Comparing the disciplinary profiles of national and regional research systems by extensive and intensive measures

In this paper, by modeling national and regional research systems as complex systems, we compare the dynamics of their disciplinary profiles using extensive (size dependent) indicators as well as intensive (size independent) average productivity indicators of scientific production. Our preliminary findings show that the differences between the disciplinary profiles among countries in the world is of the same order of magnitude of the differences among European countries, that in turn, is of the same order of magnitude of the dynamics among regions within a country. While additional research (that is in progress) is needed to confirm these findings, we describe the main advantages (features) of our approach and outline its usefulness to support evidence-based policy making.Grant: This work was supported by Elsevier that provided the data within the Elsevier Bibliometric Research Programme (EBRP) for the Project "Assessing the Scientific Performance of Regions and Countries at Disciplinary Level by Means of Robust Nonparametric Methods: New Indicators to Measure Regional and National Scientific Competitiveness".