BESIDES ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS - WHICH SECTORS COMPETE, OR ARE THERE COMPETITORS

Since its beginning thirty years ago, bibliometrics has mainly studied academic publications. More often, the Science Citation Index (SCI) is treated as a whole, without breakdown of papers by sectors (university, government, industry). However, between 15% and 30% of the SCI publications comes from other sectors than university. We present the first bibliometric analysis of papers broken down by sectors. The data have been used to test the following hypothesis: the share of papers by sectors other than university is increasing, while university's share is decreasing. The hypothesis is tested for Quebec over the period 1980-1990. It appears that it is true that the share of papers by sectors other than university is increasing. And this is so at a rate greater than that of university's growth. Quebec's university sector has decreased its share of papers over the ten-year period from 89.2% to 85.1%. However, university remains the top sector in terms of papers and remains the main partner of each sector in terms of cosignatures.