1980, 27(1-4), 61-65.
A CITATION ANALYSIS OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONNECTIONS OF A RESEARCH BRANCH: A CASE STUDY OF SOLAR ENERGY RESEARCH IN THE USSR
Discusses the internal and external
connections of a research speciality in a country by taking'a case study of solar concentrator and collector research in the USSR. The various factors are identified, which assess the
development of the speciality.
INTRODUCTION
Scientific papers are the end products of scientific research, just as products/process- es are end products of technological develop- ments. A scientific paper has many attributes.
The most important being its links in a series of citations pertaining to the previous liter- ature. These citations are provided for a number of reasons. Some of them are ethical and some are non-ethical. The dominant reason for citing references is that 'they provide identification of those earlier researchers
whose concepts, methods and apparatus /-1
7,
etc.have inspired and influenced the author, it also indicates the probability of a subject relationship between the two. It is also possible that these citations may indicate the linkages between various active groups and identify the invisible colleges in a speciality.
It is, therefore, possible to analyse and measure the internal and external connections of a speciality or its segment within a country, the links of various groups in that speciality. It also indicates the mechanics of growth of a scientific speciality. In the present essay an attempt has been made to study the development of solar energy in the USSR through citation analysis.
Vol 27 Nos 1-4 (Mar - Dec) 1980
B.M. GUPTA
Centrefor the Study of Science, Technology & Development CSIR Complex at NPL Hillside Road
New Delhi-110012
DATA BASE
&
ITS CHARACTERISTICSThe present study consists of a sample of 181 papers on solar concentrators and collectors from the Russian journal 'Gel iotekh- nika", published during the ten year period 1965-74. This journal has been chosen parti- cularly for the fact that it represents a comprehensive and important vehicle of research communication in the field of solar energy in the USSR. For the purpose of analytical conven- ience the citations of papers in the sample have been categorized as under:-
(i) All the papers published in the Russian journal are taken as a group and this grou~ is denoted by
'GI' .
(ii) The citations of GI papers by the authors of GI group are denoted by GIC.
(iii) The citations external to GI but internal to the country to which the group being studied belongs are referred to as GKN.
(iv) The citations external to both GI and the country of the group being studied are referred to as GEE.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GROUP GI
There are certain characteristics of this group which have a vital impact on the number of linkages and their patterns. The
61
sample chosen for study consists of papers both theoretical and applied in nature. Considering the institutional background of the authors of this group, it has been found that the majority of the papers (140) have emanated from only three institutions, and the rest are distributed among other eleven institutions. There are hardly a few instances where the papers of this group are produced through inter-institutional cooperation.
The analysis of the authorship in group GI is presented in Table-I. It can be seen that a major portion of the members of the group GI are the products of team research.
TABLE - 1 AUTHORSHIP PATTERN
No~ of Authors No. of Papers
1 2 3 4 5 6
49 46 51 19 14 2
181 LINKAGES
When a scientific paper refers to a previously published paper, a linkage or connect- ion is said to have developed between the two.
Study of linkages between research papers is very important, as it serves as a tool for evaluating them. Linkages may be internal or external.
Internal linkages signify relationships between different research papers or members of the group. On the contrary, an external linkage signifies a relationship between any external member and a member of the group being considered.
This external member can be from inside the country as well as from outside the country to which the group being studlPd belongs.
MEASUREMENT OF INTERNAL C(~N£CTIONS
Table-2 gives the trequency distribution of connections around each member of group GI.
It would be evident that th0re are in all 499 internal linkages. Forty-three papers of group GI have been found to have Zero linkages or no linkages at all. Th~refore, these 499 linkages are actually found to have developed
among 137 papers. To find out the density of internal connection, it is useful to take a ratio between the actual sum of connections and the maximum possible sum of the linkages.
The initial idea of measuring such a relation- ship through matrix analysis was proposed by Solla Price, /- 2 & 3 7and was later on develop- ed by a Japanese scientist Yagi Era
L-4~,
in close collaboration with Solla Price. The total possible number of linkages between 137 papers of group GI will be 9286*. Hence, the density of internal connections/linkages is = 537**.This means that there are on an average 5 linkages per paper in this group.
