Decomposing National Trends in Activity and Impact

Abstract

Publication and citation counts have become essential indicators for science policy in many countries. However, the overall national performance needs to be decomposed if it is to inform the development of appropriate and targeted policies. This can be accomplished by breaking down performance in terms of research institution, research groups and/or individual authors, as well as by applying different performance measures. In this chapter we show how the Swedish trend in activity and impact within neuroscience changes as we decompose trends according to actors and apply different measurements.