Article’s scientific prestige: Measuring the impact of individual articles in the web of science
(2023)
We performed a citation analysis on the Web of Science publications consisting of more than 63 million articles and 1.45 billion citations on 254 subjects from 1981 to 2020. We proposed the Article’s Scientific Prestige (ASP) metric and compared this metric to number of citations (#Cit) and journal grade in measuring the scientific impact of individual articles in the large-scale hierarchical and multi-disciplined citation network. In contrast to #Cit, ASP, that is computed based on the eigenvector centrality, considers both direct and indirect citations, and provides steady-state evaluation cross different disciplines. We found that ASP and #Cit are not aligned for most articles, with a growing mismatch amongst the less cited articles. While both metrics are reliable for evaluating the prestige of articles such as Nobel Prize winning articles, ASP tends to provide more persuasive rankings than #Cit when the articles are not highly cited. The journal grade, that is eventually determined by a few highly cited articles, is unable to properly reflect the scientific impact of individual articles. The number of references and coauthors are less relevant to scientific impact, but subjects do make a difference.
Article's Scientific Prestige: Measuring the Impact of Individual Articles in the Web of Science
(2022)
We performed a citation analysis on the Web of Science publications consisting of more than 63 million articles and 1.45 billion citations on 254 subjects from 1981 to 2020. We proposed the Article’s Scientific Prestige (ASP) metric and compared this metric to number of citations (#Cit) and journal grade in measuring the scientific impact of individual articles in the large-scale
hierarchical and multi-disciplined citation network. In contrast to #Cit, ASP, that is computed based on the eigenvector centrality, considers both direct and indirect citations, and provides
steady-state evaluation cross different disciplines. We found that ASP and #Cit are not aligned for most articles, with a growing mismatch amongst the less cited articles. While both metrics are reliable for evaluating the prestige of articles such as Nobel Prize winning articles, ASP tends to provide more persuasive rankings than #Cit when the articles are not highly cited. The journal grade, that is eventually determined by a few highly cited articles, is unable to properly
reflect the scientific impact of individual articles. The number of references and coauthors are
less relevant to scientific impact, but subjects do make a difference.
Through recent progress in hardware development, quantum computers have advanced to the point where benchmarking of (heuristic) quantum algorithms at scale is within reach. Particularly in combinatorial optimization -- where most algorithms are heuristics -- it is key to empirically analyze their performance on hardware and track progress towards quantum advantage. To this extent, we present ten optimization problem classes that are difficult for existing classical algorithms and can (mostly) be linked to practically-relevant applications, with the goal to enable systematic, fair, and comparable benchmarks for quantum optimization methods. Further, we introduce the Quantum Optimization Benchmark Library (QOBLIB) where the problem instances and solution track records can be found. The individual properties of the problem classes vary in terms of objective and variable type, coefficient ranges, and density. Crucially, they all become challenging for established classical methods already at system sizes ranging from less than 100 to, at most, an order of 100,000 decision variables, allowing to approach them with today's quantum computers. We reference the results from state-of-the-art solvers for instances from all problem classes and demonstrate exemplary baseline results obtained with quantum solvers for selected problems. The baseline results illustrate a standardized form to present benchmarking solutions, which has been designed to ensure comparability of the used methods, reproducibility of the respective results, and trackability of algorithmic and hardware improvements over time. We encourage the optimization community to explore the performance of available classical or quantum algorithms and hardware platforms with the benchmarking problem instances presented in this work toward demonstrating quantum advantage in optimization.
Amidst the unprecedented expansion of scientific and technological knowledge over the past century, concerns persist regarding a slowdown in innovation. To address this, we introduce the AIMS framework, which categorizes patents into four types—Aurora, Invisible, Mirage, and Success—based on their respective inherent scientific values and market-recognized economic values. Utilizing USPTO patent and citation data from 1976 to 2022, our analysis reveals an increasing volume of patent issuances but a concerning dilution in scientific quality starting in the 2000s. This trend is primarily attributed to the rise of low scientific value patents—categorized as Mirage and Invisible—and a modest decline in high-impact scientific patents—categorized as Success and Aurora. Meanwhile, the economic value of patents has risen, especially noted with the growth in Mirage patents since the 2010s, indicating a shift towards strategies that prioritize market-driven patenting. This study highlights the evolving nature of patents from mere indicators of scientific innovation to strategic tools for market dominance, providing an alternative understanding of patent value and its implications for firms’ strategic decisions over patent issuance across different sectors.
