A Series of HSE Working Papers "Science, Technology, Innovation" — Six Months
At the end of September, 2012 Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) launched "Science, Technology and Innovation" (STI) working paper series in the framework of the Higher School of Economics “Working Papers of the Basic Research Program” (HSE WP BRP). Currently it is one of the youngest among all HSE WP BRP series, nevertheless the most popular among them.
At the end of September, 2012 Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) launched "Science, Technology and Innovation" (STI) working paper series in the framework of the Higher School of Economics “Working Papers of the Basic Research Program” (HSE WP BRP). Currently it is one of the youngest among all HSE WP BRP series, nevertheless the most popular among them.
HSE Working papers
Higher School of Economics staff has the opportunity to publish working papers in two HSE working paper repositories:
- “Working papers of the HSE Publishing House” (17 series of working papers in Russian and English available both online and print);
- “Working papers of the HSE Basic Research Program” (12 series of working papers in English only available in online format only).
All working papers in “Working papers of the Basic Research Program” repository are posted not only on HSE corporate portal, but also in SSRN (Social Science Research Network) — one of the world's largest electronic repositories of scientific publications in social sciences.
Since 2012, HSE publishes its series’ of research papers at the SSRN platform. Since April 2013, the Higher School of Economics (HSE) ranked 1st among all Economics Departments & Research Centers registered in SSRN by contributing authors. HSE ranks 36 in the total number of publications (531), and 38 by number of downloads of publications (59643) among all Economics Departments & Research Centers registered in SSRN as of May 1st 2013.
HSE Basic Research Program working paper series launched by ISSEK
The working Paper Series was initiated by Leonid Gokhberg and Dirk Meissner end of September 2012 in due course of the increasing number of papers prepared by Laboratory for Science and technology Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies (LST), Laboratory for Economics of Innovation (LEI) and Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) staff.
The pioneering paper in “STI” series was "Exploring Innovation Modes of Russian Companies: What Does the Diversity of Actors Mean for Policymaking?" (Leonid Gokhberg, Tatyana Kuznetsova, Vitaly Roud) posted in SSRN October 4, 2012. By May 2013, “STI” series has 11 preprints, 10 of them were prepared by ISSEK staff. During April 2013, 5 working papers were added to “STI” series. As of May 16, ISSEK staff uploaded 16 papers in SSRN (see Table 1).
All papers submitted to the series are edited by Mario Cervantes, OECD and Dirk Meissner, HSE. The editors organize a reliable review of the submitted papers. Only original research is considered for publication in the series. The WP series editors strongly encourage WP authors to further develop WP to full journal articles. If the series continues its successful development in the years coming it might be accompanied by an STI journal edited by one of the leading publishing houses.
The series contributes to an improved understanding of STI in the following fields:
- Trends analysis in STI, Education and Information Society (globally and in Russia CIS)
- Elaboration of theories, models, and implementation of empirical studies
- Special STI monitoring studies
- Advancement of theory, methodology and practices of statistical measurements in the areas of STI, Education, and Information Society
- Methodologies for Long-term forecasting (Foresight) and setting priorities for STI and socio-economic development
- Corporate Foresight
- Management of public research institutes
- Public funding of research
- Evaluation of research and innovation
- Methodologies for the elaboration of strategies, programmes, roadmaps of innovation-based development for companies, sectors and regions
- Design and development of information-analytical and knowledge formalization systems
- Advancing national statistics, methodological support to federal statistical surveys in STI, Education, and Information Society
- Measuring business and innovation climate and assessing economic trends in various sectors.
Table 1. Ranking of ISSEK staff papers in SSRN on number of paper downloads (as of May 16, 2013)
Notes: 1. all the data are relevant for May 16, 2013.
2. When calculating the indicator “Number of downloads per day” date of upload of paper to SSRN as well as day of analysis were counted as full days.Strong positions of “Science Technology and Innovation” series in SSRN
In spite of its short history “Science, Technology and Innovation” (STI) series launched by ISSEK has already become very popular in SSRN. Its positions among other HSE Basic Research Program working paper series is very strong (see Table 2).Table 2. Basic info on the Working papers Series from the HSE Basic Research Program in SSRN (as of 16 May 2013)
| Series | Number of downloads as of 15 May, 2013 | Number of working papers as of May 2013 | Average number of downloads per working paper | Weighted average of per day downloads for all working paper in the series1 | Average number of downloads of all working paper in the series per day2 | Date of upload of the first working paper3 |
| Economics | 1097 | 29 | 37.8 | 0.298 | 2.08 | 06.12.2011 |
| Humanities | 662 | 33 | 20.1 | 0.375 | 1.41 | 01.02.2012 |
| Science, Technology and Innovation | 649 | 11 | 59.0 | 3.412 | 2.88 | 04.10.2012 |
| Sociology | 579 | 17 | 34.1 | 0.118 | 1.18 | 12.01.2012 |
| Financial Economics | 560 | 13 | 43.1 | 0.257 | 1.42 | 18.04.2012 |
| Political Science | 512 | 11 | 46.5 | 0.250 | 1.13 | 16.02.2012 |
| Education | 386 | 11 | 35.1 | 0.226 | 0.85 | 16.02.2012 |
| Management | 263 | 9 | 29.2 | 0.450 | 0.63 | 26.03.2012 |
| Law | 259 | 18 | 14.4 | 0.244 | 0.56 | 11.02.2012 |
| Psychology | 114 | 10 | 11.4 | 0.106 | 0.25 | 18.02.2012 |
| Public Administration | 94 | 4 | 23.5 | 0.109 | 0.20 | 01.02.2012 |
| International Relations | 38 | 2 | 19.0 | 0.089 | 0.16 | 25.09.2012 |
2. This indicator is counted as ratio of total number of downloads of all working papers in the series to the number of days since uploading the first working paper in the series. Date of upload of paper to SSRN as well as day of analysis were counted as full days.
