Institute for Competitiveness and Communication
Dauerhafte URI für die Sammlunghttps://irf.fhnw.ch/handle/11654/62
Listen
4 Ergebnisse
Ergebnisse nach Hochschule und Institut
Publikation International collaboration, mobility and team diversity in the life sciences: impact on research performance.(Taylor & Francis, 2008) Barjak, Franz; Robinson, SimonThe combination of knowledge and skills from different backgrounds or research cultures is often considered good for science. This paper describes the extent to which academic research teams in the life sciences draw on different national knowledge pools and how this is related to their research performance. We distinguish between international collaboration between research teams and international mobility leading to team diversity, where scientists with a background in another country work as members of a team over time. Our findings confirm previous results on the positive relationship between international collaboration and team performance. Moreover, we show that the most successful teams have a moderate level of diversity: maximizing diversity does not maximize performance. These results have implications for research team management and for research policy, in particular pointing out a need for adequate integration support to mobile scientists.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher ZeitschriftPublikation National cultural diversity of research teams(2009) Barjak, Franz; Robinson, SimonAccording to social categorization theory diversity has negative effects on group processes as it places a burden on communication and cohesion. From an information processing approach, however, diversity is considered as beneficial for groups broadening the available cognitive resources. The paper compares national cultural diversity of research teams, i.e. to what degree members of research teams come from different countries, across a set of 10 European countries and four academic domains (engineering, natural sciences, biology, and social sciences). It uses different measures of diversity which include species richness, evenness and disparity to different degrees. For all measures we find that the UK and Sweden have high cultural diversities of their research teams, whereas the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy and at domain level the social sciences have low diversities. We then relate the diversity measures to the teams’ research performance measured as journal publications but at the current level of calculations we fail to find a stable relationship.04B - Beitrag KonferenzschriftPublikation International collaboration, mobility and team diversity in the life sciences: impact on research performance(2007) Barjak, Franz; Robinson, SimonThe combination of knowledge and skills from different backgrounds or research cultures is often considered good for science. This paper describes the extent to which academic research teams in the life sciences draw on knowledge from different research cultures and how this is related to their research performance. We distinguish between international collaboration of research teams from different countries and cultural diversity of research teams resulting from team members with different countries of origin. Our results show that the most successful teams have a moderate level of cultural diversity; in addition, successful teams engage in collaboration activities with teams from other European countries and the US leading to joint publications. These results have implications for research team management and for research policy, in particular in relation to supporting measures for mobile scientists.04B - Beitrag KonferenzschriftPublikation Assessing the web connectivity of research groups on an international scale(Emerald, 2008) Thelwall, Mike; Li, Xuemei; Barjak, Franz; Robinson, SimonThe purpose of this paper is to claim that it is useful to assess the web connectivity of research groups, describe hyperlink‐based techniques to achieve this and present brief details of European life sciences research groups as a case study. Design/methodology/approach A commercial search engine was harnessed to deliver hyperlink data via its automatic query submission interface. A special purpose link analysis tool, LexiURL, then summarised and graphed the link data in appropriate ways. Findings Webometrics can provide a wide range of descriptive information about the international connectivity of research groups. Research limitations/implications Only one field was analysed, data was taken from only one search engine, and the results were not validated. Practical implications Web connectivity seems to be particularly important for attracting overseas job applicants and to promote research achievements and capabilities, and hence we contend that it can be useful for national and international governments to use webometrics to ensure that the web is being used effectively by research groups. Originality/value This is the first paper to make a case for the value of using a range of webometric techniques to evaluate the web presences of research groups within a field, and possibly the first “applied” webometrics study produced for an external contract.01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift