IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/infome/v13y2019i4s1751157718305030.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coping with methods for delineating emerging fields: Nanoscience and nanotechnology as a case study

Author

Listed:
  • Muñoz-Écija, Teresa
  • Vargas-Quesada, Benjamín
  • