AI Research in Italy

Our aim was to evaluate the research activity in AI in Italy in the scope of the world landscape. The analysis was performed using the databases Web Of Science (WOS) and Scopus, with data extracted on 24/11/2017.

In order to the evaluate the volume of the scientific output of Italian researchers, we extracted all articles in the Web of Science Category “Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence” from WOS and we grouped them by nation. Italy ranks 10th in the world for number of articles [1]:

In terms of the number of articles per 10.000 inhabitants, Italy ranks 13th [2]:

Italy does better with respect to the number of articles per researcher, ranking 3rd [3]:

We now compute the research output as a function of the national investment in Research and Development: in terms of the number of articles per $100.000 of R&D expenditure Italy ranks 6th [4]:

In order to evaluate the quality of the research output, we extracted from Scopus all the journal articles with the keyword “artificial intelligence”. The average number of citation per article as a function of the publication year for the article with at least one Italian author with respect to all articles is shown in the graph below, that shows how articles by Italian authors get, on average, more citation with respect to the world average, in particular in the last four years [5]:

[1] Query WC=”Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence”  Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, ESCI Timespan=All years

[2] Abitanti da http://www.worldbank.org/, prime 18 nazioni per numero di articoli, Taiwan esclusa per mancanza di dati

[3] Numero di ricercatori da http://www.worldbank.org/, prime 18 nazioni per numero di articoli, Taiwan esclusa per mancanza di dati

[4] PIL mondiale e spesa in R&D in %PIL da http://www.worldbank.org/, prime 18 nazioni per numero di articoli, Taiwan esclusa per mancanza di dati

[5] Query KEY ( artificial AND intelligence ) AND  DOCTYPE ( ar ) per recuperare gli articoli a livello mondiale e KEY ( artificial AND intelligence ) AND AFFILCOUNTRY ( italy ) AND  DOCTYPE ( ar ) per quelli di autori italiani