The ScienceMetrics blog has so far focused on our scientometric, data mining and science policy activities, but we also have a long history of conducting evaluations of S&T-related programs and initiatives. In my opinion, the most fun to be had on the job is when we team up to combine our quantitative and qualitative analysis skills on a project. To kick off a series of posts from the evaluation side of Science-Metrix, in this post…

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Science advice is apparently having a “moment” right now in Canada. Quebec has had a chief scientist since 2011, but both the federal government and the Ontario provincial government named chief science advisors in the second half of 2017. For the first time, at the end of January 2018, the three chief scientists appeared publicly together, on a panel organized by the Institute for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP) at the University of Ottawa. This…

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Bibliometrics is a complex and nuanced field, and at times, we’ll admit, it’s even a little arcane. At Science-Metrix we take great pride in explaining indicators to clients: what they mean, how they are calculated, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they can and cannot do. As with so many things, examples provide a good entry point. Inspired by this, today I begin a new occasional series that heads back to basics to explain some…

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Over the past year, the ScienceMetrics.org blog has grown considerably. We really appreciate our growing group of readers and all the interesting discussions that the blog has sparked. In today’s post, we’ll take a quick look back at 2017, and give you a year-in-review from our side of the “Publish” button. Capturing your attention For ScienceMetrics.org, 2017 was the Year of the Series, as we experimented with providing long-form content broken down into series of…

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It’s no secret that we have an inequality problem within the hallowed walls of the academy. Much focus has been dedicated to problems of inequality—of status, of wage, of job security, of resulting social mobility, and beyond—mainly between tenured faculty and the growing precariat of contract teaching labour. The central importance of published research is often fingered as a central culprit in entrenching this inequality, and in this post I’ll explore the inequality of citations…

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In the course of another project, I recently ran some data on the publications of 37 laureates of the Nobel prizes in Medicine, Physics and Chemistry. The results raised eyebrows in the office: they showed that those laureates, recognized for the tremendous contribution their discoveries have made to humanity, have over the course of their careers produced knowledge that has been taken up in innovation—as measured by patent citations—more widely than the work of the average US…

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Collaboration and disciplinary diversity are hot topics in the science policy and research communities. At Science-Metrix, we’ve been working on multi-/inter-/trans-disciplinarity issues for a while now, and we figured that some of you might find it useful to have a tool you can use to take a quick measurement of the multidisciplinarity of your team. As part of our 15th anniversary celebrations, we’ve created a free widget that we’re sharing for just such a purpose. Any team…

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Kirsty Duncan (the Canadian federal Minister of Science) gave a keynote address at the 9th annual Canadian Science Policy Conference in early November, during which she outlined the main priorities of her role and what she’s accomplished since being named two years ago. In our ongoing coverage of the keynote speeches from CSPC, this post will summarize her talk and highlight some critical questions. Minister Duncan opened her speech by highlighting the how propitious the…

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The new Chief Science Advisor position is the top job at the science–policy interface in Canada. While attending the 9th Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa earlier this month, the other conference-goers and I were lucky to get a glimpse of how Dr. Mona Nemer—newly named to the job—understands evidence-based decision-making. In this week’s post, I’ll give a summary of her remarks at the CSPC and distill the main views on evidence-based decision-making that they seem…

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At the beginning of November, I attended the Canadian Science Policy Conference, where one of the headline guest speakers was the new Governor General: former astronaut and currently Right Honourable Julie Payette. The Canadian science and science policy communities had an expectedly positive response to the appointment of such a scientifically minded person to this emblematic role. Her Excellency’s speech really played to the home-town crowd, too, emphasizing that science is increasingly embraced in policymaking here…

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