mathematics

Ronald Rousseau

Ronald Rousseau is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ronald Rousseau rather than just read about it. In short: Ronald Rousseau (born 1949 in Antwerp) is a Belgian mathematician and information scientist. He has obtained an international reputation for his research on indicators and citation analysis in the fields of bibliometrics and scientometrics.

Key takeaways

Ronald Rousseau belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ronald Rousseau to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ronald Rousseau from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ronald Rousseau (born 1949 in Antwerp) is a Belgian mathematician and information scientist. He has obtained an international reputation for his research on indicators and citation analysis in the fields of bibliometrics and scientometrics.

Education and career Ronald Rousseau obtained his doctorate in mathematics at the KU Leuven in 1977 and his doctorate in documentation and library science at the UIA in 1992. He was Professor of Mathematics at the Department of Industrial Science and Technology at the KHBO in Ostend, Belgium. Rousseau has focused his research on the development and use of indicators to measure the quality of research and main trends in science. He is an expert in citation analysis and research evaluation. In 1990 Ronald Rousseau and Leo Egghe wrote the first manual of bibliometrics. Rousseau has published more than 200 scientific articles on various aspects of bibliometrics and scientometrics in, among other journals, Scientometrics, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and the Journal of Informetrics. He is considered to be one of the most productive writers in this discipline. Rousseau, along with Leo Egghe, received the Derek de Solla Price award in 2001. From 2007 till 2015, he was the seventh chairperson of ISSI. In 2015 he became co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Data and Information Science.

Honors and awards For his mathematical work Ronald Rousseau was Laureate of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences and Arts, class Natural Sciences in 1979. Ronald Rousseau received the Derek de Solla Price award together with Leo Egghe in 2001. He is an Honorary professor at the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China (2015). He is an Honorary professor at the Henan Normal University in Xinxiang, China (2001). He is a guest professor at the National Library of Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Scientometrics in Dharwad, India. He is a guest professor at the Library and Information Center, library of the CAS in Chengdu, China. He is a guest professor at Nanjing Agricultural University (NJAU) in Nanjing, China. He is an Honorary Professor of the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. Ronald Rousseau received the 2020 West Lake Friendship Award from Zhejiang Province, China. In 2021, he received the President's International Fellowship Inititative (PIFI) award as Distinguished Scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Publications (selection) Books

Egghe, L., & Rousseau, R. (1990). Introduction to informetrics. Quantitative methods in library, documentation and information science. ISBN 0-444-88493-9. Elsevier, 430 p. Ding, Y., Rousseau, R., & Wolfram, D. (eds.) (2014). Measuring scholarly impact: Methods and practice. ISBN 978-3-319-10377-8. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Rousseau, R., Egghe, L. & Guns, R. (2018). Becoming metric-wise. A bibliometric guide for researchers, ISBN 978-0-08-102474-4. Chandos Publishing: Elsevier Articles

Rousseau, R. (1979). Sitations: An exploratory study. Cybermetrics, 1(1) [The first article showing that Internet inlinks follow a power law] Rousseau, S., & Rousseau, R. (1997). Data envelopment analysis as a tool for constructing scientometric indicators. Scientometrics, 40(1), 45–56. doi:10.1007/BF02459261 Otte, E., & Rousseau, R. (2002). Social network analysis: a powerful strategy, also for the information sciences. Journal of Information Science, 28(6), 441–453. doi:10.1177/016555150202800601 Ahlgren, P., Jarneving, B., & Rousseau, R. (2003). Requirements for a cocitation similarity measure, with special reference to Pearson's correlation coefficient. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(6), 550–560. doi:10.1002/asi.10242 Egghe, L., & Rousseau, R. (2006). An informetric model for the Hirsch-index. Scientometrics, 69(1), 121–129. doi:10.1007/s11192-006-0143-8 Jin, B., Liang, L., Rousseau, R., & Egghe, L. (2007). The R-and AR-indices: Complementing the h-index. Chinese Science Bulletin, 52(6), 855–863. doi:10.1007/s11434-007-0145-9

References

External links Personal webpage of Ronald Rousseau ORCID page of Ronald Rousseau Ronald Rousseau on ResearchGate

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ronald Rousseau

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ronald Rousseau claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ronald Rousseau before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ronald Rousseau ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ronald Rousseau

In research: Ronald Rousseau appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ronald Rousseau in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ronald Rousseau is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1949 births, 21st-century Belgian mathematicians, Bibliometricians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ronald Rousseau outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ronald Rousseau in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ronald Rousseau means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ronald Rousseau out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ronald Rousseau in simple terms?

Why does Ronald Rousseau matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ronald Rousseau?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ronald Rousseau.