Table Of ContentSpringer
Handbook
oƒ
Science and
Technology
Indicators
Glänzel
Moed
Schmoch
Thelwall
Editors
123
Springer Handbook of Science and
Technology Indicators
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H
Springer
Handbook
of Science and Technology
Indicators
Wolfgang Glänzel, Henk F. Moed,
Ulrich Schmoch, Mike Thelwall (Eds.)
With279Figuresand223Tables
K
Editors
WolfgangGlänzel
ECOOMandFacultyofEconomicsandBusiness
KULeuven
Leuven,Belgium
HenkF.Moed
Amsterdam,TheNetherlands
UlrichSchmoch
CompetenceCenterPolicy–Industry–Innovation
FraunhoferInstituteforSystemsandInnovationResearchISI
Karlsruhe,Germany
MikeThelwall
FacultyofScienceandEngineering
UniversityofWolverhampton
Wolverhampton,UK
ISBN978-3-030-02510-6 e-ISBN978-3-030-02511-3
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3
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V
Preface
The SpringerHandbookof Scienceand TechnologyIndicators offers a collection of
state-of-the-art contributions on quantitativescience and technology research. Orga-
nizedinsixparts,theindividualchaptersfocusonvariousaspectsofthedevelopment
andapplicationofindicatorsderivedfromdataonscholarlypublications,patents,and
electronic communication. The 44 chapters are written by leading specialists in the
topicsselected forthisSpringerHandbook.Thesechaptersdealwiththeoreticaland
methodologicalissues,illustrateapplications,highlighttheirpolicycontextandrele-
vance,andpointtofutureresearchdirections.Inparticular,theauthorspresentasurvey
oftheresearchtopicstheyaddress,andshowtheirmostrecentachievementsandcon-
tributiontotheadvancementofquantitativestudiesofscienceandtechnology.
Thechaptersarearrangedintosixparts:
PartA: Analysisofdatasourcesandnetworkanalysis
PartB: Advancementofmethodologyforresearchassessment
PartC: Sciencesystemsandresearchpolicy
PartD: Newindicatorsforresearchassessment
PartE: Advancementofmethodologyforpatentanalysis
PartF: Patentsystem,patents,andeconomics.
TheEditors’Introductionprovidesafurtherspecificationofthehandbook’sscope
andofthemaintopicsaddressedinitschapters.ThisSpringerHandbookaimsatfour
distinctgroupsofreaders:practitionersinthefieldofscienceandtechnologystudies;
researchstudentsinthisfield;informationscientistsaandpractitionersininformatics;
scientists,scholars,andtechnicianswhoareinterestedinasystematic,thoroughanaly-
sisoftheiractivities;policy-makersandadministratorswhowishtobeinformedabout
thepotentialitiesandlimitationsofthevariousapproachesandabouttheirresults.
ThecurrenthandbookcanbeconsideredasuccessoroftheHandbookofQuanti-
tativeScienceandTechnologyStudieseditedbyAnthonyvanRaanandpublishedin
1988andtheHandbookofQuantitativeScienceandTechnologyResearch.TheUseof
PublicationandPatentStatisticsinStudiesofS&TSystemseditedbyHenkF.Moed,
WolfgangGlänzel,andUlrichSchmochin2004.
Weare grateful to all contributors for their enormousefforts to share their long-
standingexperienceasexpertsintheirresearchtopicsandtoprovideuswithexcellent
chaptersforthishandbook.
WolfgangGlänzel
HenkF.Moed
UlrichSchmoch
MikeThelwall
VII
Editors’ Introduction
TheSpringerHandbookofScienceandTechnologyIn- proved accessibility to research results and broadened
dicators continues the tradition and scope set by two the usage of published information, while scientific
predecessorreference works:TheHandbookofQuan- bloggingprovideda platform to communicatescience
titative Studies of Science and Technology, edited by to major stakeholders and the public. The extension
Anthony F.J. van Raan and published in 1988, and of communication and publication channels with new
a little more than 15 years later, the Handbook of actorandusergroupsintroducedthenecessityandpos-
Quantitative Science and Technology Research (edi- sibility of building new measures of usage exchange
tors:HenkMoed,WolfgangGlänzel,UlrichSchmoch). andnetworks,whichmakesitpossibletoexaminenew
Similarlytothepreviousvolumes,thishandbookdeals kindsofimpact,andtostudysocietalimpactbeyondthe
withquantitativestudiesofthescienceandtechnology traditional scholarly domain. With the growth of user
(S&T)systemwhichisconceivedasapartofthevari- groups and communities and the wide scope of data
ousnationalorregionalinnovationsystems. sourcesforinformationtransferandusagethedemand
Thecurrentworkprovidesthestateoftheartofthe for connectability and interoperability with the neces-
development and application of methods and models sity of harmonization,standardization, and integration
thathavebeendevelopedtounderstandandstudypro- ofdataemerged(DaraioandGlänzel,2016).