Quantum computing is poised to transform the financial industry, yet its advantages over traditional methods have not been evidenced. As this technology rapidly evolves, benchmarking is essential to fairly evaluate and compare different computational strategies. This study presents a challenging yet solvable problem of large-scale dynamic portfolio optimization under realistic market conditions with frictions. We frame this issue as a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem, compatible with digital computing and ready for quantum computing, to establish a reliable benchmark. By applying the latest solvers to real data, we release benchmarks that help verify true advancements in dynamic trading strategies, either quantum or digital computing, ensuring that reported improvements in portfolio optimization are based on robust, transparent, and comparable metrics.
Modeling Functional Time Series and Mixed-Type Predictors With Partially Functional Autoregressions
(2022)
About 23% of the German energy demand is supplied by natural gas. Additionally, for about the same amount Germany serves as a transit country. Thereby, the German network represents a central hub in the European natural gas transport network. The transport infrastructure is operated by transmissions system operators (TSOs). The number one priority of the TSOs is to ensure the security of supply. However, the TSOs have only very limited knowledge about the intentions and planned actions of the shippers (traders). Open Grid Europe (OGE), one of Germany’s largest TSO, operates a high-pressure transport network of about 12,000 km length. With the introduction of peak-load gas power stations, it is of great importance to predict in- and out-flow of the network to ensure the necessary flexibility and security of supply for the German Energy Transition (“Energiewende”). In this paper, we introduce a novel hybrid forecast method applied to gas flows at the boundary nodes of a transport network. This method employs an optimized feature selection and minimization. We use a combination of a FAR, LSTM and mathematical programming to achieve robust high-quality forecasts on real-world data for different types of network nodes.
We propose a partially functional autoregressive model with exogenous variables
(pFAR) to describe the dynamic evolution of the serially correlated functional data.
It provides a united framework to model both the temporal dependence on multiple lagged functional covariates and the causal relation with ultrahigh-dimensional exogenous scalar covariates. Estimation is conducted under a two-layer sparsity assumption, where only a few groups and elements are supposed to be active, yet without knowing their number and location in advance. We establish asymptotic properties of the estimator and investigate its unite sample performance along with simulation studies. We demonstrate the application of pFAR with the high-resolution natural gas flows in Germany, where the pFAR model provides insightful interpretation as well as good out-of-sample forecast accuracy.
About 20% of the German energy demand is supplied by natural gas. Ad-
ditionally, for about twice the amount Germany serves as a transit country. Thereby, the German network represents a central hub in the European natural gas transport network. The transport infrastructure is operated by so-called transmissions system operators or TSOs. The number one priority of the TSOs is to ensure security of supply. However, the TSOs have no knowledge of the intentions and planned actions of the shippers (traders).
Open Grid Europe (OGE), one of Germany’s largest TSO, operates a high-
pressure transport network of about 12.000 km length. Since flexibility and security of supply is of utmost importance to the German Energy Transition (“Energiewende”) especially with the introduction of peak-load gas power stations, being able to predict in- and out-flow of the network is of great importance.
In this paper we introduce a new hybrid forecast method applied to gas
flows at the boundary nodes of a transport network. The new method employs optimized feature minimization and selection. We use a combination of an FAR, LSTM DNN and mathematical programming to achieve robust high quality forecasts on real world data for different types of network nodes.
Keywords: Gas Forecast, Time series, Hybrid Method, FAR, LSTM, Mathematical Optimisation
Forecasting natural gas demand and supply is essential for an efficient operation of the German gas distribution system and a basis for the operational decisions of the transmission system operators. The German gas market is moving towards more short-term planning, in particular, day-ahead contracts. This increases the difficulty that the operators in the dispatching centre are facing, as well as the necessity of accurate forecasts. This paper presents a novel predictive model that provides day-ahead forecasts of the high resolution gas flow by developing a Functional AutoRegressive model with eXogenous variables (FARX). The predictive model allows the dynamic patterns of hourly gas flows to be described in a wide range of historical profiles, while also taking the relevant determinants data into account. By taking into account a richer set of information, FARX provides stronger performance in real data analysis, with both accuracy and high computational efficiency. Compared to several alternative models in out-of-sample forecasts, the proposed model can improve forecast accuracy by at least 12% and up to 5-fold for one node, 3% to 2-fold and 2-fold to 4-fold for the other two nodes. The results show that lagged 1-day gas flow and nominations are important predictors, and with their presence in the forecast model, temperature becomes insignificant for short-term predictions.