The scientific productivity of nations

Minerva

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 1-23

  Cole, Stephen ^a   Phelan, Thomas J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0002809834     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1004591413630     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Cole, Stephen, Making Science: Between Nature and Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992).
2. See also Knorr-Cetina, Karen, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981);
3. Latour, Bruno, Science In Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987);
4. Pickering, Andrew (ed.), Science as Culture and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992);
5. Merton, Robert K., Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Howard Fertig Press, 1970; first published 1938).
6. Merton, R.K., Science, Technology and Society, op. cit.
7. May, Robert M., "The Scientific Wealth of Nations", Science, CCLXXV (1997), pp. 793-796.
8. Ben-David, J., The Scientist's Role in Society (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984).
9. For a more complete discussion of these theories, see Cole, S., Making Science, op. cit., ch. 9.
10. Merton, R.K., Science, Technology and Society, op. cit.
11. The issue of how "valuable" science is defined, is, of course, crucial and will be discussed in some detail below.
12. Ben-David, Joseph, "Scientific Productivity and Academic Organization in Nineteenth-Century Medicine", American Sociological Review, XXV (1960), pp. 828-843.
13. Price, Derek J. de Solla, Little Science, Big Science . . . and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).
14. Price, Derek J. de Solla, Little Science, Big Science . . . and Beyond Ibid., p. 53.
15. Price, Derek J. de Solla, Little Science, Big Science . . . and Beyond Ibid., ch. 7.
16. Cole, Jonathan R. and Cole, Stephen, "The Ortega Hypothesis", Science, CLXXVIII (1972), pp. 368-375.
17. Cole, Stephen and Meyer, Gary S., "Little Science, Big Science Revisited", Scientometrics, VII (1985), pp. 443-458.
18. We know of only one study conducted since 1985 which deals with this theoretical problem. Stephan, Paul and Levin, Sharon, in Striking the Mother Lode in Science: The Importance of Age, Place, and Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
19. present evidence which they claim shows a decline in the scientific capacity of the United States. They see this as a result of the ageing of the scientific community and a decline in the quality of those entering science over the last 20 years. Their data, however, do not adequately support their conclusions. See Cole, Stephen, "Review of Stephan and Levin", Contemporary Sociology, XXII (1993), pp. 499-500.
20. Price, D.J. de Solla, Little Science, Big Science, op. cit.
21. See Tables I and IV for a complete list of countries included in the samples. Obtaining consistent data was a complex and difficult process. For a full discussion of the problems involved, see Phelan, Thomas J., doctoral thesis, State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1993.
22. Martin, B.R., "British Science in the 1980's: Has the Relative Decline Continued?", Scientometrics, XXIX (1994), pp. 27-56.
23. For a discussion of these issues, see Feyerabend, Paul, Against Reason (London: NLB Press, 1975);
24. Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1970);
25. Laudan, Larry, Progress and Its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
26. Cole, S., Mating Science, op. cit.
27. Sorokin, Pitirim and Merton, Robert K., "The Course of Arabian Intellectual Development 700-1300 A.D.: A Study in Method", Isis, XXII (1935), pp. 516-524.
28. Sarton, George, Introduction to the History of Science (Baltimore: Carnegie Institution, 1962; first published 1927).
29. Science, Technology and Society, op. cit., p. 40, note 4.
30. It has long been known that the correlation between the number of papers published by an individual scientist and the citations that scientist receives is quite high, usually in the range of r=.70. See Cole, Jonathan and Cole, Stephen, Social Stratification in Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). For nations this correlation is substantially higher. For the sample of 95 countries the correlation between total number of papers published and those published which received 40 or more citations is r=.97, i.e., where citation data are unavailable, the number of papers published by a country may be used as a reliable proxy for the extent of its contribution to scientific knowledge.
31. Cole, Jonathan and Cole, Stephen, cited by Sorokin, P. and Merton, R.K., "The Course of Arabian Intellectual Development", op. cit.,
32. and by Edge, David, "Quantitative Measures of Communication in Science: A Critical Review", History of Science, VIII (1979), pp. 102-134;
33. Narin, Francis, Evaluative Bibliometrics (Cherry Hill: Computer Horizons, 1976);
34. Cole, Stephen, "Citations and the Evaluation of Individual Scientists", Trends in Biochemical Sciences, XIV (1989), pp. 9-13.
35. Eugene Garfield and Henry Small of the Institute for Scientific Information made these data available. Without their help this study could not have been completed.
36. Data on the citation impact of publications for all the major science producing nations is presented in Braun, Tibor et al., "World Science in the 80's", Scientometrics, XXIX (1994), pp. 299-334.
37. Stephen Cole in "Professional Standing and the Reception of Scientific Discoveries", American Journal of Sociology, LXXVI (1970), pp. 286-306, has indicated that such delayed recognition papers represent only about 15 per cent of all papers which ever receive recognition. Nor is there reason to believe there will be much variation in the proportion of such papers among countries.
38. See Cole, J. and Cole, S., Social Stratification in Science, op. cit.
39. Cole, Stephen, unpublished material.
40. See Tables I and IV; see also Phelan, T.J., doctoral thesis, op. cit.
41. Salary data for scientists in the United States are published in Haberfeld, Yitchak and Shenhav, Yehouda, "Are Women and Black Scientists Closing the Gap? A Longitudinal Analysis of Discrimination in Science During the 70's and 80's", Industrial & Labor Relations Review, XLIV (1988), pp. 69-82;
42. and for Israel in Shenhav, Yehouda and Haberfeld, Yehouda, "Scientists in Organisations: Discrimination Processes in An Internal Labor Market", Sociological Quarterly, XXIX (1988), pp. 451-463. For the non-industrialised countries, average salaries tend to be very low and scientists' salaries many times higher than twice the average, so we could not use the same estimation technique for non-industrialised countries.
43. Price, DJ. de Solla, Little Science, Big Science, op. cit.
44. We are analysing elsewhere how countries divide their technological talent between pure and applied research and the effect this has on the production of both. Japan is one country which places more emphasis on technology than on basic research, as is seen in its relatively low production of high-quality science (Table IV) and its high production of patents.
45. Data compiled from Schubert, Andras et al., "Scientometrics Datafiles: A Comprehensive Set of Indicators on 2649 Journals and 96 Countries in all Major Fields and Subfields 1981-1985", Scientometrics, XVI (1989), pp. 3-478.
46. Ben-David, J., The Scientist's Role in Society, op. cit.
47. Merton, R.K., Science, Technology and Society, op. cit., p. 79.
48. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, tr. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner's, 1958; first published 1904).
49. In American Journal of Sociology, LXXV (1959), pp. 337-347.
50. Minerva 37: 25-43, 1999.