Iraqi Engineering: Where has all the research gone? Alan L. Porter*
Abstract To what extent have Iraqi engineering research emphases changed over the past fifteen years or so? Exploration of Iraqi publication patterns shows a dramatic rise in activity through 1990, followed by a precipitous decline through early 2003. Iraqi engineering research emphases include chemistry and chemical engineering, information technology, applied math and simulation, applied physics, and circuits and controls. Modeling and simulation, and attention to thin semiconductor films, show relatively increased recent emphasis. We also observe interesting institutional patterns. Government-run universities, plus the Science Research Council, dominate engineering research publication. The net effect of this study is to raise questions about the current status of Iraqi engineering R&D. Knowledge of changes in engineering publication patterns can inform deliberations about Iraqi capabilities and emphases, but drawing policy implications requires expert review.
Introduction Profiling Iraq's engineering research publication since sheds light on current capabilities and policies. It also provides background information on the current research climate in Iraqi academia and national labs. This illustrates as well the use of bibliometrics to profile a nation's R&D. Obviously, one would not base policy decisions solely on such information. To set the context, Iraq is a nation of about 24 million people. Its economy depends primarily on petroleum. Saddam Husein and his Ba'th Party have led Iraq since the 1970's, with him as president since 1979. The disastrous war with Iran (1980-1988) cost the country tremendously in lives and resources. Financial losses have been estimated at $100 billion (Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2002). Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading to the Persian Gulf War of January-February, 1991, with disastrous defeat. Since then, we have witnessed shifting pressures on Iraq regarding their weapons of mass destruction. At times, UN resolutions have backed inspections and embargoes. As this paper is finalized (early March, 2003), war appears imminent. Review of the literature uncovers essentially no treatment of research policy in Iraq. I could not find a single use of terms such as "science" or "engineering" in 392 article abstracts mentioning Iraq, found in Social Science Citation Index from 1995 through 2002. It is against this background, that the evolution of the country's R&D activities holds great interest. This paper addresses one major portion of R&D -- that focused on engineering. It does so through a bibliometric and text mining analysis of Iraqi engineering publication abstracts since 1969. Table 1 sets the stage to consider Iraq's engineering research activity patterns. This sample of Middle Eastern countries, plus predominantly Muslim Malaysia with a similar population, presents several interesting contrasts. Iran and Egypt are several times more populous; Israel several times less so. Israel and Egypt are most prominent in international publication of engineering research; Israel strikingly more so per million population. [In comparison, a study of physics publications from the Middle East showed Egypt and Turkey dominant (Uzun, 1996).] Interestingly, Iraq and Iran come across quite comparable on a per capita basis. *
Alan L. Porter is Director of Research and Development, Search Technology, Inc., 4960 Peachtree Industrial Blvd., Norcross, GA 30071-1580, USA. Tel: +1 770-441-1457; Fax: +1 770-263-0802; e-mail:
[email protected]. He also co-directs the Technology Policy and Assessment Center, Georgia Tech.
