| This study aims at building a representative list of international awards in science and technology by collecting sample awards in a broad range of subjects and fields from diverse sources,summarizing the development of international awards in science and technology;surveying the reputations of these collected awards quantitatively;and then analyzing the similarities between awards by mapping thess collected awards.In other words,this paper aims at assessing international awards in science and technology scientifically,by studying the relative importance of awards and the relationships between awards,and facilitating the use of international awards in science and technology in the evaluation of science and technology.This study collects 225 international awards in science and technology in a broad range of subjects and fields.These awards are granted by academic institutions such as academic associations,societies,and higher education instituions,and by institutions outside the academic world such as foundations;are granted with the rewarding history from one or two years to nearly three centuries;are granted mainly with a certain amount of prize money;are granted at formal ceremonies,sometimes with the presence of heads of state and government or the royal family members.The development of international awards in science and technology has presented the diverse situation,which meet the needs of rewarding scientists from different fields and at differernt levels in different historical periods.For the reputation of awards,this study succeeds in evaluating the reputation of the 225 sample awards quantitatively,by taking the Nobel Prizes in Science as the benchmark award and sending survey questionnaires to the awardees subject/field by subject/field.The survey results show that,compared to the Nobel Prizes with the highest reputation score of 1,there are 15 awards with an average reputation score of no less than 0.75,82 awards with scores of no less than 0.50 but below 0.75,123 awards with scores of no less than 0.25 but below 0.50,and five awards with scores of less than 0.25.Obviously,there is a hierarchy of reputation among these 225 awards.In addition,based on the survey results and the characteristics of these sample awards,this study analyzes the influence of awarding scope,awarding intensity,awarding history,type of awarding organization,awarding ceremony,propaganda and awarding regulations on the reputation of awards.The results show that various factors have influence on the reputation of international awards in science and technology.And no single factor is positively correlated with the reputation of awards.For a specific award,one certain factor or some factors play a very important role in the formation of its reputation.For the relationships between awards,this study succeeds in evaluating quantitatively the similarities between awards by building award map.Award map is built based on the network of co-awardees between every pair of awards,and by introducing the mapping technology which is widely used in the bibliometrics.The results show that the similatities between awards are visually shown in the award map,and the awards in one subject or field,which share more co-awardees between each other,are located much closer in the award map.Moreover,the similarities between the Nobel Prizes and the relevant awards are analyzed and used to identify the awards that can better presage future recognition by the Nobel committee.Finally,this study summarizes the practice of using awards in university rankings and their characteristics,and analyzes the rationalities and limitations for using awards as university ranking indicator.Furthermore,four prestigious international awards in Chemistry are used to build university ranking indictor in practice.The results show that using several prestigious awards as ranking indicator,instead of using only one award,could not only idendify the first-class academic institutions but also cover more institutions.The creative points of this study includes: firstly,a representative list of international awards in science and technology was built successfully;secondly,the reputations of these collected awards were weighed quantitatively,and the reputational gap between these awards were shown scientifically;thirdly,the similarities between these awards were gauged by building award map creatively.In general,this study succeeded in assessing international awards in science and technology by studying the relative importance of awards and the relationships between awards,which provides the foundation for further related study about award and facilitating the use of awards in the evaluation of science and technology. |
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