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A network analysis of research productivity by country, discipline, and wealth.

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION:Research productivity has been linked to a country's intellectual and economic wealth. Further analysis is needed to assess the association between the distribution of research across disciplines and the economic status of countries. METHODS:By using 55 years of data, spanning 1962 to 2017, of Elsevier publications across a large set of research disciplines and countries globally, this manuscript explores the relationship and evolution of relative research productivity across different disciplines through a network analysis. It also explores the associations of those with economic productivity categories, as measured by the World Bank economic classification. Additional analysis of discipline similarities is possible by exploring the cross-country evolution of those disciplines. RESULTS:Results show similarities in the relative importance of research disciplines among most high-income countries, with larger idiosyncrasies appearing among the remaining countries. This group of high-income countries shows similarities in the dynamics of the relative distribution of research productivity over time, forming a stable research productivity cluster. Lower income countries form smaller, more independent and evolving clusters, and differ significantly from each other and from higher income countries in the relative importance of their research emphases. Country-based similarities in research productivity profiles also appear to be influenced by geographical proximity. CONCLUSIONS:This new form of analyses of research productivity, and its relation to economic status, reveals novel insights to the dynamics of the economic and research structure of countries. This allows for a deeper understanding of the role a country's research structure may play in shaping its economy, and also identification of benchmark resource allocations across disciplines for developing countries.

SUBMITTER: Jaffe K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7219709 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A network analysis of research productivity by country, discipline, and wealth.

Jaffe Klaus K Ter Horst Enrique E Gunn Laura H LH Zambrano Juan Diego JD Molina German G

PloS one 20200513 5

<h4>Introduction</h4>Research productivity has been linked to a country's intellectual and economic wealth. Further analysis is needed to assess the association between the distribution of research across disciplines and the economic status of countries.<h4>Methods</h4>By using 55 years of data, spanning 1962 to 2017, of Elsevier publications across a large set of research disciplines and countries globally, this manuscript explores the relationship and evolution of relative research productivit ...[more]

PMID: 32401823

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Project description:Several developing countries seek to build knowledge-based economies by attempting to expand scientific research capabilities. Characterizing the state and direction of progress in this arena is challenging but important. Here, we employ three metrics: a classical metric of productivity (publications per person), an adapted metric which we denote as Revealed Scientific Advantage (developed from work used to compare publications in scientific fields among countries) to characterize disciplinary specialty, and a new metric, scientific indigeneity (defined as the ratio of publications with domestic corresponding authors) to characterize the locus of scientific activity that also serves as a partial proxy for local absorptive capacity. These metrics-using population and publications data that are available for most countries-allow the characterization of some key features of national scientific enterprise. The trends in productivity and indigeneity when compared across other countries and regions can serve as indicators of strength or fragility in the national research ecosystems, and the trends in specialty can allow regional policy makers to assess the extent to which the areas of focus of research align (or not align) with regional priorities. We apply the metrics to study the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-a region where science and technology capacity will play a key role in national economic diversification. We analyze 9.8 million publication records between 1981-2013 in 17 countries of MENA from Morocco to Iraq and compare it to selected countries throughout the world. The results show that international collaborators increasingly drove the scientific activity in MENA. The median indigeneity reached 52% in 2013 (indicating that almost half of the corresponding authors were located in foreign countries). Additionally, the regional disciplinary focus in chemical and petroleum engineering is waning with modest growth in the life sciences. We find repeated patterns of stagnation and contraction of scientific activity for several MENA countries contributing to a widening productivity gap on an international comparative yardstick. The results prompt questions about the strength of the developing scientific enterprise and highlight the need for consistent long-term policy for effectively addressing regional challenges with domestic research.

Dataset Information

A network analysis of research productivity by country, discipline, and wealth.

Publications

A network analysis of research productivity by country, discipline, and wealth.

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