Bibliometric Analysis Asia-Pacific Research Area ... - JuSER

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With the aid of a network analysis, we studied the output of South-East Asian countries (both
between the countries studied and with others outside this area) and illustrated the results in the
form of a network diagram. Using Salton’s measure, a normalisation was performed. The results
of these investigations allow us to draw the conclusion that cooperation between the countries
studied has intensified in the period from 1998 to 2007 and that an Asia-Pacific research area
has emerged. This conclusion is based solely on the bibliometric analyses performed in this
study and must be supplemented with more results before it can be generalised.
A counter example, in which ten selected countries with the same bibliometric parameters are
investigated in the same manner as the South-East Asian countries, should furthermore prove
that increasing networking activities within the research area investigated cannot be explained
by a general global increase in international cooperations nor are they simply a matter of
coincidence.
Verification of networks using randomly selected countries
In the preceding investigation, different analysis methods revealed that cooperation between the
key countries increased disproportionately between 1998 and 2007. To conclude that the
proportion of international co-publications has generally increased worldwide, the same method
will be applied in the following to a counter sample of ten 9 selected countries 10 . Figure 118
shows the annual number of scientific publications by the selected comparative countries
between 1992 and 2007. Germany and Japan, which have already been analysed in relation to
South-East Asia, once again come out way ahead of the other countries. France and Russia
follow in third place. In the case of Russia, the drop in the number of scientific papers must be
considered in the context of the political collapse. Excluding Russia, the publication output of all
countries investigated increased between 1992 and 2007.
Publication output of the ten selected countries between 1992 and 2007
120000
100000
number of publications
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Argentina Brazil France Germany Japan Mexico South Africa South Korea Ukraine Russia
Figure 118: Publication output of the ten selected countries between 1992 and 2007
9 The countries chosen are: Argentina, Brazil, Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Ukraine
and Russia.
10 The selection was made based on the following criteria: both small and large countries (measured in terms of
publication output), countries from South-East Asia, as well as countries with and without geographical
relationships.
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