arXiv subjects

Loet Leydesdorff

Publications and source records attributed to Loet Leydesdorff.

At least 163 records · Page 9Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Innovation Systems as Patent Networks: The Netherlands, India and Nanotech

Research in the domain of 'Innovation Studies' has been claimed to allow for the study of how technology will develop in the future. Some suggest that the National and Sectoral Innovation Systems literature has become bogged down, however, into case studies of how specific institutions affect innovation in a specific country. A useful notion for policy makers in particular, Balzat & Hanusch (2004) argued that there is a need for NIS studies to develop complementary and also quantitative methods in order to generate new insights that are comparable across national borders. We use data for patents granted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to map innovation systems. Groupings of patents into primary and secondary classes (co-classification) can be used as relational indicators. Knowledge from one class may be more easily used in another class when a co-classification relation exists. Using social network analysis, we map the co-classification of patents among classes and thus indicate what characterizes an innovation system. A main contribution of this paper is methodological, adding to the repertoire of methods NIS studies use and using information from patents in a different way. Policy makers may also find benefits in the social network analysis of the complete set of patents granted by the WIPO to firms and individuals in a country. Social network analysis indicates what innovation activity occurs in a countries and which fields of technology are likely to give rise to innovative products in the near future. We offer such analysis for the Dutch and Indian Innovation Systems. This social network analysis could also be done for a Sector Innovation System, and we do so for Nanotech to determine empirically the knowledge field relevant for this emerging scientific domain.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2011

Which are the best cities for psychology research worldwide? A map visualizing city ratios of observed and expected numbers of highly-cited papers

We present scientometric results about world-wide centers of excellence in psychology. Based on Web of Science data, domain-specific excellence can be identified for cities where highly cited papers are published. Data refer to all psychology articles published in 2007 which are documented in the Social Science Citation Index and to their citation frequencies from 2007 to May 2011. Visualized are 214 cities with an article output of at least 50 in 2007. Statistical z tests are used for the evaluation of the degree to which an observed number of top-cited papers (top-10%) for a city differs from the number expected on the basis of randomness in the selection of papers. Map visualizing city ratios on significant differences between observed and expected numbers of highly-cited papers point at excellence centers in cities at the East and West Coast of the United States as well as in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and Taiwan. Furthermore, positive but non-significant differences in favor of high citation rates are documented for some cities in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian and the German-speaking countries, Belgium, France, Spain, Israel, South Korea, and China. Scientometric results show convincingly that highly-cited psychological research articles come from the Anglo-American countries and some of the non-English European countries in which the number of English-language publications has increased during the last decades.

stat.OT↗

arXiv2011

The Communication of Meaning in Anticipatory Systems: A Simulation Study of the Dynamics of Intentionality in Social Interactions

Psychological and social systems provide us with a natural domain for the study of anticipations because these systems are based on and operate in terms of intentionality. Psychological systems can be expected to contain a model of themselves and their environments social systems can be strongly anticipatory and therefore co-construct their environments, for example, in techno-economic (co-)evolutions. Using Duboi's hyper-incursive and incursive formulations of the logistic equation, these two types of systems and their couplings can be simulated. In addition to their structural coupling, psychological and social systems are also coupled by providing meaning reflexively to each other's meaning-processing. Luhmann's distinctions among (1) interactions between intentions at the micro-level, (2) organization at the meso-level, and (3) self-organization of the fluxes of meaningful communication at the global level can be modeled and simulated using three hyper-incursive equations. The global level of self-organizing interactions among fluxes of communication is retained at the meso-level of organization. In a knowledge-based economy, these two levels of anticipatory structuration can be expected to propel each other at the supra-individual level.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2011

The structure of the Arts & Humanities Citation Index: A mapping on the basis of aggregated citations among 1,157 journals

