Scenario-driven forecasting: modeling peaks and paths. Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium.

The recent 'outburst' of COVID-19 spurred efforts to model and forecast its diffusion patterns, either in terms of infections, people in need of medical assistance (ICU occupation) or casualties. Forecasting patterns and their implied end states remains cumbersome when few (stochastic) data points are available during the early stage of diffusion processes. Extrapolations based on compounded growth rates do not account for inflection points nor end-states. In order to remedy this situation, we advance a set of heuristics which combine forecasting and scenario thinking. Inspired by scenario thinking we allow for a broad range of end states (and their implied growth dynamics, parameters) which are consecutively being assessed in terms of how well they coincide with actual observations. When applying this approach to the diffusion of COVID-19, it becomes clear that combining potential end states with unfolding trajectories provides a better-informed decision space as short term predictions are accurate, while a portfolio of different end states informs the long view. The creation of such a decision space requires temporal distance. Only to the extent that one refrains from incorporating more recent data, more plausible end states become visible. Such dynamic approach also allows one to assess the potential effects of mitigating measures. As such, our contribution implies a plea for dynamically blending forecasting algorithms and scenario-oriented thinking, rather than conceiving them as substitutes or complements.

A new generation of relational charts for comparative assessment of citation impact.

A common problem in comparative bibliometric studies at the meso and micro level is the differentiation and specialization of research profiles of the objects of analysis at lower levels of aggregation. In this study, institutional profile clusters are used to examine which level of the hierarchical subject classification should preferably be used to build subject-normalized citation indicators. It is shown that a set of properly normalized indicators can serve as a basis of comparative assessment within and even among different clusters, provided that their profiles still overlap and such comparison is thus meaningful. Using the example of 24 European universities, a new version of relational charts is presented for the comparative assessment of citation impact.