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România în Science and Engineering Indicators 2014, III. Numarul relativ de doctorate pe domenii.

Alexandru Dan Corlan,

Revista de Politica Ştiinţei şi Scientometrie 5(3):202-213, 2016

ABSTRACT

In 2010, romanian universities awarded one of the highest number of doctoral titles in the world, by GDP or GERD, comparable, per capita, with the most developed academic systems. Here, we further detail the statistics on doctorates earned in 2010, as reported by SEI-2014, by research field and country. We compare the doctorates’ distribution with the distribution of research articles by field. A large number of doctorates, per capita, were awarded in Romania in the social sciences (fifth in the world), agricultural sciences (world second) and engineering sciences (tenth in the world). The number of doctorates awarded in physical and biological sciences was very small—the last in the EU, with 6 doctorates per million inhabitants; Bulgaria was the second last with 13. Doctorates and academic articles are the results of the same academic research activities, the content of articles being frequently based on work performed during doctoral studies. They are both indicators of the size and visibility of the academic community in a certain field. Thus, a proportionality is to be expected between the number of earned doctorates and the number of articles. Romania was outside the range of EU countries, with 32 doctorates per Science Citation Index (SCI) article, measured with the fractional method, in agricultural sciences (397 doctorates in 2010 and 12 articles in 2011), and social sciences (745 doctorates and 23 articles). In engineering sciences, 1032 doctorate titles were awarded in Romania and 283 articles published (3.6 doctorates per article)—second, in the EU, after Slovakia (6.9). For comparison, the doctorates per article indicator for the USA was 0.28 for agricultural, 0.64 for social and 0.5 for engineering sciences. For Bulgaria, these indicators have been 0.96, 7.6 and 1.35 respectively. In contrast, in physical and biological sciences, 133 doctorates were earned in 2010, while 1020 articles were published from Romania in 2011. The doctorates per article indicator is 0.13, comparable with that in Sweden or New Zeeland. In conclusion, the large number of doctoral titles awarded in Romania in 2010, compared to other countries, was due, in part, to a high excess in fields like agricultural, social and engineering sciences, while a very small number of doctorates are earned in physical and biological sciences, both per capita and relative to the output of the respective fields as measured by the number of SCI articles.

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