TABLE - 2
FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF LINKAGES WITH- IN GROUPS GI
No.of Times each No. of paper is linked Papers
No. of Links
13 2 26
11 1 11
10 2 20
9 2 18
8 5 40
7 5 35
6 7 42
5 17 85
4 17 68
3 22 66
2 31 62
1 27 27
0 43 0
181 499
MEASUREMENTS CONCERNING EXTERNAL CONNECTIONS Table 3 gives statistics on the percent- age of citations of group GEE in the total citations distribution of individual member of group GI. It is noticed that:-
(i) 54.1 percent of papers of group GI have zero percentage citations of group GEE.
(ii) 9.9 percent of papers of group GI has more than 50% of citations to group GEE.
*
Total possible linkages= n(n-l) 2
137 X 136 2
**
density of linkages is 499 X 1009286
These observations give a broad indica- tions of the impact of those papers which have been published outside the USSR on the group GI.
It has been found that more than 50% of the members of the group GI have not been subjected to pressure external to the country. They have either done original research or have been influenced by ideas developed within the country.
As against this, only a small percentage (around 10%) of the members of group GI have been influenced in a big way by the papers
published outside the country. Only in 2 papers, the external influence was found to be total or complete.
TABLE - 3
PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF MEMBERS OF GEE IN TOTAL CITATIONS OF MEMBERS OF
GROUP GI
No. of Papers of Percentage Range Group GI of Citations of
Group GEE in Group GI
98
*
07 0-10
26 11-20
9 21-30
11 31-40
14 41-50
7 51-60
4 61-70
2 71-80
2 81-90
2 91-100
181
*
This includes 10 papers which are original and does not cite any external paperTab1e-4 provides the freq~ency distri- bution of external papers cited by group GI.
The total number of such external papers is 455;
of these 74 percent (336 papers) belong to group GEN and 26 percent (119 papers) to group GEE. A deeper scrutiny indicates that out of these 455 papers, 310 papers (i.e. about 69 percent) are cited only once and the rest (31 percent) are cited twice or more. It is generally assumed that good papers or important papers are cited several times, barring exceptional cases. So if a paper is cited twice or more the probability will be that it is an important paper for the group GI. This probability will increase as the frequency of citations received from the members of GI increases. We assume a certain standard that if a paper is cited four times or more it will be an important paper to the group GI. Now ana1ysing these 115 papers cited twice or more,21 papers are found to be cited four times or more. A chronological analysis of these 21 papers reveals that most of these papers pertain to the period 1954~1961. So it can be concluded that the basic foundation of the research in the area to which group GI belongs was lai d internally in the country
during the period 1954-61. This has been further confirmed by the context analysis of these 21 highly cited papers, which lends support to the hypothesis that these papers contain original ideas and basic development work which are duly acknowledged and improved upon by group GI.
TABLE - 4
FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF EXTERNAL PAPERS
No.of Times each No. of Papers .Total paper is cited. GEN GEE Citations.
27 1 27
14 1 14
11 1 11
10 1 10
8 1 8
7 2 1 21
6 3 2 30
5 2 1 15
4 4 2 24
3 16 5 63
2 39 23 124
1 225 85 310
336 119 649
Table 5 provides the chronological distribution of external citations. The follow- ing observations emerge from these tables:
(i) Uptill 1955 there is a steady growth of external citations, but after- wards, there is a sudden increase in the growth rate. The possible reason for this is that around this period, the first international conference on solar energy was held.
As a result, solar energy research and its applications received world- wide attention and governments in many countries started giving emphasis to this area. More publications came out as a result of large scale investment in R&D.
(ii) Looking at the papers in group GEN, one finds continuous growth upto 1969; thereafter the growth rate fell considerably. The possible explanation for this is that the areas of research pursued by group GI might have been national
priority areas upto 1969, and later on national priorities might have changed, causing a sudden decrease in numbers of group GEN.
