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Modelling the Basic Research Competitiveness Index (BR-CI) with an application to the biomass energy field

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Abstract

How to effectively make an international comparison of the basic research capacity in a specific field is an urgent problem for a country to monitor the science and technology activities. In this paper, we develop a composite index, that is, Basic Research Competitiveness Index (BR-CI), for evaluating the countries’ basic research performance versus the world average level over time. For this purpose, the three sub-indexes, namely, Activity Index (AcI), Attractive Index (AtI) and Efficiency Index (EI), are proposed, which are respectively used to assess the countries’ research efforts, impacts, efficiency versus the world average level in a particular science field over time. The proposed indicator system can present the cross-time and cross-country comparison of research performance, which can quantify the basic research competiveness relative to the world average level, and describe the competitive landscape among countries in the world. As the first application, this paper employs the four indicators, AcI, AtI, EI and BR-CI, to measure and compare the five leading countries’ research performances in the biomass energy field. In short, the modelling and empirical study in this paper not only offers some new references for fully exploring the international competition in the basic research of biomass energy field, but also provides some new perspectives and ideas for examining the international competitiveness in the basic research field of science and technology.

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Notes

  1. Schwab (2010) is World Economic Forum Editor. We mainly adopt the research ideas of Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) that creating the Global Competitiveness Index contained in The Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum.

  2. To verify whether this order of countries follows the trend of publishing in other fields or is unique to the biomass energy field, we respectively search for all the publishing indexed in SCI database and in one specific field: energy storage. After making some research and analysis, we find that the order of five leading countries is USA, China, Germany, UK and Japan in the SCI database. Besides, we find that the order of countries in research field of energy storage is USA, China, South Korea, Germany and Japan. Thus we can conclude that the order of countries presented in our paper is unique to the biomass energy field although USA, China and Japan are always the major contributors in many fields.

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Acknowledgments

The work in this paper was jointly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Number 71471170; 71103173; 71373254; 71233003), the Major Research Task of Institute of Policy and Management in Chinese Academy of Sciences (Project Number Y201121Z01), the Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research, Ministry of Education of China (Project Number 12JZD042), the Key Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province in China  (Project Number S2013020012767) and the Major Research Task of Advisory Institute for Scientific Strategies in Chinese Academy of Sciences (Project Number Y501141S01).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Yi Zhang

  2. Dongling School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China

    Mingting Kou

  3. Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Kaihua Chen & Yuchen Li

  4. Department of International Development, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Kaihua Chen

  5. School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jiancheng Guan

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  1. Yi Zhang
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  2. Mingting Kou
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  4. Jiancheng Guan
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  5. Yuchen Li
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kaihua Chen.

Appendices

Appendix 1

The comparison of citations of research outputs by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9
figure 9

The biomass energy citations of five leading countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively. a The number of citations by considering 2-year lags (2005–2012), b the number of citations by considering 5-year lags (2005–2009), c the world share of citations by considering 2-year lags (2005–2012), d the world share of citations by considering 5-year lags (2005–2009)

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Appendix 2

The comparison of Attractive Index (AtI) of major countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10
figure 10

The AtI of five leading countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively. a The AtI of the countries by considering 2-year lags (2005–2012), b the AtI of the countries by considering 5-year lags (2005–2009)

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Appendix 3

The comparison of Efficiency Index (EI) of major countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11
figure 11

The EI of five leading countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively. a The EI of the countries by considering 2-year lags (2005–2012), b The EI of the countries by considering 5-year lags (2005–2009)

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Appendix 4

The comparison of Basic Research Competitiveness Index (BR-CI) of major countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively (Figs. 12, 13).

Fig. 12
figure 12

The BR-CI (the weighted arithmetic average score) of five leading countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively. a The BR-CI (WAA) of the countries by considering 2-year lags (2005–2012), b The BR-CI (WAA) of the countries by considering 5-year lags (2005–2009)

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Fig. 13
figure 13

The BR-CI (the weighted geometric average score) of five leading countries by considering the 2- and 5-year lags, respectively. a The BR-CI (WGA)of the countries by considering 2-year lags (2005–2012), b the BR-CI (WGA) of the countries by considering 5-year lags (2005–2009)

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Zhang, Y., Kou, M., Chen, K. et al. Modelling the Basic Research Competitiveness Index (BR-CI) with an application to the biomass energy field. Scientometrics 108, 1221–1241 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2042-y

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