Category Archives: Research Examples

Correlation of Betel Quid with Oral Cancer from 1998 to 2017 A Study Based on Bibliometric Analysis (full-text)

Betel quid chewing has been a major risk factor for oral cancer (OC) in southern China. This study aimed to analyze the scientific publications on the relationship between betel quid chewing and OC and construct a model to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate pertinent publications from 1998 to 2017.

The publications from 1998 to 2017 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Microsoft Excel, Thomson Data Analyzer, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace software were used to analyze the publication outcomes, journals, countries/regions, institutions, authors, research areas, and research frontiers.

A total of 788 publications on the relationship between betel quid chewing and OC published until October 25, 2017, were identified. The top 4 related journals were Journal of Oral Pathology Medicine, Oral Oncology, Plos One, and International Journal of Cancer. The top five countries engaged in related research included China, India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Malaysia. The corresponding disciplines, such as oncology, oral surgery, pathology, environmental and occupational health, and toxicology, were mainly concentrated in three disciplines. The subject terms squamous cell carcinoma, OC, betel quid, expression, oral submucous fibrosis, India, and p53 ranked first among research hotspots. The burst terms squamous cell carcinoma, OC, betel quid, and expression ranked first in research frontiers.

Research in this area emphasized hotspots such as squamous cell carcinoma, OC, oral submucosal fibrosis, betel quid, and tobacco. The annual number of publications steadily decreased from 1998 to 2017, with a lack of a systematic study from interdisciplinary perspectives, inadequate pertinent journals, limited regions with the practice of betel quid chewing, and insufficient participation of researchers, which indicate that as the prevalence of OC increases, particularly in China, research in this area warrants further expansion.

link to full-paper https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Fulltext/2018/08200/Correlation_of_Betel_Quid_with_Oral_Cancer_from.14.aspx

Author(s): Mu Wang, Chang Xiao, Ping Ni, Jian-Jun Yu, Xiao-Wan Wang, Hong Sun
Organization(s): Central South University, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences
Source: Chinese Medical Journal
Year: 2018

Mapping the Healthcare Service Quality Domain: A Bibliometric Analysis (full-text)

Quality in healthcare services has become a subject of study, acquiring a special connotation for both individual and collective health services.
The aim of this study is to examine the scientific literature on healthcare service quality indexed in SCOPUS between 1994 and 2015. A bibliometric study was conducted using the SCOPUS database along with a structured search equation. A total of 256 academic publications were retrieved and analysed for quantity, quality and structure bibliometric indicators.
The interest in the present topic has been increasing exponentially during the past years. The year of 2014 was the most productive period, with 34 research papers published. Likewise, it is worth noting that the existing literature has focused on quality and satisfaction-related issues. Studies conducted between 1994 and 2015 aimed to measure the level of satisfaction among the users of healthcare services using the SERVQUAL model, proving its applicability for quality management in healthcare.

DOI : 10.7860/JCDR/2018/30361.11863

link to Full Paper

Author(s): Alejandro Valencia-Arias, Lemy Bran Piedrahita, Alejandra Botero Zapata, Martha Benjumea, Lucia Palacios Moya
Organization(s): Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano, Institución Universitaria Escolme
Source: Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research
Year: 2018

Institutional shaping of research priorities: A case study on avian influenza

Since outbreaks in 2003, avian influenza has received a considerable amount of funding and become a controversial science policy issue in various respects. Like in many other global and multidisciplinary societal problems fraught with high levels of uncertainty, a variety of perspectives have emerged over how to “tackle” avian influenza and public voices have expressed concern over how research funds are being allocated. In this article, we document if and how research agendas are being informed by public policy debates. We use qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine the relations between expectations of outcomes of public science and the existing research landscape. Interviews with a cross-section of stakeholders reveal a wide range of perspectives and values associated with the nature and objectives of existing research avenues. We find that the landscape of public avian influenza research is not directly driven by expectations of societal outcomes. Instead, it is shaped by three institutional drivers: pharmaceutical industry priorities, publishing and public research funding pressures, and the mandates of science-based policy or public health organizations. These insights suggest that, in research prioritization, funding agencies should embrace a broad perspective of research governance that explicitly considers underlying institutional drivers. Deliberative approaches in public priority setting might help to make agendas more plural and diverse and thus more responsive to the contested and uncertain nature of avian influenza research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.07.005

