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.

Modern science is a main driver of technological innovation. The efficiency of the scientific system is of key importance to ensure the competitiveness of a nation or region. However, the scientific system that we use today was devised centuries ago and is inadequate for our current ICT-based society: the peer review system encourages conservatism, journal publications are monolithic and slow, data is often not available to other scientists, and the independent validation of results is limited. The resulting scientific process is hence slow and sloppy. Building on the Innovation Accelerator paper by Helbing and Balietti [1], this paper takes the initial global vision and reviews the theoretical and technological building blocks that can be used for implementing an innovation (in first place: science) accelerator platform driven by re-imagining the science system. The envisioned platform would rest on four pillars: (i) Redesign the incentive scheme to reduce behavior such as conservatism, herding and hyping; (ii) Advance scientific publications by breaking up the monolithic paper unit and introducing other building blocks such as data, tools, experiment workflows, resources; (iii) Use machine readable semantics for publications, debate structures, provenance etc. in order to include the computer as a partner in the scientific process, and (iv) Build an online platform for collaboration, including a network of trust and reputation among the different types of stakeholders in the scientific system: scientists, educators, funding agencies, policy makers, students and industrial innovators among others. Any such improvements to the scientific system must support the entire scientific process (unlike current tools that chop up the scientific process into disconnected pieces), must facilitate and encourage collaboration and interdisciplinarity (again unlike current tools), must facilitate the inclusion of intelligent computing in the scientific process, must facilitate not only the core scientific process, but also accommodate other stakeholders such science policy makers, industrial innovators, and the general public. We first describe the current state of the scientific system together with up to a dozen new key initiatives, including an analysis of the role of science as an innovation accelerator. Our brief survey will show that there exist many separate ideas and concepts and diverse stand-alone demonstrator systems for different components of the ecosystem with many parts are still unexplored, and overall integration lacking. By analyzing a matrix of stakeholders vs. functionalities, we identify the required innovations. We (non-exhaustively) discuss a few of them: Publications that are meaningful to machines, innovative reviewing processes, data publication, workflow archiving and reuse, alternative impact metrics, tools for the detection of trends, community formation and emergence, as well as modular publications, citation objects and debate graphs. To summarize, the core idea behind the Innovation Accelerator is to develop new incentive models, rules, and interaction mechanisms to stimulate true innovation, revolutionizing the way in which we create knowledge and disseminate information.