cesses and networks of scientific communication, the Software development in recent decades and pub-
indicators for the S&T system that are derived from licly available data sources, such as Google Scholar
the documented output of research and patenting ac- andacademiclicensesforcommercialabstractandcita-
tivities.Besidesreportingandreviewingmethodologies tiondatabaseswithbibliometricfeatures, haveopened
andapplicationfields,thereisastrongfocusontracing up bibliometrics to a broader user group among sci-
thedevelopmentsthattookplaceinthefieldofquanti- entists, librarians, and bibliometric semiprofessionals.
tative S&T studies since the first and second volumes This hasfostered uninformeduseofbibliometricsand
appeared. The three decades since the publication of technometrics, most notably in an evaluative context.
vanRaan’sHandbookwerecharacterizedbyincreasing Thisdevelopmentunderlinesthenecessityofproviding
internationalization,thedualityofglobalcollaboration anup-to-datehandbookonquantitativeS&Tresearchto
andcompetitioninscienceandtechnology,challenges scientistsandpractitioners,notonlyreportingthestate
to S&T studies that have also created opportunities of the art in the disciplinebut also giving guidanceto
and proved to be one of the main driving forces for practitionersandpotentialusersofS&Tindicators.
the advancement of our field, and the gradual supple- ThecontributionstotheSpringerHandbookofSci-
mentationandreplacementoftraditionalpublishingby ence and TechnologyIndicators reflect a wide variety
electroniccommunicationmediaandpublicationchan- of attributes of the contemporary S&T system. Most
nels. Several of these and related issues had already central concepts have not changed since the previous
found their way into the second handbook, including editionastheseincludescientificortechnologicalper-
the science-technology interface, research collabora- formance,andtheproductivityorefficiencyoftheS&T
tion and network analysis, emerging economies and system and its constituent parts. The question of how
thechangingglobalresearchlandscape,theinternation- performance or productivity could be measured also
alization of knowledge generation, and data and text remains a crucial issue but contexts and applications
miningforS&Tstudiesandwebometrics. have created new challenges, data provide more and
Thenewmillenniumhasspedupdevelopmentand betterinformation,thegeneraltrendtowardsthemeso
brought new challenges but also solutions. Increased and increasingly micro level has continued, requiring
computing capacity, practically infinite storage capac- more accuracy and finer granularity. The question of
ities, and the development of new algorithms have how the various parts in an S&T system react with
helped researchers to cope with the challenges of big oneanotherandhowthisinteractionaffectstheoverall
datathatemergedduringthelastdecade.Boththequan- performance is still of foremostimportance. The need
tity and quality of data now allow the analysis and formeasuringtheimpactofresearchbeyondscholarly
linkageofhugedocumentcorpora,large-scaletextmin- communication,includingpolicyimpactandimpacton
ing, and study of the evolutionof hugedocumentand society, called broaderimpact, has becomeoneofthe
actornetworks.Openaccessandopensciencehaveim- driving forces for the development of our field. This
VIII Editors’Introduction
also includes the necessity of exploiting and mining yet that gives good evidence of public interest in re-
unstructured and nonstandardized sources for relevant search. Forthis,mediamentionsare probablythebest
information, a new challenge of big-data processing proxy available. Indicators like download counts are
that has broadened our field further towards computer particularlyusefulforinvestigatingthescholarlycom-
and information science with the developmentof new munication process by giving insights into patterns of
algorithmsandnewretrievaltechniques.Thesesources usefordocuments,includingbyscholarsandstudents.
and techniques are not replacing the traditional ones In the following, we will give an overview of the
based on well-standardized bibliographic and patent chaptersthatareincludedinthishandbook.
databases but they essentially extend traditional quan-
titativescienceand technologystudiesbygivingthem Part A: Analysis ofData Sources
a new perspective and dimension. To stay abreast of and Network Analysis
thesechanges,thishandbookincludesanewpartonthe
developmentandapplicationofnewindicators(PartD: ThechapterbyVincentLarivièreandCassidyR.Sugi-
NewIndicatorsforResearchAssessment). motodealswiththejournalimpactfactor,probablythe
Many new web indicators have been developed most widely used bibliometric construct. They argue
since the last handbook was published. In addition to that this indicator is, by far, the most discussed bib-
a small set of webometrics, the Altmetrics initiative, liometricindicator,and hasbeen widelydissectedand
started by Jason Priem in 2010, led to the creation of debated by scholars of every disciplinary orientation.
