Klavans Richard, Boyack Kevin W
SciTech Strategies, Inc., Wayne, PA, United States of America.
SciTech Strategies, Inc., Albuquerque, NM, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 Jan 5;12(1):e0169383. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169383. eCollection 2017.
What motivates the research strategies of nations and institutions? We suggest that research primarily serves two masters-altruism and economic growth. Some nations focus more research in altruistic (or non-economic) fields while others focus more research in fields associated with economic growth. What causes this difference? Are there characteristics that would suggest why a nation is more aligned with altruism or economic growth? To answer this question, we have identified nine major fields of research by analyzing the publication activity of 4429 institutions using Scopus data. Two fields of research are clearly altruistic (there is relatively little involvement by industry) and two fields are clearly aligned with economic growth. The altruistic vs. economic nature of nations based on their publication profiles across these fields is correlated with national indicators on wealth, education, capitalism, individualism, power, religion, and language. While previous research has suggested that national research strategy is aligned with national wealth, our analysis shows that national wealth is not highly correlated with the tradeoff between altruistic and economic motives. Instead, the tradeoff is largely captured by a culture of individualism. Accordingly, implications for national research strategies are discussed.
国家和机构的研究策略受何驱动？我们认为，研究主要服务于两个目标——利他主义和经济增长。一些国家将更多研究集中在利他主义（或非经济）领域，而另一些国家则将更多研究集中在与经济增长相关的领域。造成这种差异的原因是什么？是否存在一些特征可以表明一个国家为何更倾向于利他主义或经济增长？为回答这个问题，我们通过分析Scopus数据中4429个机构的出版活动，确定了九个主要研究领域。其中两个研究领域明显是利他主义的（行业参与相对较少），另外两个领域则明显与经济增长相关。基于各国在这些领域的出版概况，其利他主义与经济性质与国家在财富、教育、资本主义、个人主义、权力、宗教和语言方面的指标相关。虽然先前的研究表明国家研究策略与国家财富相一致，但我们的分析表明，国家财富与利他主义和经济动机之间的权衡并无高度关联。相反，这种权衡在很大程度上由个人主义文化所决定。据此，我们讨论了对国家研究策略的影响。
