Relative Specialization / Activity Index
The Relative Specialization Index and the closely related Activity Index measure how much a country, institution, or other unit concentrates its research effort in a given field relative to a global benchmark. The Activity Index, popularized by J. Davidson Frame in the 1970s, compares a unit's share of its own output devoted to a field against the world's share of output in that field: a value above 1 means the unit is more active (more specialized) in that field than the world average, and below 1 means less. András Schubert and Tibor Braun's relative-indicator framework formalized this family and introduced bounded, symmetric variants and 'relational charts' that pair publication activity with citation 'attractivity'. These indices are the scientometric analogue of revealed comparative advantage in trade and are central to national and institutional research-profiling.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Schubert, A., & Braun, T. (1986). Relative indicators and relational charts for comparative assessment of publication output and citation impact. Scientometrics, 9(5-6), 281-291. · DOI 10.1007/BF02017249
- Frame, J. D. (1977). Mainstream research in Latin America and the Caribbean. Interciencia, 2(3), 143-148. · URL
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.