This research reviews and delineates the status quo and dynamics of studies on the international influence and the power of academic discourse. It develops an integrated theoretical framework on evaluating the global impact and contribution of social science and applies it to the field of China’s political science research. Based on about two million of global bibliometric information, the research reveals that China is still not yet a major player in the arena of political sciences, but the impact and contribution of Chinese political scientists have increasingly dramatically over the period of 2001 and 2020 with highly unbalanced power at different themes. The study contributes to a dialogue between normative research and empirical investigations on the global power of academic discourse of social science research. Policy implications on research assessment are also discussed in the end.

The University of Edinburgh is involved in a range of strategic partnerships, and noticed a lack of consistent, aligned evaluation practices. It proved a challenge to assess whether to enter into an agreement with a potential partner, or whether a strategic partnership indeed delivered its expectations, let alone to discuss this with their strategic partners. They invited five of their strategic partners to join hands to develop an evaluation framework, based on state-of-the-art literature leading to clear assessments of strategic partnerships. Leiden University’s CWTS and the University of Edinburgh's Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) were asked to contribute to the project given expertise in research governance and assessment, including collaboration and internationalization. We decided to co-create the framework with the international officers, which resulted in an evaluation framework. This looks unlike anything imagined, but it is changing the way in which evaluation thinking is integrated in practice.

This paper reports on a survey of 198 early career researchers from Spain, which aimed to assess their knowledge and attitudes towards predatory journals. The results revealed that the primary characteristic of predatory journals is their fast acceptance and publication times, while many other features are similar to legitimate journals. The study recommends several actions, including raising awareness and providing mentorship, promoting ethical publishing practices, and allocating resources to early career researchers by academic institutions. The findings highlight the need for better education and support for researchers in identifying and avoiding predatory journals. The study's conclusions have implications for policymakers, academic institutions, and individual researchers seeking to maintain the integrity of scholarly publishing.

Risk plays a fundamental role in scientific discoveries, and thus it is critical that the level of risk can be systematically quantified. Knowledge recombination is an important route to generating new knowledge, but it often fails. We propose a novel approach to measuring risk involved in this discovery process. Drawing on machine learning and natural language processing techniques, our approach converts knowledge elements in the text format into high-dimensional vector expressions and computes the probability of failing to combine a pair of knowledge elements. Testing the calculated risk indicator on survey data, we confirm that our indicator is correlated with self-assessed risk. Further, as risk and novelty have been confounded in the literature, we examine and suggest the divergence of the bibliometric novelty and risk indicators. Finally, we demonstrate that our risk indicator is negatively associated with future citation impact, suggesting that risk-taking itself may not necessarily pay off. Our approach can assist decision making of scientists and relevant parties such as policymakers, funding bodies, and R&D managers.

The question of what bibliometric indicator indicate has been discussed for several decades. Over that period, the use of indicators has increased, the number of indicators too, but the question of what the indicators exactly measure remains to be debated. In this paper we propose to approach it from the perspective of scale construction. Basically, this means that we interpret the publication-based and citation-based indicators as items that measure aspects of the scientific quality, but at the same time we accept that all these indicators are characterized by error. However, several indicators together, may lead to a valid and reliable variable, representing a latent quality dimension. This approach should not be confused with composite indicators, such as deployed in university rankings.

In this paper we address the question whether (i) the Dutch dental research portfolio reflects the dental care demand, and whether (ii) the results of this research does reach the dental care professionals. In order to answer these questions, we analyzed the content of the Dutch Journal of Dentistry (NTvT), a Dutch language professional journal which explicitly aims at disseminating useful knowledge to dental professionals. The research topics addressed in the journal were compared with (i) dental publications written by authors with a Dutch affiliation in international journals and with (ii) expenditures in the various types of oral healthcare. The analysis shows topical change over time, with more emphasis in NTvT on topics as social dentistry, and less attention for basic science topics. At the same time, the Dutch dental research portfolio (reflected by publications in international journals) does not reflect that trend. In addition, it appears that the largest domains of care with the highest share of oral healthcare expenditures (e.g. cariology and prevention) have the lowest attention in research. This applies to both international publications, as to the research disseminated through the professional journal NTvT.

In current research evaluation models, monitoring and impact evaluation are extended beyond peer-reviewed articles to include Public Communication of Science and Technology activities. Through an online survey, we analyzed the perceptions of relevance and degree of application of the altmetric indicators for the PCST of 51 sampled Brazilian federal universities. Perceptions of relevance and application of altmetrics proved to be an outlier in 26 indicators. 66.7% of respondents said they did not know the relevance of altmetrics for the PCST or considered it not applicable to the field. Regarding the perception of relevance, the indicator “Mentions tracked by altmetrics” received high relevance scores (7 and 9) from 21.5% of respondents. The indicator was also the least applied, with only one university (1.9%) using it. In addition, 45% of respondents reported having no intention of applying it, 41.1% intend to apply it in the long term, and 11.7% in the short term.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered unprecedented scientific efforts worldwide and launched several initiatives to promote international cooperation. Because international scientific collaborations between high-income countries (HICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are not always balanced, analyzing research leadership helps to understand the global dynamics of knowledge production during COVID-19. In this study, we focused on HIC-LMIC collaborations on COVID-19 research in 469,937 scientific publications during the first two years of the pandemic (2020-2021). Co-authorship and authors' affiliation were used to identify international collaborations, according to country income level. The leadership analysis considered the countries of the first and last authors. The results show that i) most publications with international collaborations (49.3%) involved researchers from HICs and LMICs; ii) collaborative research between HICs and LMICs addressed relevant public health needs; iii) most HIC-LMIC publications (44%) had shared leadership, with research interests linked to national expertise and global interests.

NISTEP in MEXT of Japan conducted "Survey on Career Awareness and Financial Assistance to 1st year of Doctoral Students" from December 2022 to January 2023. NISTEP asked all universities with doctoral programs in Japan to distribute all first-year doctoral students in FY2022. Survey participants responded via the web regarding their impression about research environment, career awareness, and financial support status etc. This paper shows simple results and indicates a direction for future analyses.

STEM workforce is a crucial driver of Thailand’s economy. Over the past few years, there has been significant concern regarding the adequacy of the supply of STEM workers to meet the demands of the market. A number of national policies have been put in place to support the development of human resources in STEM. With data from Labor Force Surveys, this research examines the Thai STEM workforce in an effort to ascertain whether the notion of STEM shortage is more of a mismatch between degrees and jobs. The study then evaluates determinants and labor market outcomes of the mismatches.