced European economies, applying a zero inflated negative binomial model to a set of more than 240,000 papers authored by researchers from these countries. We find that funding is not related to the first citation but is significantly related to the number of citations and top percentile citation impact. Additionally, we find that citation impact is positively related to funding variety and negatively related with funding intensity. Finally there is an inverse relationship between the relative frequency of funding and citation impact. The results presented in the paper raise insights for the design of research programs and the structure of research funding and for the behavior and strategies of researchers and sponsoring organizations.

Open Access escholar

Author(s): Abdullah Gök, John Rigby, Philip Shapira
Organization(s): MIoIR Manchester University
Source: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Year: 2014

Use of web mining in studying innovation (full-text)

Data Type, novel source, Research Examples,

As enterprises expand and post increasing information about their business activities on their websites, website data promises to be a valuable source for investigating innovation. This article examines the practicalities and effectiveness of web mining as a research method for innovation studies. We use web mining to explore the R&D activities of 296 UK-based green goods small and mid-size enterprises. We find that website data offers additional insights when compared with other traditional unobtrusive research methods, such as patent and publication analysis. We examine the strengths and limitations of enterprise innovation web mining in terms of a wide range of data quality dimensions, including accuracy, completeness, currency, quantity, flexibility and accessibility. We observe that far more companies in our sample report undertaking R&D activities on their web sites than would be suggested by looking only at conventional data sources. While traditional methods offer information about the early phases of R&D and invention through publications and patents, web mining offers insights that are more downstream in the innovation process. Handling website data is not as easy as alternative data sources, and care needs to be taken in executing search strategies. Website information is also self-reported and companies may vary in their motivations for posting (or not posting) information about their activities on websites. Nonetheless, we find that web mining is a significant and useful complement to current methods, as well as offering novel insights not easily obtained from other unobtrusive sources.

Open Access doi:10.1007/s11192-014-1434-0

Author(s): Abdullah Gök, Alec Waterworth, Philip Shapira
Organization(s): MIoIR-University of Manchester
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2015

Patent Landscape Report on Animal Genetic Resources

Data Type, Patents, Research Examples, Research profiling, Research Type

This patent landscape report provides an overview of international patent activity for animal genetic resources for food and agriculture. The research focused on identifying patent activity for 17 animals from 15 species of global importance in food and agriculture. The research covered cattle, buffalo, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, bactrian and dromedary camels, llamas and alpacas along with  chickens, ducks and turkeys. The research did not include fish.
The research involved:

  • Text mining over 14 million patent documents from the European Patent Office, the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the Patent Cooperation Treaty for animal names and breed names;
  • Mapping technology clusters involving animals;
  • Identifying patent documents involving animal genetic resources of
    relevance to food and agriculture;
  • Reviewing patent documents for references to breed names and traditional
    knowledge.

The main outcomes of the research are:

  • A quantitative indicator of trends in patent activity for animal genetic
    resources that can be updated and refined over time to respond to policy
    needs;
  • Analysis of the key features of the patent landscape for animal genetic
    resources of relevance to food and agriculture;
  • A detailed set of examples of important patent documents involving
    animal genetic resources to provide evidence to inform policy debates.

Author(s): Paul Oldham, Stephen Hall and Colin Barnes
Organization(s): World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
Source: Patent Landscape Reports Project
http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_947_3.pdf
Year:  2014