JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Year:2009 | Volume:2 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

The role of the humanities in achieving the goals of the Iranian vision is obvious to all policy makers and public managers. Increasing the number of scientific products can facilitate Irans movement towards achievement of this vision. Studies indicate that the generation of knowledge in the field of humanities in slow in Iran. The aim of this paper is to provide a reflecton on barriers to the creation of knowledge in Iranain studies of the humanities. Finally, some recommendations are put forward for promoting the quality of Iran's science policy.

The main objective of this study was to identify and analyze the barriers to nanotechnology development in the Iranian agricultural sector. The type of research method of this study was Descriptive-Correlative research. The statistical population of the study consisted of all the researchers of National Research Institutes and Centers from among whom 120 were selected for the study. A questionnaire was used to collect the data and a panel of experts established the validity of the questionnaire. A pilot study was conducted to establish the reliability of the instrument. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the main scales of the questionnaire was higher than 0.7 showing that it had an acceptable level of reliability. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the factors creating barriers to nanotechnology development in the Iranian agricultural sector. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were also used to determine the goodness fit index of the research model. The results showed that the barriers to nanotechnology development in the Iranian agricultural sector included five independent factors, namely infrastructural, political, informational, legal and financial.

This paper is a critical view to two mainstream approaches to technology regulation and their sufficiency in providing functional models for policy-making in this field. On the one hand, the literature on innovation and its special attention to the role of new technologies and how to regulate them is putting forward different perspectives. On the other hand, the extensive discussion on managing the risk of new technologies through government regulation represents another major approach to technology regulation. The present critical appraisal shall reveal that both of them are confronting serious shortcomings in providing functional policy models and in guiding the real decisions of policy makers; this is mainly because of their restrictive assumptions. While policy makers need models to help them in assessing the risks and benefits of technologies simultaneously, the innovation models are merely focused on the beneficial aspects of technology as opposited to the risk models that are mainly conceraed with the risk of new human products. Then, the discussion leads to the epistemological difficulties inherent in developing such models that pave the way for suggesting a new model at the end of the paper.

This study is a quantitative study of the Iranian national innovation system of at the disaggregated industry level. The approach of this study is based on the premise that the innovation outputs of investment on research and development (R&D) are ultimately used through inter-industry transactions creating beneficial technological spillovers. We used input-output modeling and network analysis to acquire a better understanding of the Iranian innovation network. We learned that the Iranian innovation network is rather hierarchic. We identified chemicals and chemical products, basic metals, and non-metallic mineral products as those sectors with the three highest outward innovation connections with other sectors; as such, these sectors are the core industries in terms of the diffusion of innovation.We found that all but chemicals and chemical products, non-metallic minerals, and basic metal products sectors of the Iranian innovation system are dependent on the technologies of the other sectors. Additionally, chemicals, non-metallic minerals, and basic metals receive or no innovations from the other industries. On the other hand, the four sectors with the highest dependence on innovation of the other sectors are appliances, electrical machinery, medical and optical equipment, and other transport sectors. We classify the Iranian innovation system as a dispersed technological system. To make the results of our study more meaningful, we compared the innovation systems of Iran, China, and Taiwan. We note that the three innovation systems have more or less the same degree of innovation outreach. In terms of receiving innovation benefits from other sectors Iranian and Chinese innovation systems are the most similar. The number of Iranian and Chinese sectors that receive innovations is substantially smaller than that of Taiwanese industries. Based on this, we conclude that both Iranian and Chinese innovation diffusion is more hierarchic than that of Taiwan. We identified five clusters in the Iranian innovation system. We discovered that a large number of sectors in the Iranian innovation network do not use or receive innovation from the other sectors of the economy, and so present potential opportunities for widespread diffusion of innovations.

This research investigates factors affecting Impact Factor of those economics journals approved by Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. The research method use is that of scientomerics and it was conducted through survey, citation analysis and library research. Data were collected using the Islamic World Science Citation database (ISC), a questionnaire and browsing case journals. Research of independent variables included self-citation, associativity, article quality and prestige, publication delay, review articles ratio, rejection rate, price and open-access. The IF of case journals, is a research dependent variable. Correlation analysis shows that such factors as self-citation, article quality, associativity, publication delay, review article ratio, and rejection rate have a significant correlation with a journal's IF. On the other hand, factors including prestige and price have no significant correlation with a journal's IF. For thermore, open-access hasn’t had any significant inpact on case journal's IF. Multiple regression analysis shows that rejection rate, self-citation, articles quality, associativity, review articles ratio and publication delay do, respectively, affect a journal's IF.

This paper is a preliminary attempt to describe NIS approach in broad definition as a theoretical circle in the broad realm of evolutionary economics’ scientific research program and to analyze if Prof. Lundavall and his colleagus in Aalbourg University’s initiation to stretch their conceptual focus outreaching the Asian and African Countries as a scientific advancement or an ad hoc hypothesis regardless of negative heuristics of Evolutionary Economics Scientific Program. The methodology selected is MSRP introduced by Imre Lakatos. This paper first analyses the internal artchitecture of Lundval’s NIS theory in the framework of lakatosian Methodological Scientific Research Program and introduce its hardcore and auxiliary hypothesis, and positive heuristics and then by evaluating the hypotheses brought forth by Lundvall in the Asian and African projects , it concludes that the Asian project can be considered as an scientific advancement of National Innovation system While African project is an ad hoc and local hypothese.

Given the paradigm shift from “Closed Innovation” to “Open Innovation”, there seems to be a need for a systematic mechanism for exploring and evaluating alternative external technologies, as well as the business models that may be appropriate for capturing value from such technologies. Although Traditional Technology Roadmapping (TTRM) used to play an important role in this regard, analyzing its utility in the context of Open Innovation reveals some shortcomings that need to be addressed in order to make the most of the Technology Roadmapping (TRM) concept. This paper elaborates on these limitations and suggests a modified approach, Open Innovation Roadmapping (OIRM), as an effective technological innovation management and planning tool in this new paradigm. The results of the application of the proposed approach in the case of the membrane technology roadmapping at the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI) are also presented here. Further practical guidelines are also raised by the authors to give a more practical vision on the approach.