Developing scientific capacity in the Global South Citation for published version (APA): Confraria, H. (2019). Developing scientific capacity in the Global South. ProefschriftMaken Maastricht. https://doi.org/10.26481/dis.20190508hc Document status and date: Published: 01/01/2019 DOI: 10.26481/dis.20190508hc Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Please check the document version of this publication: • A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. 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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author or the copyright-owning journals for previous published chapters. Developing scientific capacity in the Global South DISSERTATION to obtain the degree of Doctor at Maastricht University, on the authority of the Rector Magnificus, Prof. Dr. Rianne M. Letschert in accordance with the decision of the Board of Deans, to be defended in public on Wednesday 8 May, 2019, at 10:00 hours by Hugo Confraria Supervisors Prof. Dr. Bart Verspagen Prof. Dr. Robin Cowan Co-supervisor Dr. Lili Wang Assessment Committee Prof. Dr. Fred Gault (Chairman) Prof. Dr. Robert Tijssen, University of Leiden Dr. Ismael Ràfols, Universitat Politècnica de València Dr. Fabiana Visentin Summary In this thesis, our objective is to provide a better understanding of how researchers, institutions and countries in low and middle-income regions can advance their scientific capacity and employ it for higher research citation impact, international collaboration, alignment between research priorities and social needs, and university-industry interactions. We raised different research questions and used different quantitative approaches in order to provide insights for policy makers to create and manage policies that promote the absorption, creation, diffusion, application, and retention of scientific knowledge in the Global South. The second chapter is the first study that creates a framework to analyse the determinants of citation impact at country level. It displays a U-shaped relationship between research citation impact and GDPpc and finds that previous citation impact, level of international collaboration and total publications in a specific scientific field are important determinants of citation impact among all nations. However, specialisation in particular scientific fields seem significantly more important in lower income regions. The third and fourth chapters combine unique survey data with bibliometric data to study the characteristics of highly cited researchers in Africa and which factors influence international research collaboration in Africa. The results are consistent with previous literature but discussed within the African context. In the fifth chapter of the thesis, we change focus, and we investigate to what extent health research capacity in Africa has been aligned with medical needs in the continent. We use text mining to combine bibliometric data from the Web of Science with the estimates of the disability-adjusted life years produced by the World Health Organization. We find that in sub-Saharan Africa most diseases with high disease burden are also the ones with relatively more research effort and that the resources used to fund that research come mostly from international research funders (public non-African and philanthropic). In the last empirical chapter, we study what kind of characteristics make research institutions more prone to interact with the private sector in Latin America. The main finding is that the scientific institutions that have a more diverse set of knowledge sources and are in brokerage positions at the national level, within their scientific discipline, are the ones that are working more intensively with industry. 5 Acknowledgments 7 Acknowledgments There are many people I would like to thank for their support during this thesis. First of all, I want to thank my supervisors; Prof. Bart Verspagen, Prof. Robin Cowan and Dr. Lili Wang who provided me with continuous support, guidance and intellectual freedom throw-out this process. Individually, I want to thank Bart for his rigour, vision and help in turning ideas into coherent research questions and chapters; Robin for inviting me to participate in a workshop in South Africa in 2016 and present some preliminary results of my second chapter. The ideas and intellectual exchanges during that workshop were essential to develop this thesis. I am also profoundly thankful to him for giving me the opportunity to do a 3-month research visiting in Stellenbosch, which allowed me to have access to some of the data that I use in the third, fourth and fifth chapter. I would also like to thank him for opening my mind to the social network analysis field; and Lili for always being ready to help at each stage of my research, supporting with all my technical queries and introducing me to several people in our field. I learned a lot from all of you! I am also very thankful to Prof. Fred Gault, Prof. Robert Tijssen, Dr. Ismael Ràfols and Dr. Fabiana Visentin for having accepted to serve as committee members and giving me great comments. The time and effort you took to review this work is highly appreciated. My sincere thank you also goes to my chapter co-authors, Manuel Mira Godinho, Charl Swart, Jaco Blanckenberg and Fernando Vargas. Without Manuel, I would not be doing a PhD. My journey in research started because of him and since then he has been a mentor and a friend. The contributions of Charl and Jaco were hugely significant to this thesis. Chapters four and five are done with data they collected and cleaned. At the beginning of my 3-month visiting in Stellenbosch I was unsure of what was going to happen. But you were extremely welcoming, and I think my time there was the most productive time of my life due to our continuous interactions. That visiting was not possible without the support of Prof. Johann Mouton and Prof. Catherine Beaudry. I am also profoundly thankful to them. Finally, huge thanks to my “cumpadre” Fernando. We did not manage to achieve our objective of having more papers together than Europa League Finals, but I think we can still do it. The thesis has benefited from comments, suggestions and data from many other people in conferences, workshops, poster sessions and other casual interactions. I want to thank Aldo Geuna, Eddy Szirmai, Pierre Mohnen, Renè Belderbos and Rodrigo Costas for their contributions particularly. I am especially grateful to my paranymphs and amazing friends; Cho and Mario. We made this journey together, and I hope we can continue to share trips, concerts, drinks and ideas in the future. 9 I have been lucky to be part of an incredible cohort at UNU-MERIT: Arip, Bruhan, Cho, Clotilde, Davina, Fernando, Francesca, Eli, Janyl, Jemal, Maria, Mario, Nga, Nora, Wondie, thank you so much for all the debates, dinners, drinks, parties and days together. Our first year was memorable! I am also grateful to my other UNU-MERIT colleagues, Allison, Bea, Caio, Charlotte G., Charlotte K., Dachi, Daniel, Danilo, Eleni, Elisa, Elvis, Emmanuel M., Gintare, Giulia, Ibrahima, Jenny, Joseph, Juanca, Julietta, Jussi, Lika, Lorena, Mary, Mira, Mueid, Paula, Racky, Sachin, Sheng, Shivani, Solomon, Stefania, Stephan, Tamara, Tobias, Victor and others for all the lovely time and experiences. I want to express my gratitude to the research and administrative staff at UNU-MERIT, who have been caring and helpful during the time I was at the institute as a student, tutor, seminar organiser and PhD representative.