At STI 2024 in Berlin, Science-Metrix presented two innovative papers, introducing new methodologies to extract insights on academic mentorship and international collaboration.

Tree Index: a new widescale indicator on contribution to mentorship

Guillaume Roberge and David Campbell introduced the tree index (TI), a new bibliometric indicator designed to measure the contributions of senior researchers to mentoring the next generation of scholars.

The TI quantifies these senior researchers’ mentorship contributions, capturing a dimension of their academic impact that has often been overlooked. The indicator also creates a new avenue for analyzing the dynamics of research mentorship networks, for example, across countries. The tree index builds upon the tree algorithm, which connects researchers to their most likely mentor at the onset of their publishing career. This family tree of researchers is central to the new indicator and can be used to further investigate mentoring practices, including across genders.

Affinity patterns in international collaboration: an asymmetrical perspective applied to French−North African co-publications

Paul Khayat, Tyler Martindale, and David Campbell presented their research on international collaboration patterns using the asymmetrical probabilistic affinity index (PAIasym).  In their approach, they introduced a new dimension in collaboration practice that captures preferential ties between countries  while accounting for leadership in scientific co-publications. Here, the leading country in a bilateral collaboration was determined by taking the country of the corresponding author on a co-publication.

The study focused on scientific collaboration between France and North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) over time and revealed distinct trends of asymmetrical preferences in joint publications. Initially, both France and North African countries exhibited strong mutual affinity regardless of who led the research. However, in recent years, France’s preference for partnering with North African countries has been declining more steeply when in a leading role, compared to the affinity of North African countries towards France when these countries were leading the research.

The presentation highlighted the indicator’s potential to provide deeper insights into international collaboration  where power dynamics and contributions are imbalanced, for example between countries with complex historical ties, and how those ties influence the production of science today. The patterns of international collaboration affinities under an asymmetrical perspective may serve to uncover significant changes over time that can be linked to various factors, such as trends in researcher mobility, the implementation of new funding strategies, and shifts in policies and cooperation initiatives.

Science-Metrix will continue to build on both papers in developing, refining, and employing sophisticated bibliometric indicators that capture the multifaceted contributions of researchers and support the strategic goals of institutions.

Image credit: iStock Photo