I am Professor and Chair of the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, USA. I obtained my DPhil in Science and Technology Policy Studies from SPRU, University of Sussex, UK. For almost 10 years I was on the faculty of SPRU. Between 1998 and 2003 I was the Senior Policy Analyst at CHI Research, Inc. where I conducted numerous policy analyses for government agencies based on empirical information in patent and paper databases. My work has been supported by and has informed policy makers in the U.S., Europe and Japan. I have also taught at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, SPRU and worked at the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Tokyo. There are several threads to my research, united by the large databases of papers or patents at their core. Over the past decade I have done a series of studies of highly innovative small firms. This work was supported by the Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration and looked at firm patent profiles to identify the highly innovative small firms and their technology. I called these firms "serial innovators". Another set of work has examined the strong growth in Asian scientific output and the consequent pressure on trends in US output as seen in the major databases. My interest in bibliometrics is also visible in the series of papers exploring the difficulties of using such techniques in the social sciences and humanities. The framework I developed here is that of 4 literatures: international journal articles, books, national literature and enlightenment literature (popular press etc.). The scholarly databases used to build metrics index only the first. The European Science Foundation is interested in overcoming this problem, and I was a consultant on that project.
Bibliometrics in the social sciences & humanities
The New York Times as a resource for Mode 2 (with Jian Wang) (2013)
The New York Times receives more citations from academic journals than the American Sociological Review,...
One size doesn’t fit all: on the co-evolution of national evaluation systems and social science publishing, Confero (2012)
In recent decades governments have sought greater accountability from those who receive public money. In...
Coverage and overlap of the new social science and humanities journal lists (with Jian Wang), Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (2011)
This is a study of coverage and overlap in second generation social sciences and humanities...
Towards a Bibliometric Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (with Jian Wang) (2009)
In the social sciences, humanities or arts it is largely impossible to substantiate statements on...
The Dangers of Partial Bibliometric Evaluation in the Social Sciences, Economia Politica (2006)
Social science research communities around the world face pressures for quantitative evaluation imposed from outside....
Highly innovative small firms
Pathways from Discovery to Commercialization: Using Web Sources to Track Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Strategies in Emerging Nanotechnologies (with Jan Youtie, Philip Shapira, and Travis Horsely) (2011)
There is a growing need for fresh and systematic evidence about company innovation behaviors in...
Structural Change and Industrial Classification, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics (2011)
Understanding of structural change is compromised because scholars do not clearly articulate the limits of...
A taxonomy of small firm technology commercialization (with Dirk Libaers and Alan porter), Industrial and Corporate Change (2010)
This paper proposes a taxonomy of business models used by small, highly innovative firms focused...
Mergers, joint ventures, and licensing as commercialization strategies for technology based firms (with Marco Ceccagnoli) (2009)
A key objective in the technology strategy literature is to identify the appropriate business commercialization...
Highly Innovative Small Firms in the Markets for Technology (with Deepak Hegde), Research Policy (2005)
Long-lived small firms with a substantial, public record of innovative success are the focus of...
Science Policy
Detecting structural change in university research systems: A case study of Australian research policy (with Jian Wang) (2012)
The university research environment has been undergoing profound change in recent decades. Aiming at international...
Performance-based university research funding systems, Research Policy (2012)
The university research environment has been undergoing profound change in recent decades and performance-based research...
Narrative visualization of the outcomes of Federal investments in research (2011)
We offer here a narrative visualization entitled: Technology hot spots and the Office of Science....
Equity and excellence in research funding (with Sylvan Katz), Minerva (2011)
The tension between equity and excellence is fundamental in science policy. This tension might appear...
Overview of models of performance-based Research funding systems, Performance-based Funding for Public Research in Tertiary Education Institutions: Workshop Proceedings (2010)
This chapter provides an overview of models of performance-based research funding systems. It discusses the...
Research Evaluation
Detecting structural change in university research systems: A case study of Australian research policy (with Jian Wang) (2012)
The university research environment has been undergoing profound change in recent decades. Aiming at international...
Bibliometrics as a Tool for Research Evaluation (with Julia Melkers), Handbook on the Theory and Practice of Program Evaluation (2012)
Creative use of bibliometric analysis in evaluation offers an unparalleled opportunity to take advantage of...
Narrative visualization of the outcomes of Federal investments in research (2011)
We offer here a narrative visualization entitled: Technology hot spots and the Office of Science....
Evolving Regimes of Multi-university Research Evaluation, Higher Education (2009)
Since 1980, national university departmental ranking exercises have developed in several countries. This paper reviews...
Bibliometric evaluation of federally funded research in the United States, Research Evaluation (2004)
Research evaluation in the USA historically tended to rely more heavily on peer review than...
Science and innovation systems
Detecting structural change in university research systems: A case study of Australian research policy (with Jian Wang) (2012)
The university research environment has been undergoing profound change in recent decades. Aiming at international...
Narrative visualization of the outcomes of Federal investments in research (2011)
We offer here a narrative visualization entitled: Technology hot spots and the Office of Science....
The Maturation of Global R&D: Evidence from the activity of U.S. foreign subsidiaries (with Deepak Hegde), Research Policy (2008)
This study empirically investigates the impact of foreign country factors like market size, technological strength...
Global Research Competition Affects Measured U.S. Academic Output, Science and the University (2007)
Between 1992 and 1999, the number of papers published by U.S. academics fell by 9...
The Changing Science and Technology Environment, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 2002 (2002)
This chapter focuses on three areas. The first area is innovation as a context for...
Bibliometric Method
Detecting structural change in university research systems: A case study of Australian research policy (with Jian Wang) (2012)
The university research environment has been undergoing profound change in recent decades. Aiming at international...
A Boosted-Trees Method for Name Disambiguation (with Jian Wang, Kaspars Berzins, Julia Melkers, Fang Xiao, and Diogo Pinheiro), Scientometrics (2012)
This paper proposes a method for classifying true papers of a set of focal scientists...
Bibliometrics as a Tool for Research Evaluation (with Julia Melkers), Handbook on the Theory and Practice of Program Evaluation (2012)
Creative use of bibliometric analysis in evaluation offers an unparalleled opportunity to take advantage of...
Narrative visualization of the outcomes of Federal investments in research (2011)
We offer here a narrative visualization entitled: Technology hot spots and the Office of Science....