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Analysis of Slovenian research community through bibliographic networks

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Abstract

Science is a societal process, designed on widely accepted general rules which facilitate its development. Productive researchers are viewed from the perspective of a social network of their interpersonal relations. In this paper we address performance of Slovenian research community using bibliographic networks between the years 1970 and 2015 from various aspects which determine prolific science. We focus on basic determinants of research performance including productivity, collaboration, internationality, and interdisciplinarity. For each of the determinants, we select a set of statistics and network measures to investigate the state of each in every year of the analyzed period. The analysis is based on high quality data from manually curated information systems. We interpret the results by relating them to important historical events impacting Slovenia and to domestic expenditure for research and development. Our results clearly demonstrate causal relations between the performance of research community and changes in wider society. Political and financial stability together with concise measuring of scientific productivity established soon after Slovenia won independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 had positive influence on all determinants. They were further leveraged by foundation of Slovenian research agency and joining EU and NATO. Publish and perish phenomenon, negative impacts of financial crisis in 2008–2014 and reshaping the domestic expenditure for research and development after 2008 have also clear response in scientific community. In the paper, we also study the researcher’s career productivity cycles and present the analysis of the career productivity for all registered researchers in Slovenia.

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(Source: Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, 2016). (Color figure online)

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Notes

  1. http://www.cobiss.si/cobiss_eng.html.

  2. http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/cris.aspx?lang=eng&opdescr=home&opt=1.

  3. http://www.izum.si/default-EN.htm.

  4. http://www.arrs.gov.si/en/index.asp.

  5. We say that a publication is scientific if it is classified as an original scientific article, a review article, a short scientific article, a published scientific conference contribution, a published scientific conference contribution abstract, an independent scientific component or a chapter in a monograph, or a scientific monograph.

  6. http://pxweb.stat.si/pxweb/database/Ekonomsko/23_raziskovanje_razvoj/04_Kariera_dokt/04_Kariera_dokt.asp.

  7. https://www.arrs.gov.si/sl/mr/obseg.asp?menu=3SCC.

  8. http://www.stat.si/StatWeb/en/show-news?id=5656&idp=17&headerbar=13.

  9. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn.

  10. http://www.arrs.gov.si/en/agencija/inc/ssd-new.pdf.

  11. http://www.arhiv.mvzt.gov.si/fileadmin/mvzt.gov.si/pageuploads/pdf/odnosi_z_javnostmi/01.06.2011_dalje/01.06._RISSdz_ENG.pdf.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous referees for their remarks which helped to improve the manuscript. This research was supported by Slovenian Research Agency Program P1–0383.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Studies, Novo mesto, Slovenia

    Andrej Kastrin, Jelena Klisara, Borut Lužar & Janez Povh

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  1. Andrej Kastrin
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  2. Jelena Klisara
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  3. Borut Lužar
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Correspondence to Andrej Kastrin.

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Kastrin, A., Klisara, J., Lužar, B. et al. Analysis of Slovenian research community through bibliographic networks. Scientometrics 110, 791–813 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-016-2203-z

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