Capturing Change in Science, Technology, and Innovation: Improving Indicators to Inform Policy by Robert E. Litan

Author:Robert E. Litan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2014-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

RECOMMENDATION 6-4: The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics should explore whether questions can be included in the National Survey of College Graduates and the American Community Survey that would allow the identification of community college graduates or of holders of higher university degrees that have attended a community college.

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The employment situation of early-career doctorate holders may be very different from that of more experienced researchers. Members of the former group must decide whether to pursue a research career in academia or employment with a private company. A number of interesting questions arise in this regard that cannot be examined with existing data, such as the main factors affecting the choice between academia and the private sector, types of occupations in the private sector and the Ph.D. skills most relevant for these occupations, and responses to potential difficulties in finding a permanent position at a university or public research institution.

Ph.D. dissertations themselves contain valuable information on the areas in which research is being conducted and thus also on the skills and research competencies being developed. Research topics do not always fit well within standard fields of study. They may transcend different fields or represent a new specialized subfield or a combination of topics normally not seen as closely related. To a large extent, a database and the necessary text mining tools with which to address these issues already exist, and with further adaptation and improvement could be used to develop a number of useful indicators on current doctoral work. It would clearly be advantageous if all Ph.D. dissertations were publically available for analysis. Text mining tools could then be developed to identify emerging research topics and to measure the closeness of key research areas. Privately managed services cover a large portion, but not all, of U.S. dissertations.20

RECOMMENDATION 6-5: The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics should explore methods for exploiting the full-text resources of dissertation databases to create indicators on selected topics both within and across scientific fields and on the relatedness of different fields.

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