Author(s): Matthew L.Wallace, Ismael Ràfols
Organization(s): Universitat Politècnica de València
Source: Research Policy
Year: 2018

Changes in the structures and directions of destination management and marketing research: A bibliometric mapping study, 2005–2016

The growing importance of destinations as loci for change in tourism systems has led to the recent accelerated growth of destination management and marketing (DMM) research. This paper conducts an integrated exploration of the structure and interconnections, and the dynamics of the recent growth of DMM research in terms of research fronts and trajectories. A quantitative, visualization-rich approach is proposed, based on bibliometric mapping networks comprising DMM-relevant articles extracted from 49 tourism journals published from 2005 to 2016. The results reveal a DMM structure consisting of 10 key clusters. Sustainable development, competitiveness of tourist destinations, destination development and innovation, and ICT/social media are found to have rapidly evolved as research fronts, while the more traditional research clusters on destination perception and tourist decision-making have developed more slowly. Significant interactions can be observed between management- and marketing-oriented research domains. At deeper levels of analysis, more diverse research trajectories stand out, including those focusing on destination governance; knowledge and experience-based analytical frameworks; service-related domains; subjective issues such as emotions, attachment, and identity; destination brand equity; and sustainability. The paper also shows that additional value will come from research that integrates up-to-now distant DMM topics. The results of this study can help policymakers, practitioners, and scholars understand the recent progress in, and the major trends shaping, the DMM research agenda.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2018.06.005

Author(s): Alfonso Ávila-Robinson, Naoki Wakabayashi
Organization(s): Kyoto University
Source: Journal of Destination Marketing & Management
Year: 2018

Electromobility research in Germany and China: structural differences

Electromobility (e-mobility) is applicable to issues from sustainable transportation to revolutionary driving behaviour. The wide-ranging influence of this concept calls for a shift toward an internationalization of e-mobility research in developed and developing countries alike. Germany and China, as the major exporters and volume producers in the automotive industry, have established the goal of becoming market leaders in e-mobility by 2020. Compared to China, Germany, as a forerunner in the field of e-mobility, is unexpectedly lagging behind in both the sale volume of electric vehicles (EVs) and the share of international publications. Since 2006, China has been the second largest single “producer” of EV-related published research, trailing only the United States. However, the technological capabilities—applying science to real-world issues—seem to be under-represented in these publications. This paper explores structural differences in e-mobility research landscapes and examines possible contextual explanations for the differences between Germany and China. The study involves a detailed comparison of articles sourced from the two countries, beginning with a broad overview of recent research and ending with a short content analysis of the statement concerning current progress and practical challenges for e-mobility development in Germany and China. The conclusion reached is that both countries have explored topics related to EV modes, batteries, energy management and the smart grid; however, specific terms of interest have evolved differently in the two countries. Compared with China, Germany has not achieved a rapid increase in the number of international publications but has still accumulated a vast reservoir of scientific talents and technological resources through the scientific collaboration between academia and industry. Universities, as the main loci of scientific research in China, have actively engaged in international cooperation, addressing problems with no apparent differences from those addressed in Germany. The authors’ views relative to the development of e-mobility in the two countries vary greatly from group to group, indicating that differences should be considered in both the pattern of knowledge production and the research context.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2873-9

Author(s):Qu Zhao
Organization: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2018

Interdisciplinarity and collaboration: on the relationship between disciplinary diversity in departmental affiliations and reference lists

This study explores the characteristics of scientific activity patterns through co-author affiliations to obtain new insights into interdisciplinary research. To classify the interdisciplinarity in research, we explored and compared two different approaches: the diversity of disciplines reflected in the listed affiliations of the authors and the diversity of the subject categories reflected in the reference list. To assess the diversity in departmental affiliations, we developed an explorative methodology that retrieves feature words from a combination of manual work and the thesaurus function in the Thomson Data Analyzer text mining tool. To assess the diversity in references, we followed the conventional approach applied in previous work. With both approaches, we relied on diversity as the measure for assessing interdisciplinarity of 157,710 articles published in PloS One (2007–2016). Based on a comparison between the results of both approaches, our study confirms that different methodologies and indicators can produce seriously inconsistent, and even contradictory results. In addition, different indicators may capture different understandings of such a multi-faceted concept as interdisciplinarity. Our results are summarized in a schematic representation of this twofold perspective as a method of indexing the different types of interdisciplinarity commonly found in research studies.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2853-0

