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on Sociology of Economics |
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Issue of 2011‒06‒25
three papers chosen by Jonas Holmström Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration |
| By: | Chia-Lin Chang (Department of Applied Economics, Department of Finance, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan); Michael McAleer (Econometrisch Instituut (Econometric Institute), Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen (Erasmus School of Economics) Erasmus Universiteit, Tinbergen Instituut (Tinbergen Institute).); Les Oxley (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Canterbury, New Zealand) |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses alternative Research Assessment Measures (RAM), with an emphasis on the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science database (hereafter ISI). Some analysis and comparisons are also made with data from the SciVerse Scopus database. The various RAM that are calculated annually or updated daily are defined and analysed, including the classic 2-year impact factor (2YIF), 2YIF without journal self citations (2YIF*), 5-year impact factor (5YIF), Immediacy (or zero-year impact factor (0YIF)), Impact Factor Inflation (IFI), Self-citation Threshold Approval Rating (STAR), Eigenfactor score, Article Influence, C3PO (Citation Performance Per Paper Online), h-index, Zinfluence, and PI-BETA (Papers Ignored - By Even The Authors). The RAM are analysed for 10 leading econometrics journals and 4 leading statistics journals. The application to econometrics can be used as a template for other areas in economics, for other scientific disciplines, and as a benchmark for newer journals in a range of disciplines. In addition to evaluating high quality research in leading econometrics journals, the paper also compares econometrics and statistics, alternative RAM, highlights the similarities and differences of the alternative RAM, finds that several RAM capture similar performance characteristics for the leading econometrics and statistics journals, while the new PI-BETA criterion is not highly correlated with any of the other RAM, and hence conveys additional information regarding RAM, highlights major research areas in leading journals in econometrics, and discusses some likely future uses of RAM, and shows that the harmonic mean of 13 RAM provides more robust journal rankings than relying solely on 2YIF. |
| Keywords: | Research assessment measures, impact factors, Immediacy, Eigenfactor, Article influence, Cited article influence, h-index, C3PO, Zinfluence, PI-BETA, IFI, STAR. |
| JEL: | C43 C10 Z0 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucm:doicae:1114&r=sog |
| By: | Rentocchini, Francesco; Manjarrés-Henrìquez, Liney; D'Este, Pablo; Grimaldi, Rosa |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether engagement in consulting activities has a significant impact on the research performance of academic scientists. The study relies on a sample of 2678 individual faculty, from five Spanish universities, who have been recipients of publicly funded grants or have been principal investigators in activities contracted by external agents over the period 1999-2004. By implementing a propensity score matching estimator method, we show that engaging in consulting activities has an overall negative impact on the average number of ISI-publications. However, the effect of consulting on the scientific productivity of academic scientists depends on the scientific fields and the intensity of engagement in consulting activities. Academic consulting is found to have a negative impact in the fields of ?Natural and Exact Sciences? and ?Engineering?, but not in the case of ?Social Sciences and Humanities?. When the intensity of consulting activity is taken into account at the discipline level, engaging in consulting activities has an overall negative impact on scientific productivity only for high levels of involvement in consulting activities, but not for moderate ones. |
| Keywords: | Academic consulting; Economics of science; Technology transfer |
| JEL: | O31 O32 O33 Z19 L31 |
| Date: | 2011–06–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ing:wpaper:201103&r=sog |
| By: | Mathieu Goudard (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II - Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - CNRS : UMR6579); Michel Lubrano (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II - Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - CNRS : UMR6579) |
| Abstract: | The theory of human capital is one way to explain individual decisions to produce scientific research. However, this theory, even if it reckons the importance of time in science, is too short for explaining the existing diversity of scientific output. The present paper introduces the social capital of Bourdieu (1980), Coleman (1988) and Putnam (1995) as a necessary complement to explain the creation of scientific human capital. This paper connects these two concepts by means of a hierarchical econometric model which makes the distinction between the individual level (human capital) and the cluster level of departments (social capital). The paper shows how a collection of variables can be built from a bibliographic data base indicating both individual behaviour including mobility and collective characteristics of the department housing individual researchers. The two level hierarchical model is estimated on fourteen European countries using bibliometric data in the fields of economics. |
| Keywords: | Economics of science; human capital; social capital; hierarchical models; European science |
| Date: | 2011–06–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00601033&r=sog |