A quantitative measure to compare the disciplinary profiles of research systems and their evolution over time

We model Science and Technology (S&T) systems as complex systems and propose to use the mathematical tools developed within the spin-glasses literature to evaluate similarity within systems and between systems in a unified manner. Our measure is based on the ‘overlap’ of disciplinary profiles of a set of S&T systems. The investigation of the distribution of the overlaps provides useful insights on the dynamics of the general system, that is whether it converges towards a unique disciplinary structure or to a differentiated pattern. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach by investigating the dynamics of disciplinary profiles of European countries from 1996 to 2011. We analyse several bibliometric indicators (including publications and citations) of European countries in the 27 Scopus subject categories. We compare the disciplinary profiles of European countries i) among them; ii) with respect to the European standard; and iii) to the World reference. We find that there is a convergence towards a unique European disciplinary profile of the scientific production even if large differences in the scientific profiles still remain. The investigation of the dynamics by year shows that developing countries are converging towards the European model whilst some developed countries are departing from it.