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NIMP-Romania and EU project ''Mapping of excellence''
Romanian nanoscience and technology in
the EU project
''Mapping of excellence in research and development''
Project
objectives
Lisbon European Council
on 23-24 March 2000 requested to map research and development
excellence in Europe, in order to foster the dissemination of
excellence.Based on this demand , the EC has financed the project
"Mapping of excellence in research and development''
The main goal of the project ''Mapping
of excellence'' is to identify excellent competencies in the aim to
allow visibility raising across borders, by disseminating the mapping
results widely through public web sites (e.g. Europa, Cordis), through
EU and national innovation support agencies,etc.A wide range of users
would be targeted: industry (with special attention for SMEs) and
investors, policy makers, RTD managers, public services,etc.The
ultimate effects could show as intensified networking, increased
intra-European mobility and knowledge transfer, and greater
attractiveness of Europe
against USA or Japan.
Concretely, the result of the mapping exercise should
be the identification of an adequate number of ''entities'', in each of
the selected S&T fields: ''Life Sciences'',
''Nanoscience
and technology''
and ''Economics''. The exercise achieves full value by identifying
organized groups of researchers , such as institutes, companies,
departments, networks,etc.For the specific field of Nanoscience and
technology , the following four areas were included:
Area 1- Nanotechnology for
interacting, sensing , actuating and microsystems
Area 2- Nanotechnology for biotechnology
Area 3- Nanotechnology for information processing, storage
and transmission
Aria 4- Nanotechnology for materials and surface science
It must be mentioned that this is only
the first step of a new process which will continue with other
"mapping of excellence operations " in other various fields.
Methodology
This is an EC-financed pilot project testing the
quality and utility of a bibliometric-mapping tool to identify and
locate centres of excellence in science fields.The main task is to
develop a tool for mapping the research landscape across the European
Union and Associated States in the highlighted fields.The contractors
of this project are
The Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS),
Leiden University, Holland, and The Fraunhofer Institut fuer
Systemtechnik und Innovationsforschung (FhG-ISI), Karlsruhe, Germany.
The identification of centres within
the maps is accomplished on the basis of bibliometric data which
allows a ranking at the national level but also comparisons in
European context.The indicators that can be used for ranking are:
-Number of publications in a particular
period of time (P)
-Number of received citations (self-citations excluded) (CX)
-Average impact (number of citations per publication) (CPP)
-Number of contributions of the entity to the top 10% of most highly
cited publications (P10).
The fourth indicator is measured on
each level of aggregation (world, EU and AC or national) and
normalized to different types of publications (articles, letters,
notes and reviews).
A very important indicator is related to the relative
impact of the published papers as compared to the mean number of
citations in the field. This
indicator, called
''Crown Indicator'', CPP/FCSm is probably a better measurement of the
relative impact
and is calculated as the number of citations per publication (CPP),
divided by the mean number of citations per publication in the field
to which the publication belongs (FCSm).
Results
The first results of the project described above were
published recently on the
CORDIS site
www.cordis.lu following the link
''Mapping
of excellence/Nanotechnology''.
A short analysis of these results, focused on the
position of the National Institute for Materials Physics (NIMP),
Bucharest,
in the context of national and European research in the fields of
nanoscience and Nanotechnology, is given below. In Table 1, the main
Romanian actors of the field were listed according to the publication
number(P) in the period 1996-2001 . NIMP has the second place before
some important institutes and universities.
TABLE 1-NUMBER
OF PUBLICATIONS (P)
In the top of
the list based on the citation number (CX) (Table 2) one finds NIMP,
followed by two universities and one prestigious physics institute,
Institute of Atomic Physics. In fact, Institute of Atomic Physics
represents a consortium of 4 research institutes which includes NIMP
as well. Consequently, the real rating of NIMP is even higher than
presented in this analysis.
TABLE 2-THE
NUMBER OF CITATIONS (CX)
In the top of
the most cited publications (P10)(Table 3) , the first two places are
occupied by NIMP and Babes-Bolyai University Cluj.
TABLE 3-THE
TOP 10 PERCENT OF MOST CITED PUBLICATIONS IN THE FIELD
In the case
of the number of citations per publication (CPP), a factor over unity
(common in the European research area) is obtained only by Institute
of Atomic Physics, Babes-Bolyai University Cluj, NIMP and Bucharest
University (Table 4).
TABLE
4-NUMBER OF CITATIONS PER PUBLICATION (CPP)
The classification ,according to
so-called "Crown Indicator",
is the following:
1.Natl. Inst.
Mat. Phys. , Bucharest,
Romania- 2.12
2.Inst. Atom Phys., Bucharest,
Romania- 1.24
3.Alexandru Ioan Cuza Univ, Jassy,
Romania- 1.12
4.Natl. Inst. Laser, Plasma &Radiat Phys, Bucharest,
Romania- 1.00
5.Univ. Bucharest,
Romania- 0.88
6.Polytech Univ Bucharest,
Romania- 0.88
7.Univ. Babes Bolyai Cluj Napoca, Cluj Napoca,
Romania- 0.74
8.Natl. Inst Res &Dev Tech Phys, Jassy,
Romania- 0.65
9.Romanian Acad, Bucharest,
Romania- 0.26
10.Inst Microtechnol, Bucharest,
Romania- 0.26
In fact,
these ten actors are the only players for this top and emerging
research field.It must be noted that the mean European index is equal
to the unity or slightly higher.
Higher values,
typical for the excellence benchmarking, have been obtained according
to this analysis only by NIMP-Bucharest, Institute of Atomic Physics,
Al. I. Cuza Univ.-Jassy and NILPR-Bucharest.
NIMP in the European context
It is
evident in this pilot study that an excellent entity should have
higher values of CPP and CPP/FCSm indices.
NIMP is the only
research unit from Romania with over unity values for both
indicators.
A comparison
with other countries from Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary,
Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia), recent new EU members, shows that NIMP
could be placed on top positions in the corresponding national
classifications.
In the
Italian list , based on bibliometric indicators, NIMP is compatible
with the fifth position ,after some prestigious universities
(Florence, Roma 2 and Bologna) whereas Spain has only three research
units having higher indices.
From the
point of view of basic indicators (P, CPP and CPP/FCSm), NIMP is
placed in a honorable median position, in the case of the most
advanced countries in this specific research field, such as: Germany,
Holland or France.
Last update:
10.06.2004
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