România în 'Science & Engineering Indicators 2014'.
II. Analiza exploratorie a profilului  ̧tărilor pe domenii.

Alexandru Dan Corlan

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România în 'Science & Engineering Indicators 2014'. II. Analiza exploratorie a profilului ̧tărilor pe domenii.

Alexandru Dan Corlan,

Revista de Politica Ştiinţei şi Scientometrie 4(4):288-301, 2015

ABSTRACT

We continue the previous comparative study of the SEI-2014 data on Romania versus other countries. We examine the structural differences in the research output between countries, their evolution between 2000 and 2010, and try to correlate them with the economic development level, as expressed in the gross domestic product per capita (GDP/C). We use two indicators: (a) the ratio between engineering articles and triadic patents (EA/TP) for each country in each year; (b) the percentual distribution of the number of papers in the broad fields of science reported in SEI (math, physics, chemistry, biology, agronomy, medicine, earth sciences, social sciences, engineering and other). We compute the euclidian distance (D) between the paper profiles of different countries and different years and examine the matrix of these distances. GDP/C is strongly correlated with the inverse of EA/TP (Spearman rho=−0.75). Some countries (Japan, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Germany) obtain more triadic patents than engineering publications. Romania is at the opposite side of the spectrum, publishing almost 80 engineering papers for every triadic patent in 2010. This circumstance is not explained solely on the grounds of its relatively low GDP/C. Between 2000 and 2010, EA/TP improved (decreased) for Romania, although not as fast as for other former socialist countries. The distance from the average world profile by domain (D) is also correlated with GDP/C, as well as to EA/TP. Developed countries have a low D, each having a profile very close to world average. The least developed countries have very different profiles, with paper output in some domains absent or over-represented. Romania’s profile is consistent with its GDP/C, in an intermediary position, mostly due to relatively low (but growing) output in biomedical and social sciences. The profile of most countries grew closer to the world average over the 2000–2010 decade. Romania is no exception. In 2000, Romania’s profile looked closest to Eastern European and formerly soviet countries. Until 2010, it changed substantially towards the world average profile. It looks now mostly like other former socialist countries that acceded to the EU, and quite different from former soviet countries, that did not, in general, change much. Linear extrapolation of the worldwide tendencies would imply that Romania would catch up with EU average in 40–50 years for the EA/TP indicator, and in 10–20 years for the D indicator.

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