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Beyond the basemap of science: mapping multiple structures in research portfolios: evidence from Hungary

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Abstract

As a novel tool for evaluating research competences of R&D actors, science overlay maps have recently been introduced in the scientometric literature, with associated measures for assessing the degree of diversification in research profiles. In this study, we continue the elaboration of this approach: based on science overlay maps (called here m-maps), a new type of map is introduced to reveal the competence structure of R&D institutions (i-maps). It is argued, that while m-maps represent the multidisciplinarity of research profiles, i-maps convey the extent of interdisciplinarity realized in them. Upon i-maps, a set of new measures are also proposed to quantify this feature. With these measures in hand, and also as a follow-up to our previous work, we apply these measures to a sample of Hungarian Research Institutions (HROs). Based on the obtained rankings, a principal component analysis is conducted to reveal main structural dimensions of researh portfolios (of HROs) covered by these measures. The position of HROs along these dimensions then allows us to draw a typology of organizations, according to various combinations of inter- and multidisciplinarity characteristic of their performance.

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Notes

  1. We thank one of the referees for pointing out this issue.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the financial support from the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme within the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission, under the FET Open grant number 233847 (Dynanets project, www.dynanets.org), as well as the support of the Hungarian Government (Anyos Jedlik programme) through the TexTrend project (www.textrend.org), contract no. NKFP_07_A2 (2007)/TEXTREND. The supports are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science Policy and Scientometrics, Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Sándor Soós

  2. History and Philosophy of Science, Lorand Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary

    George Kampis

Authors
  1. Sándor Soós
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  2. George Kampis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sándor Soós.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 5.

Table 5 Abbreviations for Hungarian Research Institutions (HROs)
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Appendix 2

See Table 6.

Table 6 Values of measures obtained for the HROs included (the last three variables have been adopted from Soós–Kampis 2011)
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Appendix 3

See Table 7.

Table 7 Detailed results of the PCA on selected measures
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Soós, S., Kampis, G. Beyond the basemap of science: mapping multiple structures in research portfolios: evidence from Hungary. Scientometrics 93, 869–891 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0713-x

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