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Table 1 conveys a key finding -- Iraq and Iran show opposite trends in engineering research patterns -Iraq's publication drops precipitously from 1990 to 2002 in both of the databases analyzed; Iran's increases. Other Near Eastern countries show differing engineering research trends, but none show a decline. Syria's presence is notably weak. In contrast, Malaysia shows a burgeoning engineering research effort. Table 1. Selected Benchmark Country Comparisons Country Population EI Compendex (Engr. Index) 2001 1970 on 1990 2002
1969 on
INSPEC 1990
Total Iraq Iran Egypt Syria Malaysia Israel
6800000 1639 4357 16001 199 3164 52506
258000 196 73 603 13 62 1813
(Millions) 24 65 65 17 24 6.4
5300000 1225 2763 10607 130 1705 8958
222000 152 66 510 11 26 468
220000 14 526 840 8 300 1601
Sum Engr Papers 2002 (EI + INSPEC) per million All Years All Years 220000 14 451 762 16 241 1851
2864 7120 26608 329 4869 61464
119 110 409 19 203 9604
NOTE: Tallies run on March 7, 2003
Methods Data Gathering. To estimate engineering R&D activity, I searched the two most prominent engineering literature abstract databases, INSPEC and EI Compendex (Engineering Index).1 Together, these do a good job of representing a broad swath of the world's open literature on engineering research. The searches yielded over 1200 EI Compendex records with Iraq in the authors' affiliation and over 1600 INSPEC records. Each database includes both journal articles and conference papers; the Iraqi publications run about 86 percent journal articles (in both databases). Searches were conducted in late December, 2002 (slightly earlier than the tallies shown in Table 1), and redone on March 13, 2003. Some tallies thus differ for analyses based on one or the other search set, but these have no bearing on the essential conclusions drawn. Is this all the Iraqi engineering research publication? No. Certainly this search of two databases does not capture all Iraqi engineering research papers, but it does represent a major portion of those that have been published in "international" forums as abstracted by these two databases. Are these search results just engineering? No. INSPEC, in particular, includes considerable physical science and computer science. Nonetheless, I believe the activity patterns reflect Iraqi engineering research intensity reasonably well. I note two other limitations. First, both these databases only relate affiliation (institution) information for the lead author. So, this search misses papers on which an Iraqi co-authored with a first author from another country. Given Iraq's increasing isolation from the global community, this probably does not miss a high percentage of papers. In addition, the databases do err occasionally in identifying "Iraq." For instance, searching on "Baghdad, not Iraq" identifies 8 papers in EI Compendex and 11 in INSPEC (none the same). All appear to be from Iraq -- mainly from the University of Baghdad. Most have no country recorded; one indicates India (mistakenly). So, all told, the country identifier search probably misses on the order of 1 percent. As a side note, scanning the titles of the 2432 abstracts supports the conclusion of little published attention to Iraqi R&D policy. Data Treatment. Combining both final (March 13) search results, with duplicates removed, yielded 2432 abstracts. These consist of journal articles (86%), conference papers (14%), and a handful of others (book chapters, unpublished papers). Results are not perfect -- some duplicates remain (e.g., the same paper with subtitle from one database and without subtitle from the other).
