2.4 Major fields of science
Aiming at identifying the fields of research where Greek research teams were most active and successful, Greek publications were classified into the six major fields of science “Natural Sciences”, “Engineering & Technology”, “Medical & Health Sciences”, “Agricultural Sciences”, “Social Sciences” and “Humanities” and their subcategories, according to the revised edition of the Frascati Manual “Revised Field of Science and Technology Classification” by the OECD (Annex ΙΙΙ). The results of this classification corresponding to the entire period between 1996 and 2010, are presented in Figure 2.4.1.
“Natural sciences” proved to be Greece’s highest representation in the total number of publications, constituting 53.4% in 2010. “Medical & Health Sciences” represented the second highest share of Greece’s total publications, with an increasing trend between 1996-2010, and equal to 42% of the total publication in 2010.
Publications in “Engineering and Technology” accounted for a slightly declining share which was equal to 23.1% in 2010. The remaining share of Greek publications was distributed among the “Social Sciences” which had a growing share after 2007 (10.7% in 2010), the “Agricultural Sciences” with a rather stable share (5.1% in 2010), and the “Humanities” with the lowest share (1.7% in 2010). It was somewhat expected that the field of “Humanities” would be the one with the lowest share of publications, given that scientific production in the field is overwhelmed by monographs and books.
Figure 2.5.2 tracks the number of Greek publications in the subcategories of the six major fields of science. Data refer to the most recent 5-year period, 2006-2010.
Figure 2.4.3 shows the “field-normalised citation score” of Greek publications for the 5-year period 2006-2010 in the six major scientific fields. This indicator is the ratio of the average number of citations received by Greek publications to the world average of citations of the same time period and scientific subject field. The normalisation was done at the level of each article/publication according to the 329 Scopus scientific subject fields. In the case that of a publication attributed to more than one subject field, a mean value of the fields was calculated. The field-normalised citation score or “citation score” was calculated using software developed by EKT. A value greater than 1, indicates that the impact of Greek publications was higher than the world average.
In the period 2006-2010, Greek publications approached the world average across all major fields, displaying citation scores from 0.81 to 1.14. Citation scores had considerably improved for the period 2006-2010 (when compared to those of the earlier periods found in the study’s first edition) for the major fields “Humanities” (citation scores equal to 1.14 during 2006-2010 and “Engineering and Technology” (citation scores 1.12 during 2006-2010). Citation scores were more or less stable for the major fields “Agricultural Sciences”, ”Natural Sciences” and “Medical and Health Sciences”, amounting to 0.99, 0.97 and 0.93 respectively.
A rather interesting figure for the Greek publishing activity is the citation score of publications in the subfields of the major fields of science compared to those worldwide. Table 2.4.4 shows Greece’s contribution to selected subfields of major fields of science compared over the period 2006-2010.
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