Comparing national disciplinary structures: A quantitative approach

In this paper we propose a quantitative measure to compare the diversity of disciplinary profiles of countries. It is based on the theory of complex systems in physics, and in particular on the spinglasses literature (Parisi, 1983; Mezard et al 1984a,b,; Fisher and Hertz, 1991). Our Diversity of Disciplinary Profiles (DDP) measure ranges from -1 to 1. The investigation on the distribution of the DDP is particularly interesting: if it shows a peak on 1 it means that there is a convergence of all analysed units towards a unique profile in their scientific specialization; if it presents two peaks, it points to a kind of 'broken symmetry' situation in which two different configurations or patterns of scientific specialization emerge. Finally, a broad distribution of the DDP index indicates fully independence of the scientific profiles of the different countries. We analyse the number of publications (integer count) of European countries in the 27 Scopus subject categories over 1996-2011. We compare the disciplinary profiles of European countries i) among them; ii) with respect to the European standard; and iii) to the World reference. The distributions of the resulting DDP show that there is a convergence towards a unique European disciplinary profile, confirming a trend of globalization of science in Europe. © AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH Vienna 2013.