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I cleaned and analyzed the data using VantagePoint software [http://theVantagePoint.com]. This entailed tough, and imperfect, efforts to consolidate related records. For instance, one finds variations on given author names, particularly in Muslim regions. For example, are the following author(s) the same person? * Abdul-Halim, A-K Mohammed * Mahammed, Abdul-Halim A. -K * Mohammed, Abdul-Halim A-K * Mohammed, Abdul A. -K * Mohammed, Abdul-Halim A.K I judge these -- along with at least four other variants -- all likely to be the same individual. Consolidating organizational affiliation variations entails comparable decisions. Again, VantagePoint's list clean-up (fuzzy matching) and thesaurus functions help enormously in doing this. Keywords (subject index terms) have also been combined. This, too, is an imperfect process. Each database provides both author- or journal-assigned keywords (these are uncontrolled -- i.e., not standardized) and its own controlled keywords. So, when these are all consolidated, certain closely related terms will be separate. For instance, in Table 2, "analogue-digital conversion" and "data conversion, digital to analog" might well be combined. Most importantly, this means that clustering routines, as reflected in Figure 2, are just rough indicators of how topics fit together. Data Analysis. This analysis is based on text mining of abstract records of a nation's published research. This sort of analysis is rooted in bibliometrics (c.f., van Raan, 1988), extended through application of advanced statistics and natural language processing of text content (c.f., Losiewicz et al., 2000). Just as abstracts of entire papers provide a reasonable approximation of the emphases therein, "keywords" provide a good first cut at the content of the papers. In this case, keywords reflect a combination where some are assigned by the database (either INSPEC or EI Compendex), some by the journals publishing the papers, and some by the authors themselves. They are thus mixed in character. Those with greatest frequency are likely to reflect the terms assigned by INSPEC and EI Compendex because these will have wider usage. Tabulations do suggest the prevailing interests. Figure 2 displays the results of clustering the leading keywords. It is based on principal components analysis to group keywords tending to appear together in the records (c.f., Deerwester et al., 1990). Nodes indicate such principal components ("factors" for short). Proximity of the factors is a weak indicator of association among them based on multi-dimensional scaling (Zhu and Porter, 2002). Lines connecting factors are a stronger indicator of association, based on a path-erasing algorithm. Figure 2 illustrates the nature of a given factor (principle component) via "pull downs" to show clustering together usually about 3-8 keywords that tend to occur together in the abstract records. Note that factors are given the name of the most central keyword. Similar pull-down views could be shown for all the factors, but the map would be unreadable. This paper reflects my estimations and should not be taken as authoritative -- careful review by country and subject-matter experts would be necessary to fully validate. Such review should align with one's objectives. In this case, I'm interested in ascertaining broad-brush patterns and trends in Iraqi engineering research, so exacting precision is not needed. I have sought review by persons familiar with engineering research in Iraq without success. For this exploratory purpose, reliance on bibliometrics is suitable. For international policy determination, expert assessment, in addition, is vital. Statistical treatments are not generally needed in that the key effects are clear-cut. For instance, the time series of Figure 1 could be analyzed as a "time series intervention" to check the hypothesis that the Gulf War affected publication; this is superfluous. Likewise, we could compare the recent 7 years with the peak 7 years (Table 1), but it is absolutely obvious that the drop in publication activity is significant.