Author(s): Lin Zhang, Beibei Sun, Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Lixin Chen, Ying Huang
Organization(s): Wuhan University, North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2018

Revisiting the concept of Innovative Developing Countries (IDCs) for its relevance to health innovation and neglected tropical diseases and for the prevention and control of epidemics (Full-paper)

Splitting countries into two groups—rich and poor; developed (the “North”) and developing (the “South”); leaders and followers—appears to us to be progressively more simplistic, unrealistic and a heritage from colonial times. Triggered by the first wave of globalization, the share of world income going to today’s wealthy nations soared from twenty to almost seventy percent between 1820 and 1990, a fact that supported and strengthened this dichotomic vision; however, the new globalization driven by information technology has propelled the rapid industrialization of several developing nations and simultaneous deindustrialization of developed nations, a phenomenon that has not yet been fully understood nor reflected in traditional economic indexes and analyses. In this article we revisit the 2005 concept of Innovative Developing Countries (IDCs) that points to the underrepresentation of IDCs in well-known innovation indexes and country ranks. Our analysis clearly shows a prominent role for IDCs in health innovation, research and development on NTDs and in epidemics preparedness, prevention and control.

Full-paper link

Author(s): Alexandre Guimarães Vasconcellos, Bruna de Paula Fonseca e Fonseca, Carlos Medicis Morel
Organization(s): National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz)
Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
Year: 2018

A new model based on patent data for technology early warning research

As technology competition among enterprises become more intense, technical crisis occurs in enterprises, such as technological substitution and technology divulgence. Thus, it is necessary to warn enterprises of those technical crises that can be called technology early warning. As patent data contains much technology information, it becomes an efficient source to analyse technology. This paper proposes a technology early warning model based on patent data to help enterprises execute technology early warning from the perspective of its technology status. To do so, we set ten indicators from four aspects to evaluate the enterprise’s technology status at first, calculate the index of enterprise’s technical crisis with AHP, and then propose five early warning levels. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Group) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are taken as comparative case studies.

https://doi.org/10.1504/IJTM.2018.092969

Author(s): Ying Guo, Ganlu Sun, Lili Zhang, Fan Yang, Junfang Guo, Lin Ma
Organization(s): Beijing Institute of Technology
Source: International Journal of Technology Management
Year: 2018

Analysis of an investment by a seed capital fund using a patento-scientometric approach: the case of probiotics technology for veterinary use

This article examines the potential use of scientometric and patentometric indicators as a way to instrumentalise the process of selecting projects by seed capital funds. Academic interest in high-tech companies is growing due to their ability to contribute to economic and social development. Nevertheless, the literature and documented practice reveal a certain difficulty to evaluate non-financial criteria associated with technologies by venture capital funds. We selected the case of a company that received an investment from Brazil’s largest seed capital fund to analyse the contribution of these indicators to understand the potential of the firm’s technology. We conclude that use of scientometric and patentometric can improve the process of evaluation of the following criteria: technology; market; divestment; and team.

https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBBM.2018.092749

Author(s): Gustavo Da Silva Motta, Maxwel De Azevedo-Ferreira, Rogério Hermida Quintella
Organization(s): Universidade Federal Fluminense, Universidade Federal da Bahia
Source: International Journal of Bibliometrics in Business and Management
Year: 2018

How R&D partner diversity influences innovation performance: an empirical study in the nano-biopharmaceutical field

R&D partner diversity is generally acknowledged to help organizations to improve innovation performance. This study investigates the influence mechanism in depth by introducing technological diversification as mediator and the structural holes of new knowledge elements from R&D partners and the degree centrality of the focal organization’s knowledge elements as two moderators. The empirical analysis is based on patent data in the emerging nano-biopharmaceutical field and includes 554 innovative organizations. Results show that partners’ organizational diversity and geographical diversity have positive effects on focal organizations’ innovation performance through improving technological diversification. The structural holes of new knowledge elements from R&D partners and the degree centrality of the focal organization’s knowledge elements moderate the process in the way that when they are at high levels, the indirect positive effects of partner diversity on innovation performance through technological diversification are strengthened.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2831-6

Author(s): Guiyang Zhang, Chaoying Tang
Organization(s): Chinese Academy of Sciences
Source: Scientometrics
Year: 2018