Our Recent Productions

Showing 1–10 of 10

1. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Science for What? Tracing the Functions of Scientific Knowledge in UN Diplomatic Speech(opens in a new tab)

   

   Penachioni, Júlia Battistuzzi; Pires, Antonio; Bin, Adriana; de Oliveira, Amâncio J; Murat, Biegzat; Sugimoto, Cassidy R.

   This paper examines how scientific knowledge is mobilized within diplomatic discourse in the United Nations General Assembly's Fourth Committee. By combining computational text analysis with qualitative interpretation of 364 meeting transcripts between 2010 and 2023, the research seeks to answer the following question: what functions does scientific knowledge perform in UN diplomatic speech? From our analysis, the answer to this question is that science performs multiple diplomatic functions simultaneously. The findings indicate that science plays a role that is way more complex than simply providing technical information for policymaking. Scientific knowledge is often mobilized to legitimize political positions, reinforce international norms, organize multilateral coordination, support risk governance and preparedness, facilitate access to technologies, and project scientific credibility and international status.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656919CredibilitySociology of scientific knowledgePolitics
2. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Metascience Observatories: a methodological approach to characterize their outputs and policy impact.(opens in a new tab)

   

   Pereira, Cesar A. Guimarães; Sugimoto, Cassidy R.; Salles Filho, Sérgio; Bin, Adriana

   This paper presents results from ongoing research on the contributions of Metascience Observatories (MOs) to policy documents (PDs). The study examines the scientific production of 14 MOs across 13 countries, highlighting their contents and their contributions to policy documents. The methodology integrates scholarly output extracted from OpenAlex with data from the Overton database. The study yields two primary contributions: a) a methodology developed to characterize MO outputs and outcomes as reflected in policies, and b) the characterization of the 14 MOs. From a total of 6,140 articles retrieved from OpenAlex, 1,337 (22%) were cited in 6,404 policy documents produced by 679 distinct institutions, associated with 70 countries. Using an AI assistant we matched article content with PD content to identify the specific nature of MOs' contributions. This methodology is in progress and we expect it can be applied to other types of institutions.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656690
3. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Sharing the Load: Open Research Information Resources for the STI Community in the Cloud(opens in a new tab)

   

   Neylon, Cameron; Kramer, Bianca; Mazoni, Alysson; Costas, Rodrigo; Jahn, Najko; van Eck, Nees Jan

   The potential benefits of open research information (ORI) for STI are only just beginning to be realised. For responsible STI indicators, we want to use and recombine ORI resources on a large scale, including among others OpenAlex, OpenAIRE, rankings and national research databases. This special session showcases the Open Research Information Online Databases (ORION-DBs) collective, which makes ORI resources publicly available in the cloud, initially focusing on Google BigQuery. The combined collections comprise 14TB of size. The special session begins with short presentations from the participating MultiObs, Sesame Open Science, SUB Göttingen and CWTS groups, each introducing their open data offerings with an emphasis on reusability for the STI community. A brief hands-on demonstration will illustrate how the different datasets can be combined, showcasing the potential of this approach. Participants will then be invited to pitch research ideas using the presented resources and to discuss the potential of ORION-DBs.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656704Cloud computingOpen research
4. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Operationalising journals' communication functions through citation patterns and local dimensions(opens in a new tab)

   

   Di Césare, Victoria; Robinson-García, Nicolás; Costas, Rodrigo

   This preliminary study operationalises the knowledge bridging and gap-filling communication functions of scientific journals, originally proposed by Chavarro et al. (2017). Considering their theoretical definitions, we link these functions to our local research framework (Di Césare & Robinson-Garcia, 2026) through the producers and recipients dimensions, and measure them using local or global references and citations drawn from OpenAlex articles. We aim to empirically identify knowledge bridging and gap-filling journals, both within and outside the mainstream. The results suggest that the vast majority of these journals are non-mainstream. The thematic profiles of their references and citations validate our geographical operationalisations. Gap-filling journals belong predominantly to the non-mainstream local Social Sciences, whereas in the non-mainstream knowledge bridging journals, the Health Sciences emerge. These domain-level findings support the journals' theoretical functions of serving, respectively, as venues for the publication of knowledge overlooked by the mainstream, and as bridges between mainstream knowledge and local communities.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656966MainstreamCitationThematic mapSociology of scientific knowledge
5. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Gender representation of Latin American authors across bibliographic data sources: OpenAlex, Leiden Ranking Core Collection Open Edition, Scopus and SciELO(opens in a new tab)

   

   Choji, Thamyres Tetsue; Mazoni, Alysson; Moral-Muñoz, José A.; Costas, Rodrigo; Cobo, Manuel J.