a wide range of new indicators derived from social Their chapter presents a brief history of the indicator
websources.Italsoledtothecreationoforganizations and highlights a series of well-known limitations, and
devoted to collecting and selling altmetric values, in- draws on the existing literature as well as on original
cludingImpactStory,Altmetric.com,andPlumAnalyt- research. They highlighttheadverseeffects oftheuse
ics.Altmetricsarenowwidelydeployedbypublishers ofthisindicatoronauthorsandpublishers,anddescribe
in their digital libraries alongside citation counts and alternativejournal-basedindicators.Theirchapterends
are being considered for (limited) research evaluation with a call for responsibleapplication of journal indi-
contexts. Their promise is that they may reflect non- cators, and a commentary on future developments in
scholarlytypesofimpactsthatareignoredbycitations journalindicators.
fromotherjournalarticles,and/orthattheymayappear Subject delineation has become one of the promi-
more quickly than citations, allowing earlier impact nenttasks in bibliometricdomainstudies.Michel Zitt,
evidence.Mostalternativeindicatorsarealsoeasilyma- Alain Lelu, Martine Cadot, and Guillaume Cabanac
nipulatedand subjecttoirrelevantuses,however.This describe this complex task using three models as
makes them difficult to use in most research evalua- aquestionofdisciplinesversusinvisiblecolleges.The
tion contexts. Nevertheless, they can be valuable for models, which can be favorably combined with each
self-evaluationandongoingmonitoringpurposes(e.g., other, are existing classification schemes, information
byfundingorganizations),ifusedcarefully.Theymay retrieval, andclusteringexercises. Theauthorsdiscuss
also be useful on an ad-hoc basis to support narrative the opportunities and limitations of the bibliometric
claimsfornonscholarlyimpacts.Forexample,thereare techniquesunderlyinginformationretrieval, dataanal-
instancesofthistypeofuseinthecasestudypartsofthe ysis, and network analysis. They show how multiple
2016UKResearchExcellenceFrameworkevaluations. network approaches allowthe comparisonand combi-
In terms of individual new indicators, counts of nation of bibliometricnetworks. The authors focus on
readers in the social reference manager Mendeley are textual and citation networks, but outline possibilities
worthaspecialmention.Thesearelikecitationcounts and methods for hybridization.The chapter concludes
in that they primarily reflect scholarly impact but ap- withadiscussionoftypicalsubjectdelineationschemes
pear a year earlier, allowing timelier evaluations. In andprotocols.
contrast, Altmetric.com scans many policy documents Intheirchapter,Ronald Rousseau,Lin Zhang,and
for citations to academic research. Policy mentions Xiaojun Hu providea systematicreview of interdisci-
giveclear evidenceofimportantnonscholarlyimpacts plinarity in scientific research. First, they examine the
for academic research. There are also alternative indi- phenomenon of interdisciplinary research (IDR) from
cators that reflect arts and humanities impacts (e.g., aconceptualperspectiveanddiscussitscharacteristics
Google Books citations, online reviews), educational and driving forces. The second part is devoted to its
impacts (syllabus mentions), and commercial impacts quantification and measurement from the information
(e.g.,GooglePatentscitations).Oneofthebest-known science perspective. The authors proceed from the as-
indicators,tweetcounts,appeartoprimarilyreflectpub- sumptionthatIDRismirroredinthepublishedresearch
licity, however, and there is no alternative indicator documentsbytheintegrationofknowledgefromdiffer-
Editors’Introduction IX
entsubjects.Theauthorsreviewexistingapproachesto importantrolein quantitativesciencestudies.Thefol-
measure knowledge integration and show their limita- lowingthreechapterstacklethisimportanttopicwithin
tions. Proceeding from the notion by Stirling, Rafols, contemporaryscientometricresearch.Thefirstgivesan
and Meyer proposing three main components of in- overview of the advanced bibliometric tool for struc-
terdisciplinarity(diversity,variety,andevenness),they tural analysis and visualization.The second chapteris
proposeatruediversitymeasure.Anexamplefromthe devotedtothechallengesoftheanalysisoflarge-scale
fieldofsyntheticbiologyprovidesanillustrationandthe bibliometricnetworksandthethirddealsaboveallwith
chapterconcludeswithsuggestionsforfutureresearch. fundamentalmethodologicalquestionsofsciencemap-
Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, Enrique Orduna- pingandtopicidentification.
