Science and innovation
- Introduction
- Main objectives
- Interdisciplinary approach
- The Journal Classification project
- More information
Introduction
This theme addresses the connections between scientific and technical research and domains of application; more specifically, the contributions of modern-day research to the production of new knowledge, advanced skills, sophisticated tools and technical infrastructure, and science-based innovations.
Overarched by the generic concepts of ‘science-innovation eco-systems’ and ‘knowledge-driven economies’, the work within this theme comprises of a project-based research programme and a teaching & training programme.
Main objectives
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To expand the current understanding of the complex system of interconnections and knowledge flows between science and its domains of application;
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To design and develop databases, sophisticated measurement models, metrics and quantitative indicators;
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Comparative (case) studies in which these models and metrics are used to explore and describe elements of local, regional or global S-I ecosystems - for mapping and monitoring of trends of general patterns, for performance assessment of organizations, and for comparisons and benchmarking;
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To feed back the results of empirical work – at micro, meso or macro levels - into the advancement of relevant theory and the development of new conceptual models.
Interdisciplinary approach
The suite of research projects will be driven by an interdisciplinary approach with a strong focus on empirical studies and quantitative-statistical tools of enquiry. The research projects build on prior empirical studies conducted at CWTS. The majority of these studies were of the ‘bibliometric’ type, where the raw material was extracted by data-mining the wealth of information embedded in the worldwide output of research publications and patents.
The Journal Classification project
This project deals with the classification of scientific, technical and scholarly journals worldwide by broad domains of application. Indexing these journals by the share of authors from the corporate sector (business enterprises and industry), and from the hospital sector (general hospital and medical clinics) enables a classification by ‘industrial relevance' and 'clinical relevance'.
The VOSviewer map of many thousands of peer-reviewed journals (those indexed by the Thomson Reuter’s Web of Science database) graphically displays the distribution of both types of relevance across the worldwide research literature. The blue-coloured journals are industrially relevant and those in red are clinically relevant. The lilac journals reflect the interface between both domains - research fields of relevance to the biopharmaceutical sector.
These results paint a panoramic picture of the niches in the world of science where research, engineering and innovation meet.
More information
More information of the staff affiliated to this theme, and their publications can be found on the CWTS research website.