   Nowadays bibliographic data sources are available, and their coverage is shaped by their scope and indexing criteria. Their comparison can reveal what they underrepresent or exclude, particularly in regions such as Latin America, which presents specific characteristics in knowledge production. This study compares four data sources: OpenAlex, Leiden Ranking Core Collection Open Edition, Scopus, and SciELO. We analyze document coverage and author visibility by gender, career length, and language of publication. OpenAlex was used as the baseline, and comparisons were made using DOI and persistent author identifiers. Results show that, after OpenAlex, Scopus presents the largest coverage of documents (47.7%) and authors (52.1%), but with larger gender differences than SciELO. SciELO shows higher representation of women, particularly among exclusive authors, career lengths, and more authors publishing in Spanish (30.4%) and Portuguese (46%). These findings suggest that data sources may shape gender representation and multilingual publication practices in Latin America.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656952SciELOScopusLatin AmericansPortuguese
6. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Cognitive Proximity in a Hierarchical World: From Local Collaboration to Limited Global Brokerage(opens in a new tab)

   

   Borges, Luís; Mazoni, Alysson

   This paper examines the relative importance of cognitive proximity and geographical distance in shaping scientific collaboration, using Brazil as a large-scale empirical case in the Global South. Based on OpenAlex data (2010–2024), we estimate a gravity model showing that, although geographical distance negatively affects collaboration, cognitive proximity is a stronger predictor of scientific interaction. To complement this analysis, we examine the structure of international collaboration among the 23 countries with the highest number of publications. The results reveal persistent hierarchical patterns, with intermediation concentrated in a few dominant hubs. While countries such as Brazil have expanded their scientific output and international collaboration, their brokerage capacity remains limited. These findings suggest a pattern of 'concentrated deconcentration', in which increasing cognitive alignment facilitates collaboration over longer distances and scientific production becomes more geographically distributed, while brokerage capacity and structural influence remain concentrated in a limited set of countries.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656550CognitionIntermediationGeographical distanceSocially distributed cognition
7. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   'The science is clear': tracking mentions of science in parliamentary debates in five countries(opens in a new tab)

   

   Boshoff, Nelius; Gauch, Stephan; Basson, Isabel; Hamarowski, Bartosz; Sachse, Jacqueline; Butcher, Gillian; Sorgatz, Nikita; Wróblewska, Marta Natalia; Williams, Kate

   The paper evaluates the possibility of tracking societal impact of research by applying the logic of citations to parliamentary debates. It explores the extent and manner in which science and research are mentioned by parliamentary speakers. We analysed 3,815 relevant segments from 331 parliamentary debate documents across five countries (Australia, Germany, Poland, South Africa, and the UK) for the year 2023. Using grounded theory-inspired content analysis, we classified mentions based on the degree of traceable scientific evidence invoked versus appeals to scientific authority. Results show that scientific evidence is frequently mobilised, with the highest density of relevant segments in the UK and Australia. Fully traceable referencing of specific publications is rare (4–13% of evidence segments). Speakers typically name research producers or invoke collective scientific authority. Parliamentary debates offer potential for societal impact metrics, but the lack of traceable claims challenges traditional bibliometric methods, suggesting the need for reflexive evaluation.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656813Reflexivity
8. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   Exclusive Bibliographic Coupling: identifying the influence of co-authorship on the identification of scientific domains(opens in a new tab)

   

   Moutinho, Sônia Oliveira Matos; Grácio, Maria Cláudia Cabrini; Perianes-Rodriguez, Antonio

   This study proposes Exclusive Bibliographic Coupling (EBC) as a methodological alternative to mitigate the influence of co-authorship in bibliographic coupling networks. The method excludes co-author relationships while preserving organic links between non-collaborators. The comparison between the traditional model and EBC includes analyses of author networks to demonstrate that the exclusive method reduces the appearance of links resulting from collaboration, preserving connections based on the theoretical convergence of authors' citation identities. It has been determined that EBC increases the accuracy of identifying cognitive structures and scientific domains, contributing to more consistent and reliable bibliometric analyses.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656700Bibliographic couplingCitationScientific literature
9. Conference Paper2026Open Access

   The effect of open access on numbers of downloads and their geographic diversity(opens in a new tab)

   

   van Bellen, Simon; Larivière, Vincent

   Despite their usefulness in analyzing the uses of research papers within and beyond academia, the availability of download data remains scarce. Using data from the Érudit journal platform, this paper analyzes the effect of open access availability on numbers of downloads and their geographic diversity. Results show that OA positively affects the numbers of downloads by a factor of 3.0 during the embargo period, and that downloads may maintain this advantage during the following years. Eighty percent of downloads originated from non-subscribing visitors, with the end of the embargo period being strongly associated with an expansion of their geographic diversity. On the whole, our results show that journals can substantially broaden international readership by adopting immediate OA, and that metadata quality is at least as influential as OA for downloads.

   DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656606DownloadMetadataGeographic variationAudience measurementLocation
10. Conference Paper2026Open Access

    Assessing the Use of Machine Learning Techniques Across Scientific Fields (1990–2025)(opens in a new tab)

    

    Isla, Malena Méndez; Kozlowski, Diego; Larivière, Vincent

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping scientific practice. While recent advances in large language models (LLMs) are substantial, machine learning (ML) has a long history of developments across science. This study analyses the evolution of machine learning in global science from 1990 to 2025, by examining 4.9 million articles from OpenAlex. Using a hierarchical taxonomy of 252 ML techniques and architectures, we found that while deep learning exploded post-2015 and LLMs after 2022, established methods, such as linear and logistic regressions, declined in their share of the total scientific output. Utilizing state-of-the-art embeddings (mE5) and dimensionality reduction (UMAP), we constructed the ML Semantic Space that reveals a core-periphery structure dominated by the Physical Sciences. Computer Science acts as the primary methodological anchor, while Engineering drives applied developments. Health Sciences, led by Medicine, represents the second-largest expansion zone of ML techniques.

    DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22656815Dimensionality reduction