Using the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) 2008, we apply mapping techniques previously developed for mapping journal structures in the Science and Social Science Citation Indices. Citation relations among the 110,718 records were aggregated at the level of 1,157 journals specific to the A&HCI, and the journal structures are questioned on whether a cognitive structure can be reconstructed and visualized. Both cosine-normalization (bottom up) and factor analysis (top down) suggest a division into approximately twelve subsets. The relations among these subsets are explored using various visualization techniques. However, we were not able to retrieve this structure using the ISI Subject Categories, including the 25 categories which are specific to the A&HCI. We discuss options for validation such as against the categories of the Humanities Indicators of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the panel structure of the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), and compare our results with the curriculum organization of the Humanities Section of the College of Letters and Sciences of UCLA as an example of institutional organization.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Which cities produce excellent papers worldwide more than can be expected? A new mapping approach--using Google Maps--based on statistical significance testing

The methods presented in this paper allow for a statistical analysis revealing centers of excellence around the world using programs that are freely available. Based on Web of Science data, field-specific excellence can be identified in cities where highly-cited papers were published significantly. Compared to the mapping approaches published hitherto, our approach is more analytically oriented by allowing the assessment of an observed number of excellent papers for a city (in the sample) against the expected number. Using this test, the approach cannot only identify the top performers in output but the "true jewels." These are cities locating authors who publish significantly more top cited papers than can be expected. As the examples in this paper show for physics, chemistry, and psychology, these cities do not necessarily have a high output of excellent papers.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Turning the tables in citation analysis one more time: Principles for comparing sets of documents

We submit newly developed citation impact indicators based not on arithmetic averages of citations but on percentile ranks. Citation distributions are-as a rule-highly skewed and should not be arithmetically averaged. With percentile ranks, the citation of each paper is rated in terms of its percentile in the citation distribution. The percentile ranks approach allows for the formulation of a more abstract indicator scheme that can be used to organize and/or schematize different impact indicators according to three degrees of freedom: the selection of the reference sets, the evaluation criteria, and the choice of whether or not to define the publication sets as independent. Bibliometric data of seven principal investigators (PIs) of the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam is used as an exemplary data set. We demonstrate that the proposed indicators [R(6), R(100), R(6,k), R(100,k)] are an improvement of averages-based indicators because one can account for the shape of the distributions of citations over papers.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Integrated Impact Indicators (I3) compared with Impact Factors (IFs): An alternative research design with policy implications

In bibliometrics, the association of "impact" with central-tendency statistics is mistaken. Impacts add up, and citation curves should therefore be integrated instead of averaged. For example, the journals MIS Quarterly and JASIST differ by a factor of two in terms of their respective impact factors (IF), but the journal with the lower IF has the higher impact. Using percentile ranks (e.g., top-1%, top-10%, etc.), an integrated impact indicator (I3) can be based on integration of the citation curves, but after normalization of the citation curves to the same scale. The results across document sets can be compared as percentages of the total impact of a reference set. Total number of citations, however, should not be used instead because the shape of the citation curves is then not appreciated. I3 can be applied to any document set and any citation window. The results of the integration (summation) are fully decomposable in terms of journals or instititutional units such as nations, universities, etc., because percentile ranks are determined at the paper level. In this study, we first compare I3 with IFs for the journals in two ISI Subject Categories ("Information Science & Library Science" and "Multidisciplinary Sciences"). The LIS set is additionally decomposed in terms of nations. Policy implications of this possible paradigm shift in citation impact analysis are specified.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Mapping excellence in the geography of science: An approach based on Scopus data

As research becomes an ever more globalized activity, there is growing interest in national and international comparisons of standards and quality in different countries and regions. A sign for this trend is the increasing interest in rankings of universities according to their research performance, both inside but also outside the scientific environment. New methods presented in this paper, enable us to map centers of excellence around the world using programs that are freely available. Based on Scopus data, field-specific excellence can be identified and agglomerated in regions and cities where recently highly-cited papers were published. Differences in performance rates can be visualized on the map using colors and sizes of the marks.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Interactive Overlays: A New Method for Generating Global Journal Maps from Web-of-Science Data