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Results We begin with a dataset of 2432 abstract records. Let's look first at overall trends. Figure 1 shows publication activity by year. Some observations: • Publication in internationally indexed journals and conferences rose from very low levels prior to 1974 to a reasonable level by 1978; it then stopped growing through 1983 • From 1983 to 1986, engineering publication more than doubled (a period of rapid growth) • Publication continued to grow through 1990, the peak year -- it does not seem to be impacted by the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 • Publication plummeted rapidly from 1990 to 1992 [This corresponds to the Gulf War, of course] • Publication has drifted even lower since then (back to the level seen in the mid-1970's), but a modest upward trend suggests itself from 1996 through 2001 (with 5 records for early 2003 included with 19 for 2002 in the Figure). These trends pose interesting policy questions. What led to the remarkable rise in research publication in the mid-1980's? Does it reflect an increase in the amount of engineering R&D, a change in policy toward encouraging publication in the international literature, or a combination (most likely)? What were the motives? And, as the article title asks, where has the research effort gone? Presumably, those who were publishing actively a decade ago are largely still professionally active. Have their efforts been redirected to more secretive research projects? Have research support resources just dwindled? These data cannot answer these questions, but they allow us to profile what the former and recent open literature publication conveys about researcher capabilities and interests. Figure 1. Disappearing Research
300 250 200 150 100 50
1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
0
To sharpen the contrasts, many of the following analyses compare the peak period of Iraqi engineering research publication (1984-1991) with a roughly corresponding most recent period (1996-2003). The
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former period reflects 7 or 8 years (presuming 1991 publication largely reflects research done prior to the Gulf War). The recent period reflects 7+ years. Our interest keys on major shifts between these periods. Exploration of alternative groupings suggests that the conclusions are not very sensitive to these. Table 1 profiles publication activity, for the two time periods, for the 10 leading engineering research organizations -- those showing more than 20 publications. Note that 8 of the 10 leading publishers of engineering research were universities. Past tense is appropriate, as per the message of Figure 1. The Scientific Research Council includes the Solar Energy Research Center, the Space & Astronautics Research Center, the Petroleum Research Center, and other such specialized centers. The "Total" column gives the total publications captured by EI Compendex and INSPEC for which the lead author was associated with that institution, at any time (1969 - Present). The next two columns sum the publications for the peak period ending at the Gulf War and for the most recent period for comparison. The last column delivers the "punchline" -- publication has declined markedly across the board (with the minor exception of Saddam University). The leading font of engineering research in the peak years, the University of Baghdad, remains the leader in recent years, but the drop-off is extreme -- publication in the recent period is only about 21 percent of the level of the peak period. At the other leading engineering research institutions, the drop-off is even greater. Some have ceased any international publication, as indexed by these two databases. The Scientific Research Council drop in international publication is pronounced. Table 1. Engineering Research Publication by Iraqi Organization Organization
Total
1984-911996-2003
Ratio
Univ of Baghdad
707
394
81
0.21
Sci Res Council (combined)
449
388
33
0.09
Univ of Basrah
405
202
15
0.07
Univ of Mosul
232
114
14
0.12
Univ of Technol, Baghdad
228
129
14
0.11
Iraqi Atomic Energy Coun
85
42
4
0.10
Military Tech Coll, Baghdad
67
55
Univ of Salahaddin (Sulaimaniyah)
54
13
2
0.15
Al-Mustansiryah Univ, Baghdad, Iraq
26
13
1
0.08
Saddam Univ
24
7
13
1.86
1438
203
0.14
All Institutions
0.00
As INSPEC and EI Compendex report the organizational affiliation only for the first author, we estimate which organizations collaborate with which others by looking at authors linked to multiple organizations. This can reflect both actual collaboration (i.e., person A appears linked to both organization M (with which she is affiliated) and organization N (where another lead author works), and/or personal movement (where person A has shifted organizations). Were one trying to track such movements, inspection of dates when they were linked to particular organizations makes this quite feasible. Some observations: • The Scientific Research Council and its subsidiary Petroleum Research Council collaborated extensively with the University of Baghdad. Individual Scientific Research Council authors who are associated with University co-authors no longer seem to be active publishers (consistent with the apparent end of Research Center open literature publication). • The Solar Energy Research Center associates with the Scientific Research Council. • Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission shows minimal collaboration with other organizations From another angle -- we are interested in what capabilities have been retained from pre-Persian Gulf War to recent days. We compared lists of engineering research authors for the peak and recent periods.