3. Date of upload was taken according to information from “personal page” of each working paper in SSRN..
4. All the data are relevant for May 16, 2013.
The weighted average of per day downloads of “STI” is several times higher than that of all other series of preprints Fundamental Research Program HSE: 3.41 (compare with 0.45 weighted average downloads per day for “Management” series). The “STI” series also has the highest average number of downloads per working paper among all 12 series: 59.0 downloads per paper.
The absolute total number of downloads of all working papers in the STI series is also very high: 649 (the third number among all HSE WP BRP series). Suffice to say that the paper ‘Innovation Concepts and Typology — An Evolutionary Discussion’ (WP BRP 05/STI/2013) working paper (Kotsemir, Maxim; Abroskin, Alexander; Meissner, Dirk) as of May 16, 2013, has earned more downloads than all 18 working paper in “Law” series together: 264 downloads vs. 259 downloads.
Moreover this paper was the most downloaded of all 162 working paper in HSE Basic Research Program repository. The other working paper of Maxim Kotsemir and Dirk Meissner Conceptualizing the Innovation Process — Trends and Outlook (WP BRP 10/STI/2013) ranked third with 172 downloads. These working papers are in SSRN RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days) TOP 10 Papers for many SSRN thematic electronic journals.
Strong positions of ISSEK staff in SSRN
The popularity of ISSEK authors’ working papers in the “STI” series helps them to hit strong positions among HSE authors in SSRN. Three ISSEK authors hit the top ten ranking of the 284 HSE authors the number of downloads for publication IN SSRN in April 2013: Maxim Kotsemir — 2nd place, Abroskin, Alexander — 3rd place and Meissner, Dirk 5th place (See Table 3). Oleg Karasev and Konstantin Vishnevsky take 19th place in the ranking. Their working paper Intelligent Data Systems to Aid Decision-Making at Tenders for Oil and Gas Fields Development (Series: Science, Technology and Innovation, WP BRP 07/STI/2013 (co-written with D. Meissner and A. Khripunova) was in SSRN RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days) TOP 10 Papers for two SSRN electronic journals: “Operations Strategy” eJournal and “Political Economy — Development: Public Service Delivery” eJournal. Working paper Public Sector E-Innovations: E-Government and Its Impact on Corruption (WP BRP 04/STI/2013) (Gulnara Abdrakhmanova and Liliana Proskuryakova) also was in SSRN RECENT HITS (for all papers announced in the last 60 days) TOP 10 for several SSRN eJournals.
Future development of “Science Technology and Innovation” series
The apparent advantage of publication of research results in the format of working paper is the ability of the author to initiate prompt discussion with colleagues, establish and maintaining contacts, including international and interdisciplinary research that definitely brings a new stage of development.
| Author rank | Author name | New Downloads (for the last 12 months) | Total number of downloads as of 1 May 2013 | Total number of downloads as of 1 April 2013 | Number of downloads during April 2013 | Number of papers as of 1 May 2013 |
| 1 | Sonin, Konstantin | 2 698 | 14 364 | 14 071 | 293 | 52 |
| 2 | Kotsemir, Maxim | 349 | 349 | 70 | 279 | 3 |
| 3 | Fantazzini, Dean | 1 232 | 9 308 | 9 099 | 209 | 21 |
| 4 | Abroskin, Alexander | 243 | 243 | 57 | 186 | 1 |
| 5 | Dirk, Meissner | 131 | 131 | 0 | 131 | 5 |
| 6 | Geraskin, Petr | 461 | 872 | 763 | 109 | 1 |
| 7 | Shakina, Elena | 794 | 960 | 892 | 68 | 3 |
| 8 | Bykova, Anna | 592 | 756 | 698 | 58 | 5 |
| 9 | Boldyrev, Ivan | 227 | 227 | 178 | 49 | 4 |
| 10 | Savelieva, Irina | 95 | 161 | 116 | 45 | 4 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| 19 | Karasev, Oleg | 23 | 23 | 0 | 23 | 1 |
| 19 | Vishnevskiy, Konstantin | 23 | 23 | 0 | 23 | 1 |
| 19 | Lokshin, Michael | 354 | 4 434 | 4 411 | 23 | 44 |
| 20 | Sprenger, Carsten | 168 | 1 312 | 1 293 | 19 | 5 |
NB: * Ranking was done for 284 HSE authors as of May, 1 2013.
ISSEK preprints are intended to inform about ongoing research work and initiate a constructive and fruitful discussion. The high frequency of downloads of ISSEK preprints provides evidence of the relevance of the respective research. Moreover discussions resulting from these preprints start to contribute to the initiation of joint research between ISSEK staff members and international colleagues reasonably. It can be expected that in the near future international co-authored high quality journal articles based on these preprints will be published.
Maxim Kotsemir