Talk given at the 3rd European Conference of Geography of Innovation (GEOINNOV 2016) in Toulouse

1. 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

2. 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 ?

3. 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

4. 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 »

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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

8. Pitfalls
• 1st.The rubric « KEYWORD PLUS » recently
added byThomson 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Production map

12. Production map

13. 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

14. 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

15. « Zone Massif » (DATAR)
Source: SIG Pyrénées