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Of the 130 authors with at least 5 publications in the 1984-91 period, only 21 (16%) authored any papers abstracted by INSPEC or EI Compendex in1996-2002. One wonders what the others are doing? What topics do Iraqi engineering research publications emphasize? I compare these for the two time periods. Table 2 presents the leading keywords for the respective periods. Modeling and simulation remain strong emphases. Solar energy shows up in both periods. Interest in semiconductor thin films emerges in the recent period. Most apparent is that relatively few topics show heavy recent publication activity. Observers of Iraq may be interested in exploring what has happened to research interests that seem to have disappeared. Are the shifts in research emphasis statistically significant? Obviously the decline in activity is extreme -from 1438 publications indexed for the 1984-91 period to 203 for 1996-2003. We can adjust the numbers accordingly to generate estimates for the recent period based on the earlier (peak) period activity. For instance, for the leading 1984-91 keyword, 63 of 1438 articles were associated with "organic compounds" -- 4.4 percent. The same percentage applied to the 203 articles of the recent period would predict about 9 articles associated with organic compounds, whereas we observe 5. For the 14 leading terms from 198491 (First column of Table 2), their corresponding frequencies in 1996-2003 differ significantly (ChiSquare < .001). This is also true for the 18 leading terms for 1996-2003; looking back to 1984-91, their frequencies are significantly different (ChiSquare < .001). Were one trying to explore emerging interests more finely, one would likely focus on a topical area and collect all related keywords to analyze. This could help identify organizations leading research in that area, key researchers, and the sub-topics of special interest to them. In addition, VantagePoint performs natural language processing to parse title and abstract text into noun phrases. These can be compared to explore what new topics are being treated, methods in use, and interdisciplinary associations. However, such detail does not suit this overview of research activity and really requires substantive expertise too. Table 2. Leading Keywords in Iraqi Publications Leading Keywords 1984-91 Organic Compounds microcomputer applications computerised instrumentation digital-analogue conversion Mathematical models Heat Transfer Digital instrumentation Solar absorber-convertors Solar Radiation Solar cells Data Conversion, Digital To Analog Hydrocarbons Oil Well Production Computer simulation
1984-91 1996-2003 Leading Keywords 1996-2002 63 5 Mathematical models 47 1 Computer simulation 45 2 Solar heating 38 Thermal effects 35 20 Natural Convection 31 6 Solar collectors 31 Solar absorber-convertors 31 7 Enthalpy 30 5 Regression analysis 28 6 Correlation methods 28 Cadmium compounds 21 1 Heat Transfer 20 Solar cells 20 16 Thin films Form factors (nuclear Molecular weight Semiconductor thin films Annealing
1984-91 1996-2003 35 20 20 16 6 15 3 13 2 8 1 7 31 7 3 7 2 6 3 6 9 6 31 6 28 6 6 6 6 5 6 9 6 4 6
Let's explore a bit further how Iraqi engineering research emphases change over time. In the decade before the Second Gulf War (Desert Storm), Iraq invested more resources into nuclear, biological, chemical, and missile programs than any other developing country (according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, 2002). In our data, for 198890, 134 keywords appear at least 4 times. Of those, 79 percent also were among the top keywords for the
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total dataset. Another principal components analysis (similar in nature to that shown in Figure 2) suggests particular emphases in that peak 1988-90 research period on: • semiconductors, optoelectronics, and solar cells • organic chemistry • computerised instrumentation, somewhat associated with bio-medical applications • astronomy Jump ahead to year 2000 and later. For the 43 keywords appearing at least 3 times in the far fewer publications for this recent time period, the clustering is less robust. Possible emphases include: • petroleum refining • electron-nucleus scattering topics • semiconductor thin films • computer simulation and solar energy • thin films and grain boundaries To draw firm conclusions about directions in Iraqi engineering R&D one would need to probe further into "who is doing what." These quick profiles provide an interesting starter for discussions with experts on Iraqi engineering. To add general perspective, Table 3 shows the leading Database-assigned Class Codes (those appearing for 100 or more records) over the entire time period. INSPEC and EI Compendex have different classification schemes; this is an amalgam from both. Classification is not exclusive; one article will typically be assigned to several classes. This gives another perspective on topical concentration of Iraqi researchers. Emphases include: • Chemistry • Information technology • Applied math • Chemical engineering • Applied physics • Circuits and controls Looking just at the recent publications (not shown here), generally the same classification codes show prominently, but with less pronounced chemical emphasis. Table 3. Leading Classifications of Iraqi Publications, 1969-2002 Class Codes Chemical Products Generally Computer Software, Data Handling and Applications Applied Mathematics Chemical Apparatus and Plants; Unit Operations; Unit Processes Applied Physics Generally Light, Optics and Optical Devices Chemistry Automatic Control Principles and Applications Computer Circuits and Logic Elements Heat and Mass Transfer; Thermodynamics Chemical Agents Electronic Circuits Space Physics Polymers and Polymer Science
Instances 288 249 209 192 170 170 122 116 107 103 102 101 101 100
