Is the promotion of research reflected in bibliometric data? A network analysis of highly cited papers on the Clusters of Excellence supported under the Excellence Initiative in Germany

Lutz Bornmann ()

Scientometrics, 2016, vol. 107, issue 3, No 8, 1061 pages

Abstract: Abstract Under the Excellence Initiative, a number of Clusters of Excellence in Germany have been supported since 2006 and 2007—including each a limited number of cooperating institutions. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether support for Clusters of Excellence since 2006 and 2007 is reflected in bibliometric network data. For this purpose, a comparison is made between network data in the period before support started (2003–2005) and in the period after support started (2009–2011). For these two periods, a co-authorship network is generated (based on the funded institutions). This is based on publications which are among the 1 % most frequently cited publications in their respective fields and publication year and which have at least one author from Germany. As the results show, the outcomes this yields for life sciences and natural sciences differ from each other. Whereas natural sciences display an effect of establishment of Clusters of Excellence on the bibliometric networks, this was not true of life sciences. After establishment of the Clusters of Excellence, the network in natural sciences not only contained more institutions of a Cluster of Excellence, but these institutions were distributed across fewer bibliometric clusters in the network than before establishment. In other words the structure of the Clusters of Excellence was better reflected in the network.

Keywords: Excellence Initiative; Cluster of Excellence; Bibliometrics; Highly cited papers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-1925-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:107:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-1925-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-1925-2

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().