The Pyrenees : a spatially rooted analysis of

scientific researches performed

on the French Pyrenees

Marion MAISONOBE (marion.maisonobe@univ-tlse2.fr),

Anne-Claire JOLIVET, Laurent JEGOU, Muriel LEFEBVRE

Scientific Toulouse and the world

• Multiple qualities over time:

« Knowledge city »

« European capital of aeronautics and space »

« Capital of the Pyrénées »

• How these « myths » are elaborated ?

What kind of researches and networks of actors are involved ?

Research program: PASTEL

• PASTEL « Patrimoine Scientifique Toulousain et Environnement Local »:

« Scientific heritage and local environment »

▫ September 2015 to August 2018

▫ 20 researchers involved

• A joint research project: From the 1880s, Pyrenees studies have

experienced a heritage process.

▫ 7 selected disciplines: archaeology, ethnology, astronomy, geography, law,

fluid mechanics, botany

▫ Analysis: a place, a figure, an object or a collection

Areas of research

• Analysis a heritage fact/object by discipline

• Media dimension of the academic life: Press, TV and Radio (the process of creating a collective memory through the media)

• Prosopography database of the involved actors

• Bibliometric approach on « the Pyrénées »

A bibliometric approach

• To quantify the actual quantity of scientific work

presently conducted about the French Pyrenees by

scientists localized in Toulouse and elsewhere

• Source: the Web of Science (1999-2012)

Global scale but geographical and disciplinary biases

• Using the spatial scientometrics method developed

to process bibliometric data at the city level (Eckert,

Baron, Jégou, 2013; Grossetti et al., 2014)

Where are the Pyreneean researches

coming from?

• Hypothesis : Researches on the French Pyrenees

are mainly conducted by scientists located in

Toulouse

• To support this hypothesis :

- A pyreneist trend in Toulouse from the 50s

- Case studies performed in the frame of the PASTEL

Research Project

The corpus delineation

How to define a scientific publication dealing with the

« French Pyrenees » ?

• 1st. It uses the keyword « French Pyrenees »

• 2nd. It uses the name of one of the 6 French

departments covering the mountain range

• 3rd. It uses the name of one of the landmarks (city,

valley, river, mount…) of the French versant of the

mountain range

Pitfalls

• 1st. The rubric « KEYWORD PLUS » recently

added by Thomson Reuters can be useful but it is

also misleading

• 2nd. Some parts of the departments are outside the

mountain range ( « Zone Montagne » following the

DATAR definition)

• 3rd. It is difficult to compile an exhaustive list of all

the geographical names which could be of scientific

interest in the mountain area

The corpus characteristics

• 1019 publications

• 926 publications geo-localized

• 512 unique localities grouped into 376 urban areas

• We can distinguish between:

- Monographies or multisites studies (comparative studies)

- Demographic or epidemiological studies (areal studies)

- Studies taking the whole mountain chain as an object

Urban Area Number of publications (1999-2012)

Toulouse 142

Paris 115

Montpellier 42

Barcelone 33

Bordeaux 30

Pau 25

Nancy 17

Marseille-Aix 16

Font-Romeu 14

Perpignan 13

Nice 11

Birmingham 11

Tautavel 10

Boston 10

London 10

Rennes 9

Saragossa 9

Grenoble 9

Strasbourg 9

Madrid 8

*WoS (all type of publications), Whole Normalized Counting

Production map

Production map

Disciplines Number of publications

(1999-2012)

Science of the universe (Geology & Astronomy) 493

Arts and humanities 188

Applied biology 140

Medical research 70

Engineering sciences 38

Basic biology 30

Social sciences 26

Chimical research 19

Physics 15

Total 1019

Conclusion

• The « Spatial Turn » in Science Studies (Following the

study of Powell Richard C. about the High Arctics)

• Perspectives:

- Broaden the corpus

- Analyze the collaboration network

- Localize the sites of studies and map them

« Zone Massif » (DATAR)

Source: SIG Pyrénées