The analysis of technological activity using abstracting services

Abstract

Many organizations are at the present time faced with two problems. First, what are the events that are likely to have important implications for their activities in future time periods? Second, what new areas should they consider entering and how can they make quick appraisal of the potential in such areas? There are no easy answers to either of these questions but a number of methods have been proposed which have been found to be of assistance. This paper outlines an approach based on the use of abstracting services which can provide useful information quickly and inexpensively.

Light‐element abundance variations in globular clusters

“…It was therefore suprising when these orderly, predictable stellar systems turned out to host a number of stars with wide variations in the strength of molecular features. Unusually weak absorption in the CH G band (the phenomenon of "weak-G-band stars") was noted among giants in M92 (Zinn 1973;Butler, Carbon & Kraft 1975), in NGC 6397 (Mallia 1975), in M13 and M15 (Norris & Zinn 1977), in ω Cen (Dickens & Bell 1976), in M5 (Zinn 1977), and in 47 Tuc (Norris 1978). It was quickly shown (Norris & Zinn 1977;Zinn 1977) that most of the weak-G-band stars were on the asymptotic giant branch, implying the existence of some process that dramatically reshapes the surface abundances of stars between the RGB and the AGB, later named the "third dredge-up" by Iben (1975).…”

A long and winding road: 40 years of R&D Management

“…Knowledge generation is closely connected to issues of dissemination and use and here, a number of researchers observe that information technologies hardly foreseen in 1970 such as data mining and automatic rating of research (Priem, ) have led to new forms of awareness of research. Relatedly, the movement for open access (Gargouri et al, ) – perhaps anticipated in papers in R&D Management itself (Butler et al, ) – is another factor that is changing knowledge generation and dissemination. Discussion of the relationship between citations and downloads from the publishers web site is not a new departure however; Moed () and also Schloegl and Gorraiz () examined the issue some years ago and the decision by journals to make download figures public for every paper they publish on line (Watson, ) has led to interesting comparisons between citation and download data with a consensus emerging that download data reflects the use of articles by research students and post‐docs and anticipates citation counts (Maflahi and Thelwall, ).…”

Literature indexing systems for corporate R & D strategy: a case‐study in the pharmaceutical industry

“…The question 'Is your laboratory well cited?' (Anonymous, 1970) only makes sense if the R & D manager can be provided with answers which are beyond the purely quantitative terms. From this aspect it may be important to him -to know more about the performance of his research staff in their fields as compared with the capability of their competitors; -to learn early enough about technological spinoffs from traditional fields of research into perhaps new and unrecognized adjacent areas of science and technology; -to get better information on where is the appropriate market for exchange of scientific information; and on what journals or conferences are the best transmitters of research results to related industries; -to detect where to license or to acquire know-how or products (via a particular field for example); -to learn from the outside response to publications where relevant research resources are located, e.g.…”

“…However obvious the idea of creating a complete picture of the R & D activities of a particular industry from published data R & D Management 11,3, 198 1 without going through the door of any institution, its realization is far more complex (Butler, Ball & Pearson, 1976). The process of establishing the full picture of a company's research activities and its interrelationships with its competitors can be likened to a puzzle.…”