Performance profile of the Dutch research system
In short
- Dutch Information and Communication Sciences and Political Sciences have a very high citation impact.
- Computer Science, Instruments and Instrumentation, Mathematics and Statistics have a medium citation impact. The Netherlands has a relatively low to average level of specialization in this area.
- Areas of science for which the Netherlands has a very high citation impact are also areas in which the Netherlands is highly specialized.
The performance profile of the Netherlands research system relates the Netherlands international research specialisation index (RSI) in the period 2015-2018 to the citation impact (CI) score, for 35 scientific fields. Thus, the indicator shows whether the scientific fields in which Dutch science is most specialised are also the fields with the highest performance.
Degree of specialisation and citation impact by field, 2015-2018
Notes: * These fields belong to the Humanities. Like Law, the Humanities are not well represented in Web of Science, as it is customary in these fields to publish in other ways as well.
Analysis
Of the 35 science fields, two have a very high citation impact, namely Information and Communication Sciences and Political Sciences. Ten fields of science have a high citation impact and fourteen fields of science have an above-average citation impact. The two fields in which the Netherlands has a very high citation impact are also fields in which the Netherlands is highly specialised.
Technical explanation
a) Area-standardised citation impact scores (CI): the number of citations received by publications from the 2015-2018 period during the 2015-2019 period compared to the global average of citations received per area (global average = 1.0).
b) Research Specialization Index (OSI): the share of Dutch research publications per scientific field in the period 2015-2018 in the total Dutch publication output, divided by the average percentage of the same scientific field in the publication output of all reference countries combined, unweighted by publication size of the countries (mean for all reference countries = 1.0).
For an explanation of the used definitions and abbreviations we refer to the webpage Definitions for Science in Figures.