On scaling of scientific knowledge production in U.S. metropolitan areas

Using data on all scientific publications from the Scopus database, we find a superlinear scaling effect for U.S. metropolitan areas as indicated by the increase of per capita publication output with city size. We also find that the variance of residuals is much higher for mid-sized cities (100,000...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-10, Vol.9 (10), p.e110805-e110805
Main Authors: Nomaler, Önder, Frenken, Koen, Heimeriks, Gaston
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bibliometrics
Cities
Critical mass
Earth Sciences
Geography
Humans
Inhabitants
Knowledge
Knowledge management
Metropolitan areas
Population Density
Scaling
Scaling laws
Science
Science Policy
Scientific papers
Scientific research
Social Sciences
United States
Urban Population
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Summary:Using data on all scientific publications from the Scopus database, we find a superlinear scaling effect for U.S. metropolitan areas as indicated by the increase of per capita publication output with city size. We also find that the variance of residuals is much higher for mid-sized cities (100,000 to 500,000 inhabitants) compared to larger cities. The latter result is indicative of the critical mass required to establish a scientific center in a particular discipline. Finally, we observe that the largest cities publish much less than the scaling law would predict, indicating that the largest cities are relatively unattractive locations for scientific research.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0110805