To probe subject concentrations further, I clustered the leading 44 keywords from the 203 articles
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from the recent period (1996 on). Figure 2 shows the resulting map of 8 clusters. This suggests recent Iraqi attention to semiconductors and thin films (upper left). The high-loading keywords that form these two clusters are shown as "pull-downs." Similarly two factors on the upper right relating to solar energy are shown with the contributing keywords. Depending on one's interests, one could map the topical emphases of one organization or one specialty (e.g., chemical research). Figure 2. Clusters of Keywords
Factor Map Keywords (Cleaned) (top) Factors: 7 VP top links shown > 0.75 0 (0) 0.50 - 0.75 0 (0) 0.25 - 0.50 2 (0) < 0.25 5 (10)
Semiconduc tor thin films
Keywords (Cleaned) -0.92 Semic onductor thin films -0.92 II-VI semic onductors -0.83 Cadmium c ompounds Thin films
Keywords (Cleaned) 0.72 0.54 0.51 0.50 0.48
Thin films Crystals--Structure Annealing Evaporators X-ray Diffrac tion
Solar absorber-convertors
Keywords (Cleaned) -0.65 Solar absorber-convertors -0.51 Thermal analysis
Solar heating
Keywords (Cleaned) 0.75 0.57 0.52 0.43 0.42 0.40
Pipe flow
Solar heating Solar absorber-convertors Solar c ollec tors Thermal analysis Temperature measurement Performanc e
Heat Transfer
Solar collectors
Refrac tive index
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Observations Based on the patterns seen, it appears that the Gulf War and its residual political tensions has led to a severe reduction in Iraqi engineering research publication. This raises the question of what has actually happened to engineering research and researchers? Is engineering R&D still active, but redirected toward other topics? Has it withered? If so, how do economic sanctions contribute to this (Alnasrawi, 2001; Mueller and Mueller, 1999)? Universities in Iraq are governmental. The publication patterns seen in Figure 1 show a series of abrupt changes over the past quarter-century of Husein's rule, suggesting sensitivity to policy shifts. The dropoff in university engineering research publication through the present makes one wonder about how academic culture has changed. What has replaced publication in internationally abstracted journals and conferences as a faculty activity? The presence of some ongoing faculty publication implies that this is not prohibited, but it is certainly on a very reduced scale from what it was. Further exploration of the state of Iraqi R&D in various fields could inform judgments about their capabilities to generate advanced weaponry in the future. The paper presents several alternative slices on "what?" research has been undertaken -- i.e., topical emphases. At the highest level, Table 3 shows which research classifications were most prominent. Table 2 looks at keywords prominent in the Iraqi abstract records. Text mining could be carried further to examine the terms and phrases used in article titles and abstracts.. Figure 2 maps the topical emphases to give an overview perspective by which one can try to make sense of the main thrust areas (convergent topical emphases that possibly reinforce one another). These profiles of topical emphases do not lend themselves to simple conclusions. Iraqi engineering emphases, for instance, do not appear tightly focused on military interests. Nor, are they distinctly set apart from topics that might support biological, chemical, nuclear, or missile applications. The research profiles provide vital empirical evidence on Iraqi activities, but they require complementary expert knowledge-based interpretations to assess particular policy implications. Capable scientists and engineers are key to R&D (Clayton, 2002). We have looked at "who?" is doing the research at several levels -- for the country overall, by research organizations, and by individual authors. We have observed trends in engineering research activity -- addressing "when?" if you will. Were more detailed issues of interest, the “who, what, and when” aspects could be combined. For instance, we might want to identify which university faculty have been writing about chemical research in the past few years. This sort of bibliometric investigation could be extended to fundamental science and bio-medical research publication and to patenting activity. The availability of S&T information resources such as INSPEC and EI Compendex, along with text mining software oriented to analyses of them, brings a wealth of information "to our fingertips." Powerful analytical and information visualization approaches provide a promising technology management aid (c.f., Borner et al., 2003; Chen, 2003). These capabilities can aid: researchers in profiling the whole of their research domain (c.f., Porter et al., 2002), research managers in identifying gaps and opportunities (c.f., Watts and Porter, 1997), and managers and policy-makers in assessing competitive technological intelligence (c.f., Porter and Newman, 2001). Open literature publication is obviously not a full indicator of Iraqi capabilities in nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, or missile, development. However, the level of engineering research as of 1990 provides one benchmark on the country's engineering R&D capabilities. The two databases searched do not heavily cover biological or chemical research, but the Iraqi topical emphases showed activity in those domains, particularly chemicals. These searches would tap capabilities that could underlie nuclear and missile development. To some extent, they reflect basic technological infrastructure important to any technical development -- e.g., computing, instrumentation, and so forth. Recent work points to interests in petroleum (key to the economy) and semiconductors.