Recent advances in methods and techniques enable us to develop an interactive overlay to the global map of science based on aggregated citation relations among the 9,162 journals contained in the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index 2009 combined. The resulting mapping is provided by VOSViewer. We first discuss the pros and cons of the various options: cited versus citing, multidimensional scaling versus spring-embedded algorithms, VOSViewer versus Gephi, and the various clustering algorithms and similarity criteria. Our approach focuses on the positions of journals in the multidimensional space spanned by the aggregated journal-journal citations. A number of choices can be left to the user, but we provide default options reflecting our preferences. Some examples are also provided; for example, the potential of using this technique to assess the interdisciplinarity of organizations and/or document sets.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Book review: Katy Börner, Atlas of Science: Visualizing What We Know. Cambridge, MA/ London UK: The MIT Press, 2010

Katy Börner has written a wonderful book about visualization that makes our field of scientometrics accessible to much larger audiences. The book is to be read in relation to the ongoing series of exhibitions entitled "Places & Spaces: Mapping Science" currently touring the world. The book also provides the scholarly background to the exhibitions. It celebrates scientometrics as the discipline in the background that enables us to visualize the evolution of knowledge as the acumen of human civilization.

cs.OH↗

arXiv2011

"Structuration" by Intellectual Organization: The Configuration of Knowledge in Relations among Structural Components in Networks of Science

Using aggregated journal-journal citation networks, the measurement of the knowledge base in empirical systems is factor-analyzed in two cases of interdisciplinary developments during the period 1995-2005: (i) the development of nanotechnology in the natural sciences and (ii) the development of communication studies as an interdiscipline between social psychology and political science. The results are compared with a case of stable development: the citation networks of core journals in chemistry. These citation networks are intellectually organized by networks of expectations in the knowledge base at the specialty (that is, above-journal) level. This "structuration" of structural components (over time) can be measured as configurational information. The latter is compared with the Shannon-type information generated in the interactions among structural components: the difference between these two measures provides us with a measure for the redundancy generated by the specification of a model in the knowledge base of the system. This knowledge base incurs (against the entropy law) to variable extents on the knowledge infrastructures provided by the observable networks of relations.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

"Meaning" as a sociological concept: A review of the modeling, mapping, and simulation of the communication of knowledge and meaning

The development of discursive knowledge presumes the communication of meaning as analytically different from the communication of information. Knowledge can then be considered as a meaning which makes a difference. Whereas the communication of information is studied in the information sciences and scientometrics, the communication of meaning has been central to Luhmann's attempts to make the theory of autopoiesis relevant for sociology. Analytical techniques such as semantic maps and the simulation of anticipatory systems enable us to operationalize the distinctions which Luhmann proposed as relevant to the elaboration of Husserl's "horizons of meaning" in empirical research: interactions among communications, the organization of meaning in instantiations, and the self-organization of interhuman communication in terms of symbolically generalized media such as truth, love, and power. Horizons of meaning, however, remain uncertain orders of expectations, and one should caution against reification from the meta-biological perspective of systems theory.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2011

The Triple Helix, Quadruple Helix, . . ., and an N-tuple of Helices: Explanatory Models for Analyzing the Knowledge-based Economy?

Using the Triple Helix model of university-industry-government relations, one can measure the extent to which innovation has become systemic instead of assuming the existence of national (or regional) systems of innovations on a priori grounds. Systemness of innovation patterns, however, can be expected to remain in transition because of integrating and differentiating forces. Integration among the functions of wealth creation, knowledge production, and normative control takes place at the interfaces in organizations, while exchanges on the market, scholarly communication in knowledge production, and political discourse tend to differentiate globally. The neo-institutional and the neo-evolutionary versions of the Triple Helix model enable us to capture this tension reflexively. Empirical studies inform us whether more than three helices are needed for the explanation. The Triple Helix indicator can be extended algorithmically, for example, with local-global as a fourth dimension or, more generally, to an N-tuple of helices.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2011

