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Measuring regional impact: The case for bigger data
Author(s) -
Lamanna Camillo,
Bruijns Stevan
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
learned publishing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.06
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-4857
pISSN - 0953-1513
DOI - 10.1002/leap.1183
Subject(s) - regional science , economic geography , economics , geography
Global research impact can be measured using a diverse and ever-growing array of tools. Impact can be analysed with respect to the journal, the research institution, or the individual scholar from which research outputs emanate. However, we do not currently have metrics to measure the impact of research in individual geographical regions. Why would regional impact metrics be useful? Research outputs tend to concentrate in a relatively small area: the USA and Europe. In our field, emergency medicine, this area delivers nearly 60% of all research outputs recorded on Scopus despite making up less than 20% of the global population. Time and again it has been found that the findings from a high-income setting do not translate to the lowincome setting: patients differ, pathogens vary, and infrastructures diverge in their human, physical, and technological resources. Quite literally, what is life-saving in Los Angeles may be lethal in Lusaka (Andrews et al., 2017). In lowand middle-income countries (LMICs), identifying the journals with greatest regional impact would enable local librarians to identify the most regionally impactful journals, local clinicians to discover context-appropriate research (to translate into practice), and local policy-makers to direct the regional research agenda accordingly. Perhaps most importantly, identifying the most influential research outputs within individual regions may act as a stimulus for regional research in LMICs and thus begin to redress the research imbalance between the West and the rest. REMONSTRATIONS ABOUT CITATIONS