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From a methodological perspective, this paper illustrates profiling one nation's R&D activity in one large domain -- engineering. It was motivated by curiosity as to whether the Gulf War and its aftermath changed activity levels (it certainly appears to have done so). Generalizing from this illustration, here are suggested steps to profile a research domain for given purposes: 1. Specify the research question and what information is being sought. For instance, we might want to gauge Iraq's biological weapons capabilities. Or we might want to assess Ford Motor Company's fuel cell development activities to estimate when they might commercially introduce such technology in their automobiles. Georgia Tech might seek to benchmark its capabilities for a new nanotechnology research center to determine whether to propose same to a funding agency, and to help make their case. 2. Determine suitable information resources. For example, pursuing the Georgia Tech nanotechnology initiative, we might want to gauge its fundamental research strength by mining Science Citation Index, its science policy activity through Social Science Citation Index, and its engineering efforts through INSPEC and EI Compendex. (ResearchIndex provides access to research posted on the Internet, emphasizing computer science.) In contrast, to investigate the Ford fuel cell thrust, we might look at its engineering work (e.g., INSPEC, EI Compendex, and Energy Science & Technology) in conjunction with patent analysis (e.g., using Derwent World Patent Index) and possibly a business activity compilation (e.g., Business Index). 3. Search and retrieve pertinent records. Obtain access to the desired information sources. Many universities license unlimited use access to multiple databases. For instance, faculty, staff, and students at Georgia Tech have access to about 20 major databases through its electronic library and to over 100 additional ones through the State of Georgia's Galileoi system. Formulate a suitable search query. Strongly consider iterating this following preliminary review by subject matter experts. 4. Clean the data. As noted herein, removing duplicates, matching alternative versions of names, and grouping synonymous terms will greatly reduce the noisiness of analyses. On the other hand, this type of text mining does not require the search to be tightly focused on a precise topic. Indeed, it is most informative at profiling the whole of a research domain. This enables one to ascertain related topics and interactive paths. 5. Analyze the data. As illustrated here, one can do three levels of analysis: 1) Make lists (e.g., Figure 1, Table 3) 2) Make a matrix from two lists (e.g., Tables 1 and 2) 3) Use statistical means to elicit underlying relationships (e.g., clustering topics in Figure 2). 6. Represent the data. Present the data content and form in a manner most suitable to the target audience. In this paper, I believe the "vivid" finding is reflected by Figure 1. 7. Interpret the findings. In this paper, I have limited interpretation due to lack of available expertise to assess what the bibliometric data mean in terms of Iraqi engineering research. In general, text mining is highly complemented by expert review. In conclusion, Iraqi research publication in engineering and related topics is not dead, but it is not what it was. Where are the engineering researchers today and what are they doing?
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References Alnsawrawi, A. (2001), "Iraq: Economic Sanctions and Consequences: 1990-2000," Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2, pages 205-218. Borner, K., C. Chen and K. Boyack (2003), “Visualizing Knowledge Domains", Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 37. Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies (2002), Posted at the Nuclear Threat Initiative website: http://www.nti.org/e_research/e1_iraq_1.html, Chen, C. (2002), Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization, Springer-Verlag, London. Clayton, M. (2002), "The Brains Behind Iraq's Arsenal," [http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1023/p01s01-wome.html].
Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 23
Deerwester, S., Dumais, S.T., Furnas, G.W., Landauer, T.K., and Harshman, D., (1990), "Indexing by Latent Semantic Analysis,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 41, No. 6, pages 391-407. Losiewicz, P., D.W. Oard and R.N. Kostoff (2000), "Textual Data Mining to Support Science and Technology Management", Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, Vol. 15, No. 2, pages 99-119. Mueller, J., and Mueller, K. (1999), "Sanctions of Mass Destruction," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 3, pages 43-61. Porter, A.L., A. Kongthon and J-C. Lu (2002), "Research Profiling: Improving the Literature Review", Scientometrics, Vol. 53, pages 351-370. Porter, A.L., and Newman, N.C., (2001), “Why Don’t Managers Want Our Technological Intelligence? And What Can We Do about it?", Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals [SCIP], Seattle. Uzun, A. (1996), "A Bibliometric Analysis of Physics Publications from Middle Eastern Countries," Scientometrics, Vol. 36, No. 2, pages 259-269. Van Raan, A.F.J. (1988), "Handbook Of Quantitative Studies Of Science & Technology", North Holland. Watts, R.J., and Porter, A.L. (1997), “Innovation Forecasting,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 56, pages 25-47. Zhu, D., and Porter, A.L. (2002), “Automated Extraction and Visualization of Information for Technology Intelligence and Forecasting,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 69, pages 495-506.
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EI Compendex (also called Engineering Index) -- is produced by Engineering Information (http://www.ei.org). It abstracts articles from about 2600 journals, conference proceedings, and technical sources -- it includes over 6 million records since 1970. It covers all engineering disciplines. INSPEC -- is provided by IEE -- the Institute of Electrical Engineers, UK: http://www.iee.org/Publish/INSPEC. INSPEC ® comprehensively covers telecommunications, electrical and control engineering, computer science, information technology, and physics. It also covers many other fields of engineering well. It abstracts some 3500 journals and conferences, with over 7 million records from 1969 through 2002.
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