**A Multi-Level Analysis of World Scientific Output in Pharmacology**

Carlos Olmeda-Gómez, Ma-Antonia Ovalle-Perandones and Antonio Perianes-Rodríguez *Carlos III University of Madrid Spain* 

#### **1. Introduction**

338 Pharmacology

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Over the last few decades and particularly in the present economic context, the distribution of economic resources has been a concern addressed by governmental and corporate scientific policy, which has either benefitted only part of the scientific and technological community or furthered certain lines of research. The pharmaceutical industry in particular has had to confront not only this situation, but also ongoing internationalisation, supported by the relentless advances in communication technologies.

Until the nineteen eighties, industry internationalisation, in terms of R&D, was a marginal matter, not only for economics theory and business in general, but also for governments and the other organisations involved. Globalisation began to acquire importance after the mid nineteen nineties, although not all manufacturing industries have experienced the same degree of R&D internationalisation. The pharmaceutical industry, for one, pioneered this more universal approach to research and development (Noisi, 1999).

Contrary to the widely held opinion according to which R&D internatianlisation is the fruit of domestic innovation in many industries, pharmaceutical constitutes an exception. Indeed, international innovation intensifies the industry's R&D (Patel and Pavitt, 2000), whereas in other lines of business domestic innovation is the driver. In addition to internationalising its R&D, the pharmaceuticals industry has increased its research spending exponentially in recent years (Congressional Budget Office, 2006).

A number of earlier papers studied the bibilometric characteristics of the pharmacological publications generated as a result of the R&D effort in places such as the United States (Narin and Rozek, 1988), India (Kaur and Gupta, 2009; Gupta and Kaur, 2009) or the Middle East (Biglu and Omidi, 2010). Others stressed the contribution of pharmaceutical firms to scientific knowledge (Koening, 1983; McMillan and Hamilton, 2000; Rafols, et al. 2010; Perianes-Rodríguez, et al. 2011). The assessment of the international impact of scientific papers is a present, but not a new concern: it has been a frequent object of study since the nineteen eighties. The use of scientific indicators for several decades to characterise research by subject area, country or institution has confirmed that, although they have their limitations, they are the only suitable tool for scientific assessment (Braun T et al., 1985).

A Multi-Level Analysis of World Scientific Output in Pharmacology 341

When papers were co-authored by researchers from institutions in different countries, a complete computational approach was adopted. The growth rate, when provided, indicates

A number of indicators were used to obtain an approximate view of the quality of world scientific output in the field of pharmacology. The number of *citations* received refers to the total number of times papers published by the unit analysed were cited during the period studied. This indicator provides an overview of the scientific impact of the articles published by the unit in question. The number of *citations per paper* was calculated as the mean number of citations received by all the papers published by the unit analysed in the period studied.

The *domestic citations* were separated from the total to determine the proportion of the output that was used as a reference in the same geographic area (region or country) and consequently, by simple subtraction, the proportion involving knowledge transfer to other areas. The results are shown as the percentage of the citations used for research conducted in the same geographic area. The *normalised citation* indicator is the relative number of times papers produced by a specific unit were cited, compared to the world-wide mean for papers

While citations denote the subsequent use of papers once published, the *references* list the literature cited in papers published by a journal at any given time. The number of *references per paper* was found by dividing the total number of references by the number of papers

A country's *H-index*, in turn, specifies the number of papers (h) produced in that country and receiving at least h citation. It relates a country's scientific productivity (output) to its scientific impact (citations). The *international collaboration* indicator is the percentage of papers with author affiliations in more than one country. This indicator measures institutions' international networking capacity. In this chapter a journal's *% output in Q1* is the percentage of scientific papers published by an institution in what are classified as the most influential journals in the respective category, i.e., the periodicals in the first quartile or

Another qualitative indicator used, homonymous with the aforementioned scientific information system (SCImago Journal and Country Rank), was the *Scimago Journal Rank (SJR)*, used as an alternative to the traditional impact factor (I.F.). This indicator, which measures the visibility of the journals in the Scopus® database, is established by the SCImago2 research team on the grounds of the well-known Google PageRankTM algorithm. It differs from the I.F. in two ways: citations are computed over 3 rather than 2 years; and article citations are weighted, with citations in more visible or prominent journals carrying greater weight than citations in lower-ranking journals (González-Pereira et al., 2009).

World-wide scientific output, as listed in the Scopus database for the period running from 1996 to 2009, came to 21 100 138 papers. The total citations received by those papers during the

of the same type, age and subject area.

Q1, the upper 25 %, based on their SJR value.

**3.1 World-wide science and pharmacology** 

2 http://www.scimago.es/. 20.08.2011

published by the unit.

**3. Results** 

the rise or decline in world-wide output in 2009 with respect to the baseline year, 1996.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse international research in "pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics" (hereafter pharmacology) on the basis of the scientific papers listed in the Scopus multidisciplinary database. This primary objective is reached by answering the following questions (in the section on results). What weight does the subject area "pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics" carry in world-wide science? What is the percentage contribution made by the various regions of the world to the subject area "pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics"? Can certain regions be identified as leaders on that basis, as in other scientific contexts? Are emerging countries present in the field? Do the most productive countries also publish the largest number of journals? What features characterise the scientific output of companies that publish pharmacological papers?
