A Measure of Science

Patents: Australia vs New Zealand

Shaun Hendy • Nov 02, 2009

• Australia,
• economic geography,
• innovation,
• patents

The All Blacks may have swept the Wallabies in the Bledisloe Cup this year, but how do New Zealand and Australia stack up on innovation? A few posts ago I looked at how New Zealand’s patents were distributed regionally. Using an OECD database of PCT patents from 1978-2008, I found that Auckland had the most patents per capita … Read More

The University co-author network

Shaun Hendy • Oct 27, 2009

• bibliometrics,
• networks,
• nz,
• universities

In an earlier post I looked at the 2008 CRI co-author network. Now let’s turn to the University network. Using the Thomp­son Reuters Web of Sci­ence again, I found 5116 publications in 2008 with authors from New Zealand universities. In total 13930 authors contributed to these papers. The network is shown on the right. Again, a … Read More

New Zealand’s RS&T priorities

Shaun Hendy • Oct 23, 2009

• bibliometrics,
• Funding,
• MoRST,
• priorities

MoRST have just released a discussion document which introduces a new structure for RS&T investment, aimed at allowing for greater strategic priority setting. Submissions are due by November 18th. Get it here. What do you think of the feedback document and where would you put our rather modest science dollar? While you are pondering this, here is … Read More

The CRI co-author network

Shaun Hendy • Oct 19, 2009

• bibliometrics,
• CRIs,
• networks

To what extent do scientists at Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) collaborate? Using the Thompson Reuters Web of Science, I have constructed the CRI co-author network for 2008. As best I can determine, the Web of Science database contains 1271 papers from 2008 with CRI authors. In total, 4496 authors contributed to this set of papers — not … Read More

The New Zealand skills deficit

Shaun Hendy • Oct 16, 2009

• Finland,
• graduates,
• patents,
• PhDs

In 2006, 640 students  graduated with PhDs at New Zealand universities, compared to only 400 in 1998. The graph on the right shows how this growth in student numbers has been shared among the disciplines. While the number of graduates in science and applied science has grown modestly, most of the growth has come from outside of the … Read More

How many Aucklanders does it take to file a patent?

Shaun Hendy • Oct 12, 2009

• Dave Mare,
• economic geography,
• patents,
• productivity

New Zealand’s patent output is horrible by OECD standards. On a per person basis, the OECD produces four times as many triadic patents (inventions that are patented in the big three economies: the US, Japan and Europe) as New Zealand. Finland produces nearly ten times as many. Our poor performance in patenting is one of the reasons we … Read More

Marsden 2009: A substantial increase in funding but success rate remains low

Shaun Hendy • Oct 08, 2009

• Funding,
• Marsden 2009

At $66m, this year’s allocation of Marsden funding is the largest since the fund was created. However the success rate remains low – how much new science does this funding increase actually buy? The Marsden fund supports much of New Zealand’s blue skies research, so it is a vital part of our innovation system. In this year’s … Read More

New Zealand’s recent bibliometric productivity

Shaun Hendy • Oct 02, 2009

• bibliometrics,
• productivity

As discussed in an earlier post, there are a number of sources for bibliometric data. Scimago Journal and Country Rank is a freely accessible bibliometric analysis site developed by a Spanish research group using Elsevier’s Scopus bibliometric database, which holds country and journal summary information. For example, there is a New Zealand summary statistic page … Read More

2degrees?

Shaun Hendy • Sep 30, 2009

• Kevin Bacon,
• networks,
• Rhys Darby

A new mobile phone network called “2degrees” was launched in New Zealand earlier this year. As explained in their advertising campaign (fronted by the excellent Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords), their name alludes to the (alleged) two degrees of separation between New Zealanders as opposed to the six degrees that separate the rest of the world. The idea … Read More

Networks of inventors

Shaun Hendy • Sep 28, 2009

• Finland,
• innovation,
• networks,
• patents

Over the last six months I’ve been studying an OECD patent database with a research assistant, Catriona Sissons. The goal of our project is to study the economic geography of innovation in a quantitative manner. One of the things we have investigated is whether collaborative networks form between inventors through co-patenting. To find co-patents between inventors we use European Patent … Read More