(iii) Analysing the citations received by group,GEN, it is noticed that the external orientation was slowly and gradually built up upto 1964, and, therefore, there was a sudden reversal of trend. This might be due to the fact that the group of papers GI being studied might have become an advanced group, from the point of view of international standards, and after this period it might have branched off in those areas of research which had either regional bias or which were not pursued elsewhere in the world.
t+v)
Analysing the citations in group GEN, there is an enormous jump in citations to papers after 1955.Several factors may be responsible for this. One of the important factors which contributed to this was the creation of VINITI, a NatioA- al Documentation Centre in 1952.
This Centre was responsible for bringing to the notice of Russian scientists world literature on scientific research by organising an effective abstracting service called "Referativnyi Zhurnal". Then there are political reasons too.
After Stalin's era there was a
definite relaxation of political barriers between the USSR and the Western World. As a result, inter- national mobility of scientists increased and more Russian scien- tists started going abroad either under exchange programmes or to present papers at international con- ferences and symposia. Another factor is the language barrier. Aft~
this period, a national translation facility was available for translat- ing foreign documents to the Russian scientists. A language-wise
analysis of non-serial translated documents, indicate that 19 docu- ments were translated; of these 17 were in English (13 American).
(v) Looking at the cited papers of GEN
&
GEE groups together one finds thatthe external orientation o( GEE in proportion of GEN was buildfhg up upto 1950-54; later on this acquired greater dimensions upto 1964. There·
after it started dropping. This indicates that during the period 1954-64, research done outside the country had played an important role in influencing the ideas of the members of group GI.
TABLE - 5
CHRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF EXTERNAL PAPERS
Period No.of External Papers.
GEN GEE Total
1970-74 32 1 33
1965-69 121 24 145
1960-64 92 48 14b
1955-59 53 36 89
1950-54 12 4 16
1945-49 16 3 19
1940-44 2 1 3
1935-39 7 1 8
1930-34 1 1 2
'\36
119
455Table 6 provides a countrywise distribu- tion of papers of group GEE cited by group GI.
It is noticed that a major portion of these papers belongs to the United States. On the other hand, if we look at the heavily cited
papers of group GEE, they are found to be distri~
buted between USA, France, UK and Canada. Here, three factors are very important, namely,
objectives and aims of research, resources avail- able at the disposal of the countries and
accessibility to the information. We know that the major applications of solar energy research are in the field of space research, and United States is the country which is leading in space research. Secondly, USA has enormous resources at its disposal for investment in R&D. Thirdly, Russian scientists are assumed to have more accessibility to American literature because of political reasons of competition in research.
This is also confirmed by analysis of translated items of Group GEN. Numberwise, citations to papers from USA occupy the first position. On the other hand, the qualitative papers from USA, UK, France and Canada occupy the same position.
TABLE - 6
COUNTRYWISE DISTRIBUTION OF PAPERS
&
CITATIONS OF GROUP GEE
Country No.of Papers No.of Cita- tions
U.S.A~ 87 105
France 10 20
UK 7 8
Japan 6 10
Germany 3 3
Canada 2 1
Australia 1 1
Israel 1 1
Italy 1 1
Algeria 1 1
119 158
CONCLUSIONS
The brief study of the development of solar energy as an area of research in the U.S.S.R. through citation analysis leads us to the following conc1usions:-
(i) It helps us to determine the influence and its pattern of both inside and outside research efforts and developments of Centres of Research;
(ii) It is also possible to identify the spe~ific groups or clusters within a speciality that often refers to each other;
(iii) It is also possible to trace the developments internal to ~e area speciality.
(iv) The influence of social and politic- al factors on the development of an area/speciality could also be discerned.
REFERENCES
1. Weinstock, Melvin: Citation indexes.
(~: Encyclopedia of library and information science. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1971, 116-140).
2. de Solla Price, 0 J: Why sciences cumulate. (In: Frontiers of science and phi10sophy.--University of Pittsburg, V.2).
3. de Solla Price, D.J: Network of scientific papers. Science 1965, 149, 510-15.
4. Yagi Era; An application of a type of matrix to analyse citation of
scientific papers. American Documentation 1965, (Jan.), 20~31.
