Research pick: Researching research - "A new social network analysis-based approach to extracting knowledge patterns about research activities and hubs in a set of countries"

Researchers in Italy have devised a new social network analysis-based approach to studying research scenarios. The multidimensional picture they can obtain of research in a set of countries using this technique can reveal interest and might even be able to detect hubs operating within those countries. Paolo Lo Giudice and Domenico Ursino of the University ‘Mediterranea’ of Reggio Calabria, Paolo Russo of Negg International, in Rome, explain that such improved understanding might lead to new insights into how socio-economic factors influence research.

The team has investigated the North African countries of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia in the anticipation of providing new knowledge to policymakers who might then be able to sustain the accumulation of scientific and technological capabilities in the region in a way that has not been possible previously.

The data available for scientometrics and bibliometrics investigations of scientific and technological research continues to grow apace. There is therefore an urgent need, if use is to be made of this “big data”, to develop the necessary tools examine and interpret this data and to plot out meaning and extract knowledge from it. The team’s success with their social network analysis (SNA) approach now points them towards developing the approach still further to extract knowledge patterns about patent inventors and how they cooperate, to verify the presence of ‘power inventors’ in a given country, and to verify the existence of a backbone and of possible cliques among them.

Giudice, P.L., Russo, P. and Ursino, D. (2018) ‘A new social network analysis-based approach to extracting knowledge patterns about research activities and hubs in a set of countries‘, Int. J. Business Innovation and Research, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp.147-186.