The Global Triumph of the Research University: A Driving Force of Science Production

E-print/Working paper (2018)

The demand for higher education in countries around the world has never been higher. This increase in education levels has generated many benefits to society, including more knowledgeable citizens ... [more ▼]

The demand for higher education in countries around the world has never been higher. This increase in education levels has generated many benefits to society, including more knowledgeable citizens, advanced economies, and enhanced longevity. We have also seen countries and universities invest heavily in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including health (STEM+) research and scientific output. This has resulted in unexpected pure exponential growth in science production around the world. Increased competition, as well as boundary-spanning collaborations, drive unprecedented scientific advancement and technological innovation. In a book entitled The Century of Science: The Global Triumph of the Research University, we explore global scientific developments from the early 20th century to today. University-based research, especially, has risen globally to become the driving force of science production in STEM+ fields. Universities, with their multiple missions of research, teaching, and public service, are uniquely positioned to contribute to scientific output while simultaneously producing the next generation of scientists. [less ▲]

The Century of Science: The Global Triumph of the Research University

Book published by Emerald Publishing (2017)

In The Century of Science, a multicultural, international team of authors examines the global rise of scholarly research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEM+) fields. At the ... [more ▼]

In The Century of Science, a multicultural, international team of authors examines the global rise of scholarly research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and health (STEM+) fields. At the beginning of the 20th century, the global center-point of scientific productivity was about half way between Western Europe and the U.S., in the North Atlantic. Then, the center moved steadily westward and slightly southward—reflecting the burgeoning science capacity of the U.S. supported by America’s thriving public and private universities, technological innovation, and overall economic growth. After WWII, this began to change as the course of the world’s scientific center of gravity turned and for the next 70 years traveled eastward, the direction it still travels, especially due to the rise of China and other prolific East Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Europe continues to be the center of global science. Focusing on these developments, this volume provides historical and sociological understandings of the ways that higher education has become an institution that, more than ever before, shapes science and society. Case studies, supported by the most historically and spatially extensive database on STEM+ publications available, of selected countries in Europe, North America, East Asia, and the Middle East, emphasize recurring themes: the institutionalization and differentiation of higher education systems to the proliferation of university-based scientific research fostered by research policies that support continued university expansion leading to the knowledge society. Growing worldwide, research universities appear to be the most legitimate sites for knowledge production. Countries like France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan began the 20th century with prerequisites in place to realize the emerging model of university-based research. Over the past several decades, China, South Korea, and Taiwan, with different historical legacies and conflicts in education and research policy, have witnessed explosive growth, sustained by public and private funds. Qatar recently embarked on an ambitious government-driven effort to develop a world-class university sector and cultivate academic STEM+ research from scratch. These more recent entrants to the global scientific enterprise pose the question whether it is possible to leapfrog across decades, or even centuries, of cultivating university systems, to compete globally. Simultaneously with international and regional competition, world-leading science increasingly implies collaboration across cultural and political borders as global scientific production and networking continue to rise exponentially. This volume’s case studies offer new insights into how countries develop the university-based knowledge thought fundamental to meeting social needs and economic demands. Despite repeated warnings that universities would lose in relevance to other organizational forms in the production of knowledge, our findings demonstrate incontrovertibly that universities have become more—not less—important actors in the world of knowledge. The past hundred years have seen the global triumph of the research university. [less ▲]

Science Productivity, Higher Education Development and the Knowledge Society (SPHERE Project) Final Report

Report (2015)

This project created and analyzed a new, large global dataset on scientific journal articles, published between 1900 and 2011, and a series of case studies to examine how systems of higher education ... [more ▼]

This project created and analyzed a new, large global dataset on scientific journal articles, published between 1900 and 2011, and a series of case studies to examine how systems of higher education developed and grew nations’ capacity for scientific research. The analysis resulted in a series of new insights about global scientific production that were only possible with a consideration of long-term trends. First, despite predictions as early as the 1960s that the growth rate of “big science” would slow, the dataset shows in fact that “big science” started a phase of exponential growth in the early 1960s that has continued unabated for decades. “Big science” has transformed into “mega-global science” and the trends of global diffusion and regional differentiation began much earlier in the 20th century than is commonly understood. Second, the analysis of rates of regional journal article production also depicts clear shifts in the competition for ascendancy in scientific production. For the first half of the 20th century, global competition for scientific impact was primarily an Atlantic battle between the top producers of Europe (Germany, France, and the U.K.) and the United States. The locus of competition shifted by the, end of the 20th century to a contest between the current research “superpower, ” the United States, and the fast-growing producer, China, along with the many less populous countries of Western Europe with their highly productive science systems. With the contributions of other East Asian, high volume producers such as Japan and South Korea in the later decades of the 20th century, and simultaneous slowing of research production in U.S. science, the center of gravity for research production has been pulled eastward for the past two decades. Third, while science may indeed be an inherently global and collaborative enterprise, the trend toward global collaboration of authors is a relatively recent one. Historically, one-third of all research articles worldwide result from international collaboration, and less than 26 percent are the product of one researcher alone. In 1980 however only about 2 percent of all SCIE publications involved a collaboration across international lines. Three decades later this proportion is eleven times what it was in 1980. Finally, the study also concluded that overall volume of production is not a sufficient measure of scientific capacity by itself. When adjusting for the size of population and the economy the proportion of GDP spent on R&D or the number of researchers some smaller countries (especially in Europe) are more productive on a per capita basis than mid-sized or even larger ones. Similarly the ratio of investment in science to scientific production is much higher in the high volume producers than it is in some small states. While output is smaller in these states, they have maximized R&D investments more efficiently than their larger competitors. [less ▲]