About

The study, "The role of Networking in research activities" (NetReAct) captured, described and analysed the strategies, patterns, dynamics and impact of networking in research activities in the European life sciences in 10 European countries. Networking activities between universities and between these institutions and other public or private research performers were assessed and the capacity of research units and universities in the life sciences to attract doctoral students and post-docs from outside their own geographic area investigated..

For these purposes, the study will employed a methodological approach which rested on three pillars:

• a questionnaire-based survey targeted principally at heads of research units to collect data on the doctoral students and post-docs at these institutions,
• bibliometric data (publication and citation statistics) taken from the Thomson-ISI database to assess the levels of collaboration and output produced by these institutions, and
• webometric data (hyperlinks) collected from the Internet to evaluate the position of these institutions in the life sciences networks.

The work carried out and the results achieved within the study included:

• Characterisation of doctoral students
• Bibliometric measures of networking activities and of their impact 
• Characterisation of post-doctoral training
• Analysis of the datasets