When examining GDN it is of course very important to analyse the structure of the Knowledgebase. For understanding not only the structure of the Knowledgebase, but also for looking through the 'lens' on the development community I am going to ask some, at least in my mind, important questions:
- To what extent do organizations contribute equally to the field of development research?
- Are there more scientists from the South or from the North?
- Is GDN dominated by traditional Northern organizations or by upcoming ones from the South?
- Where are the papers from? Is knowledge still produced in the North only and distributed to the South?
Click to enlarge: Figure 1
Source: M. Schlögl
If we have a look at the first graph we can see that the origin of the researchers is homogeneously distributed across Regional-Windows (Content on GDNet Knowledgebase is classified according to regional clusters, called Regional-Windows (Africa, CEE, CIS…). As in 'real World' Asia and Africa are dominating the statistic, 'the Rest' representing more or less the 'developed world' has only 12% of the researchers registered in GDN.
Click to enlarge: Figure 2
Source: M. Schlögl
The ranking of countries which have most researchers on GDNet Knowledgebase reflects a different picture. With 17% of researchers, India is far ahead of all other nationalities. It is interesting to note that in 6 out of the first 7 top nations English is at least one of the official languages. 5 out of the leading 6 nations are members in the Commonwealth of Nations, the 6th (the USA) has been a British colony. These results can partly be attributed to one or more of the following reasons:
- The English language dominates the development research work.
- Since the GDNet Knowledgebase is in English, it is more attractive to English speaking nationalities.
- Researchers from the South (at least the ones coming from former British colonies) have traditionally strong ties with Northern English speaking countries.
In an online-survey carried out 2009 (Schloegl 2009) some of the respondents criticized the English prominence on the Knowledgebase.
Click to enlarge: Figure 3
Source: M. Schlögl
As the Knowledgebase differs between nationality and country of living it is possible to study a trend we already know from real world: brain drain. While in Northern countries like Austria and the US (or the EU-27) the amount of foreign scientists is way higher than the amount of natives working abroad, the contrary is the fact in Southern countries like Nigeria and India.
Click to enlarge: Figure 4
Source: M. Schlögl
Following the results of the 'Brain Drain' statistic it is not surprising that Northern countries take the lead when it comes to organizations. Although India has by far the most researchers it is just at the third position in the organizations ranking: 17% and 5%, respectively. It is worth noting that whenever we speak of 'northern countries' we speak of a two-class society. Great Britain and US leading virtually any statistic among 'northern countries' on the one side and with proper distance the rest on the other side.
Click to enlarge: Figure 5
Source: M. Schlögl
Northern countries, especially the UK and the USA (together they are accountable for 41% of all papers), dominate the research production. Although the GDNet Knowledgebase favours content for and from the South, it is clear that the majority of the knowledge continues to be generated in the North. GDNet does not publish papers itself but it provides papers for research, and this graph gives an impressive insight into where the knowledge comes from - still. It has to be admitted though that id21 and Eldis are responsible for a rather big part of UK`s papers. Nevertheless, if we drop papers from id21 and Eldis the US and UK still are accountable for more than 30% of all papers.
Table 1
Source: M. Schlögl
In the table above we can see that the mean of papers per organization is considerably higher in Europe and North America than anywhere else. Altogether this shows that northern nations have considerably higher output of papers than the south in absolute as well as relative terms. To word a bit polemic: It seem that 'southern' scientists produce 'northern knowledge' in 'northern' institutions.
--> Part 4: 'Impact of GDN-driven research'
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