Malea,andAlbertoMartín-Martínarguethatthelaunch Sciencemappinginvolvesthedevelopmentandap-
ofGoogleScholar(GS)markedthebeginningofarev- plicationofcomputationaltechniquesforthevisualiza-
olutioninthescientificinformationmarket,becauseof tion, analysis, and modeling of scientific and techno-
itsautomaticindexingofinformationdirectlyobtained logical activities. It is an advanced bibliometric tool
from the web, its ease of use, and its wide coverage. to analyze and mine scientific output. Jose A. Moral-
Their chapter lays the foundations for the use of GS Munoz, Antonio G. López-Herrera, Enrique Herrera-
asasupplementarysourceforscientificevaluation,by Viedma, and Manuel J. Cobo review six freely avail-
giving an overview of how GS works, and providing able, comprehensivescience mapping tools: Bibexcel,
statistics about its size, coverage, and growth rate. In CiteSpaceII, CitNetExplorer, SciMAT, Sci2 Tool,and
addition, the authors conduct a systematic analysis of VOSviewer.Theauthorsdiscussthestrengthsandlimi-
the main limitations of GS as an evaluation tool, and tationsofthesetoolsrelatedtodataprocessing,analysis
compareGSwithtraditionalcitationindexes.Theycon- options,andvisualization.Theyarguethateachtoolhas
cludethatGSpresentsabroaderviewoftheacademic differentproperties,andthechoiceofoneoveranother
world than the traditional indexes as it includes many depends on the type of actors to be analyzed and the
previouslyinvisiblesources. typeofoutputexpected.
The nextchapter is devoted to the analysis of cur- KevinBoyackandRichardKlavanspointtothenew
rent publication trends in gold Open Access (OA). In challenges thathaveemerged sincethelastHandbook
thefirstpart,DanielTorres-Salinas,NicolasRobinson- of QuantitativeScience and TechnologyResearch was
Garcia,andHenkF.Moedgiveacomprehensivereview published. The recent science mapping evolution has
of the current literature on Open Access, specifically beenfacilitatedbytheavailabilityoffulltextdatabases,
inrelationtoits“citationadvantage.”Thischapterhas increased computingcapacity, andthedevelopmentof
threedimensions:countries,subjectfields,andjournals. newalgorithms.Thishasallowedmappingtechnology
Inthelightofthis,theauthorsinvestigatenationalgold to transition from the analysis of small networks to
OApublicationpatterns,OAjournalcharacteristicsand large-scale exercises. The focus is on the analysis of
citationdifferencesbetweengoldOAandnongoldOA large-scale, global bibliometric networks. The authors
publications, and factors that may affect differences giveastate-of-the-artreportanddiscussthecommonly
in citation impact between OA and conventional, toll- used data sources and methods from a historical per-
accessjournals.Theauthorsalsodiscussscientists’OA spective, continuing to the most recent developments.
publicationstrategiesandpatternsaswellastheroleof Theirownlarge-scaletopic-levelmodelisusedtoillus-
predatoryOAjournals. trate the analysis of large-scale bibliometric networks
Forecasting future developments in science, tech- andpotentialapplications.
nology, and innovation (STI) is the subject of the In his chapter, Bart Thijs identifies three drivers
chapterbyKatyBörnerandStašaMilojevic´.Suchfore- of scientometric mapping of science: information-
casts are based on advanced mathematical-statistical technological innovation;improved community detec-
and computational models of the STI system, and are tion; and methodologicaladvancements in the field of
facilitated by advancesin computationalpowerand in scientometrics itself. The author shows that sciento-
the availability of numerous “big” datasets containing metric methodologies using citation-link and lexical
not only bibliometric, but also funding, stock market, approaches lagged the development of the first two
socialmedia,and othertypesofdata. Advancedmod- drivers. He discusses methodological issues related to
elscanbeusedtosimulateandunderstandthestructure community detection. The different approaches to the
and dynamics of the STI system, and enhance human creation of global maps and the possibility of achiev-
decision-making. ing comparable results at higher levels of granularity
Science mapping in the form of studies of struc- are contrasted with the fine-grained solutions possible
turalaspectsofdocumentandactornetworksplaysan fromlocalmapping.
