FW: CHINA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT REPORT - 2

Fri Mar 10 12:30:54 EST 2006

Hi All-
I've been reviewing the methodology of the mentioned report and I'm
troubled about a couple of key points.  First, the citations were
retrieved from only EI Compendex and SCI.  I believe it's acknowledged
that SCI is Western-biased (see for example, a discussion in D. J. de
Solla Price's 1986 book).  In other words, wouldn't using only these two
databases to view the scientific productivity of China really paint an
inaccurate picture?  Also, I would expect India to be less
underrepresented in SCI because scientific communications in India are
frequently in English (due to post-colonial factors?) and so there is
increased intellectual access to journals written in English.  

I believe Dr. Leydesdorff  and Dr. Zhou used a Chinese-language,
Chinese-produced scientific database to examine the representation of
journals and citations in SCI.  One of their findings was the Chinese
journal articles cited western journal articles but western journal
articles did not (for the most part) cite Chinese journals.
Accordingly, the list of Chinese journals (like Table ES2) provided in
the reference is not very meaningful.

One other note:  it appears that they've used automatic clustering and
text matching to assign subject categories.  I suppose a similar
clustering technique might be used to solve the conundrum of ISI's
assigned subject categories?

Do others have similar problems or am I not getting it?

Thanks,

Christina K. Pikas, MLS 
R.E. Gibson Library & Information Center
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 
Voice  240.228.4812 (Washington), 443.778.4812 (Baltimore) 
Fax 443.778.5353 

________________________________

From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Eugene Garfield
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 10:55 AM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] FW: CHINA SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT REPORT
- 2

FROM: Dr. Ronald N. Kostoff (Office of Naval Research)

 Kostoff, Ronald [KOSTOFR at ONR.NAVY.MIL]

SUBJ: China Science and Technology Assessment Report

A report on the structure and infrastructure of Chinese science and
technology (1) is now available for downloading
(http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/special/354/technowatch/textmine.asp).
Highlights of the report include:

OUTPUT PERFORMANCE

*       China's output of research articles has expanded dramatically in
the last decade (articles published in the Science Citation Index) 
*       China is among the research output leaders, especially in
critical technologies (e.g., nanotechnology, energetic materials) 
*       China's major research collaborators are, in order: USA, Japan,
Germany, England, Canada, Australia 
*       China-USA collaboration emphasizes biomedical first and
nanotechnology second, whereas China-Japan collaboration reverses this
priority 
*       There are critical research and technology sub-areas where China
leads the USA in absolute numbers of research articles published.  In
these areas, China has at least four times the relative investment
emphasis as the USA, since total USA articles are four times the number
of total China articles. 
*       Relative to the USA, China emphasizes the hard sciences that
underpin defense and commercial needs 
*       Relative to China, the USA emphasizes medical, psychological,
and social problem research areas 
*       China's research articles can be assigned to four major
categories: Physics/ Materials (13966 records); Life Sciences (7377);
Mathematics (7162); Chemistry (5841) 

CITATION IMPACT PERFORMANCE

*       Chinese researchers publish in many Chinese journals, but cite
very few Chinese journals 
*       Chinese researchers publish in low Impact Factor journals, but
cite relatively high Impact Factor journals (Impact Factor measures a
journal's ability to attract citations) 
*       Chinese researchers publish in much lower Impact Factor journals
than do USA researchers 
*       China-USA collaboration doubles citation impact of Chinese
authors 
*       China's research impact was larger than India's in all major
research categories (Physical/ Environmental/ Materials/ Life Sciences,
as measured by median of top ten cited articles in each sub-area, for
technical sub-areas of similar research output) 
*       China's research impact was smaller than Australia's in all
major research categories 
*       Global nanotechnology researchers cite only a handful of Chinese
journals with significant numbers, and even these journals have two
orders of magnitude less citations than the leading international
journals 

As the above and other studies have shown, aggregate country publication
productivity and citation impact results can be somewhat misleading.
Publications and citation impact in critical technologies and
sub-technologies are most important, and should serve as the basis for
publication and citation comparison.

RNK

REFERENCES

1.  Kostoff RN, Briggs, MB, Rushenberg, RL, Bowles, CA, Pecht, M.  The
structure and infrastructure of Chinese science and technology.  DTIC
Technical Report ADA443315 (http://www.dtic.mil/).  Defense Technical
Information Center.  Fort Belvoir, VA.  2006.  

A downloadable version of the report's final draft is available at
http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/special/354/technowatch/textmine.asp
<http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/special/354/technowatch/textmine.asp>

Go to ninth report listed.  Click on PDF version.  

2.  The views in this report are solely those of the authors, and do not
represent the views of the Department of the Navy or any of its
components, DDL-OMNI Engineering, LLC, or the University of Maryland.

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