Terms & Acronyms

The new glossary: Each term a piece of data, accessible as a resource throughout the online experience. The Glossary page serves as a whole-site index too. Sample items are below:

Academic doctoral S&E workforce: Includes those with a U.S. doctorate in an S&E field employed in 2- or 4-year colleges or universities in the following positions: full and associate professors (referred to as senior faculty); ...

Academic institution: In the Expenditures and Funding for Academic R&D section of this chapter, an academic institution is generally defined as an institution that grants a bachelors' or higher degree in science or eng ...

Federally funded research and development center: R&D organization exclusively or substantially financed by the federal government, either to meet particular R&D objectives or, in some instances, to provide major facilities at universities fo ...

File year: Year in which an S&E article entered Thomson Reuters' S&E publication database, which may be later than the year in which the S&E article was published. ...

Fractional counting: Method of counting S&E publications in which credit for coauthored articles is divided among the collaborating institutions or countries based on the proportion of their participating departments ...

Index of highly cited articles: A country's share of the top 1% most-cited S&E articles divided by the country's share of all cited S&E articles. An index greater than 1 means that a country has a disproportionately higher share in ...

Relative citation index: A country's share of another country's cited S&E articles divided by the other country's share of all cited S&E articles. An index of greater than 1 means that the country has a higher-than-expect ...

Underrepresented minority: Demographic category including blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians/Alaska Natives; groups considered to be underrepresented in academic institutions. ...