X Editors’Introduction
Part B: Advancementof Methodology attentionispaidtothetheoretical,mathematicalandax-
for ResearchAssessment iomaticbackgroundandvariousapplicationsaswellas
thepossibilityofapplyingtheh-indexasanetworkin-
AnthonyF.J.vanRaangivesacomprehensiveoverview dicator.
of the methodology and application of advanced bib- The method of Characteristic Scores and Scales
liometric indicators and introduces bibliometrics as (CSS) was originally proposed in the second half of
apowerfulinstrumentforthestudyofscience.Hishis- the1980s,whentheirlarge-scalecalculationswerestill
toricalreviewstartsfromthebeginningofprofessional a computational challenge. Because of increased data
bibliometrics and covers the role of citation indexing availabilityandcomputationalcapacity,themethodhas
in the emergence of the discipline of scientometrics. now become practical. Wolfgang Glänzel, Bart Thijs,
Thereviewdiscusseshowcitationindexingrevolution- and Koenraad Debackere provide an overview of the
izedquantitativesciencestudiesandcontinuesuntilthe variousfieldsofapplicationofthismethod,whichaims
stageofcontemporarybibliometricsintheinternetage. toreplacethetraditionallinearapproachtocitationim-
This introduction is followed by a description of ad- pact evaluation by a distributional one with a focus
vanced state-of-the-art bibliometrics with its rationale on the high end of performance. A discussion of the
andpracticalneeds.Theauthorproceedsfromthetwo mathematical background and statistical properties is
mainpillars,citationanalysisandmappingofscience, followed by the implementation of the method in as-
which can be reduced to a single principle. The au- sessmentexercisesatdifferentlevelsofaggregationas
thor deduces a set of main indicators to be used for well as in various disciplinary and multidisciplinary
research performance assessment with regard to the contexts.
developments at the Leiden Institute. The conceptual- The development and application of bibliometric
methodological part is followed by applications of indicatorsofresearchperformanceatthelevelofindi-
indicators in an evaluative context with various real- vidualauthorsisoneofthemostdebatedandcomplex
lifeexamples.Inthiscontext,theauthordiscussesalso issues in quantitative science and technology stud-
problematicandcontroversialissues,suchastheuseof ies. Lorna Wildgaard presents a critical overview of
journalimpactfactors,theh-index,publicationassign- the development of this type of indicator. She dis-
ment,subjectdelineation,anduniversityrankings.The cusses characteristics and mathematical properties of
lastpartofthechapterdealswiththeabove-mentioned 68author-levelindicators,andhighlightstheirpotential
secondpillarofbibliometrics,themappingofscience. andlimitations.Themajorthemeofhercontributionis
Hybridtechniques,thecombinationofcitationanalysis settingtheargumentfortheneedtomonitorandevalu-
andsciencemapping,andnewfieldsofapplicationare atecurrentindicatorproduction.
describedanddiscussed. Policyimplementationofrelevantscience,technol-
LudoWaltmanandNeesJanvanEckpresentacom- ogy,andinnovationindicatorsrequiresappropriatedata
prehensive overview of a class of bibliometric indica- managementmethods,anddataintegrationhasbecome
torsthatareamongthemostimportantinbibliometrics, a central issuein thisregard. Two mainapproaches to
namely field-normalized indicators. The term field in- dataintegrationarein use:proceduralanddeclarative.
dicates a branch of knowledge, such as a research MaurizioLenzeriniandCinziaDaraiofollowthelatter
discipline, specialty, or topic. Field-normalized indi- approachbyfocusingontheontology-baseddatainte-
cators make corrections for differences among fields, gration (OBDI) paradigm. They discuss the five main
so that groups of researchers from different fields can principles of this paradigm and the challenges of data
be compared with one another. The authors give an integration.Finally,Sapientia(theontologyofmultidi-
overviewofthevariousfield-normalizationapproaches. mensional research assessment and its OBDI system)
Most importantly, they also illustrate how indicators developedatSapienzaUniversityofRomeisprovided
themselves can be evaluated, and how the choice of asanexampleofanopenandcollaborativeplatformfor
anapproachmayaffecttheoutcomesofabibliometric researchassessment.
analysis. Synergy in innovation systems is studied by
The h-index and its derivatives have become per- Loet Leydesdorff, Inga Ivanova, and Martin Meyer
haps the most popular and most commonly used bib- within the framework of the Triple Helix model of
liometric indicators besides the journal impact factor. university–industry–governmentrelations.Thisisused
ResearchandapplicationsofHirsch-typeindexeshave asametaphorinmodelingtheknowledge-basedecon-
consequently yielded a large body of literature within omy and innovation. Synergy is introduced and an-
our field over the last decade. András Schubert and alyzed here in the context of the generation of re-
Gábor Schubert provide a guided bibliometric tour dundancy, the measures of which are derived from an
through more than 3000 papers on this topic. Special information-theoreticmodel.Usingexamplesfromsev-