Citation analysis cannot legitimate the strategic selection of excellence

In reaction to a previous critique(Opthof & Leydesdorff, 2010), the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in Leiden proposed to change their old "crown" indicator in citation analysis into a new one. Waltman et al. (2011)argue that this change does not affect rankings at various aggregated levels. However, CWTS data is not publicly available for testing and criticism. In this correspondence, we use previously published data of Van Raan (2006) to address the pivotal issue of how the results of citation analysis correlate with the results of peer review. A quality parameter based on peer review was neither significantly correlated with the two parameters developed by the CWTS in the past (CPP/JCSm or CPP/FCSm) nor with the more recently proposed h-index (Hirsch, 2005). Given the high correlations between the old and new "crown" indicators, one can expect that the lack of correlation with the peer-review based quality indicator applies equally to the newly developed ones.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

Publish or Patent: Bibliometric evidence for empirical trade-offs in national funding strategies

Multivariate linear regression models suggest a trade-off in allocations of national R&D investments. Government funding, and spending in the higher education sector, seem to encourage publications, whereas other components such as industrial funding, and spending in the business sector, encourage patenting. Our results help explain why the US trails the EU in publications, because of its focus on industrial funding - some 70% of its total R&D investment. Conversely, it also helps explain why the EU trails the US in patenting. Government funding is indicated as a negative incentive to high-quality patenting. The models here can also be used to predict an output indicator for a country, once the appropriate input indicator is known. This usually is done within a dataset for a single year, but the process can be extended to predict outputs a few years into the future, if reasonable forecasts can be made of the input indicators. We provide new forecasts about the further relationships of the US, the EU-27, and the PRC in the case of publishing. Models for individual countries may be more successful, however, than regression models whose parameters are averaged over a set of countries.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

The Local Emergence and Global Diffusion of Research Technologies: An Exploration of Patterns of Network Formation

Grasping the fruits of "emerging technologies" is an objective of many government priority programs in a knowledge-based and globalizing economy. We use the publication records (in the Science Citation Index) of two emerging technologies to study the mechanisms of diffusion in the case of two innovation trajectories: small interference RNA (siRNA) and nano-crystalline solar cells (NCSC). Methods for analyzing and visualizing geographical and cognitive diffusion are specified as indicators of different dynamics. Geographical diffusion is illustrated with overlays to Google Maps; cognitive diffusion is mapped using an overlay to a map based on the ISI Subject Categories. The evolving geographical networks show both preferential attachment and small-world characteristics. The strength of preferential attachment decreases over time, while the network evolves into an oligopolistic control structure with small-world characteristics. The transition from disciplinary-oriented ("mode-1") to transfer-oriented ("mode-2") research is suggested as the crucial difference in explaining the different rates of diffusion between siRNA and NCSC.

cs.DL↗

arXiv2011

The semantic mapping of words and co-words in contexts

Meaning can be generated when information is related at a systemic level. Such a system can be an observer, but also a discourse, for example, operationalized as a set of documents. The measurement of semantics as similarity in patterns (correlations) and latent variables (factor analysis) has been enhanced by computer techniques and the use of statistics; for example, in "Latent Semantic Analysis". This communication provides an introduction, an example, pointers to relevant software, and summarizes the choices that can be made by the analyst. Visualization ("semantic mapping") is thus made more accessible.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2011

Fractional counting of citations in research evaluation: A cross- and interdisciplinary assessment of the Tsinghua University in Beijing

In the case of the scientometric evaluation of multi- or interdisciplinary units one risks to compare apples with oranges: each paper has to be assessed in comparison to an appropriate reference set. We suggest that the set of citing papers can be considered as the relevant representation of the field of impact. In order to normalize for differences in citation behavior among fields, citations can be fractionally counted proportionately to the length of the reference lists in the citing papers. This new method enables us to compare among units with different disciplinary affiliations at the paper level and also to assess the statistical significance of differences among sets. Twenty-seven departments of the Tsinghua University in Beijing are thus compared. Among them, the Department of Chinese Language and Linguistics is upgraded from the 19th to the second position in the ranking. The overall impact of 19 of the 27 departments is not significantly different at the 5% level when thus normalized for different citation potentials.

cs.DL↗