April 1998, Volume 7, Number 1
Contents
Assessment of social sciences: the use of advanced bibliometric methods as a necessary complement of peer review Anthony F J van Raan (University of Leiden, Netherlands)
Evaluating the research activity and impact of funding agencies Marlie MacLean (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK), Catherine Davies, Grant Lewison and Joe Anderson (Wellcome Trust, UK)
Measuring the economic benefits of research and development: the current state of the art Douglas Williams and A Dennis Rank (ARA Consulting Group Inc, Canada)
The new technological landscape in Pacific Asia: an inquiry into the dramatic changes in patenting and scientific publishing Jon Sigurdson (European Institute of Japanese Studies, Sweden) and Olle Persson (University of Umea, Sweden)
Environmental science in the UK: a bibliometric study J Sylvan Katz (University of Sussex, UK) and John Plevin (Natural Environment Research Council, UK)
Finding identity and voice: a national survey of Canadian postdoctoral fellows Caren C Helbing, Marja J Verhoef (University of Calgary, Canada) and Cheryl L Wellington (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Bibliometric performance indicators allow substantial improvement of peer-review based evaluation in the social sciences. Advanced bibliometric indicators provide up-to-date, detailed, 'objective' and structured information on the performance (particularly 'impact') of a research group.
A survey of the international financial inputs and the publications that resulted from funding for malaria research found that some major funding organisations obtained more apparent productivity from their investment than did others, although the leading funding bodies all supported papers that were more highly cited than the average for the field.
Recently, increasing attention has been paid to the indirect benefits of R&D, especially the measurement of competency benefits. This shows that it is possible to provide defensible estimates of direct benefits (from the use of research results) and benefits arising from the use of competencies developed in the R&D process.
This shows the substantial increases in patenting by Asian companies in the USA. Pacific Asia overtook the EU in the mid-1980s and has expanded dramatically in sectors such as telecommunications, and computers and data processing systems. The increase in scientific papers indicates a substantial expansion in research activities in Pacific Asia.
This report examines the publication record of selected subject categories with strong links with the environmental sciences in the Institute for Scientific Information database. UK environmental science emerges as a mature research system with strength across many disciplines and impact levels above the world average.
A questionnaire-based study of postdoctoral fellows (PDFs) in Canada and of Canadian PDFs abroad determined basic demographics, evaluated job stress/satisfaction and work environment, and assessed outlook for future careers using a variety of parameters. Although several aspects were rated satisfactory, the PDFs surveyed identified key areas of concern in their training.
Research conditions and production in two humanistic disciplines - Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, and English are described and compared. A theoretical framework from research evaluation studies which emphasised mediating process factors in conjunction with input factors to explain research output was applied.
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