2007 February • JOM 75 Overview Global Perspectives The European Research Area has been established to coordinate national research policies and to encourage shared objectives, expertise, and resources throughout the European Union. To accomplish these goals, the European Research Area first needs knowledge of existing resources, fields of excellence, and potential for improve- ments as well as an idea of the direction of future research. This article describes the SMART project, established by the European Commission to identify important research topics for the future in the field of materials technology and to map materials research regions of excellence. INTRODUCTION In March of 2000 the European Coun- cil began the process to create the Euro- pean Research Area, thereby laying the foundation for a common science and technology policy across the European Union. The European Research Area is an effort to coordinate national research policies in the direction of shared objec- tives, expertise, and resources. To accomplish these goals, the European Research Area needs knowledge of existing resources, fields of excellence, and potential for improvements as well as an idea of the direction of future research. To identify important research topics for the future in the field of materials technology and to map materials research regions of excellence, the European Commission established the SMART project. Therefore, SMART is an impor- tant step toward establishing the Euro- pean Research Area. The SMART activities are complemented by European Technology Platforms, which are indus- trial-research-driven consortia defining future research needs. Materials Research in Europe: Mapping Excellence and Looking Ahead Gerd Schumacher, Dirk Tunger, Alan Smith, Stuart Preston, and Brian Knott The SMART project, coordinated by Project Management Juelich, started in April 2005. SMART does not just focus on smart materials as one might expect, but is so named because of its unusual twofold approach of combining foresight and forecast work, enabling complex analysis with limited resources. As a consequence of the high profile of recent foresight studies for improving human life, increasing safety and secu- rity, and solving energy shortages, these topic areas are seen as most important for European society in the future. To BIBLIOMETRIC INDICATORS IN A MATERIALS SCIENCE PROJECT Bibliometrics describes the application of statistical methods for the investigation of science communication. An example is the creation of timelines and hot-spot areas for different topics. Bibliometric analyses focus more on statistics than on real content. These analyses are generated from literature databases that do not just comprise bibliographic data but also information on the citation and response of articles. The Science Citation Index from Thomson Scientific has proven its worth for the natural sciences. It supplies good coverage, high precision, and rapid provision of data. What Can Be Investigated Bibliometrics can be used to investigate the development trend toward research-relevant topics in science, such as which materials will become more significant in the future (Figure A). It proves answers to questions on the publication activity of working groups, such as who are the leading scientists in a field or which groups display outstanding activity in an international comparison? With the aid of bibliometrics, research rankings can be compiled on this basis representing the starting point for further studies. Normalization by gross domestic product per capita is also possible using bibliometrics (Figure B). Because not every country has the same basis for science, normalization allows the creation of a ranking with the same basis for all countries with a basic activity in a field. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Percentage of the Topics in Each Year 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Nano Bio Macroscale Smart Modeling Figure A. A timeline of all SMART topics; displayed is the percentage of each topic on the total publication output of the five SMART Topics in each year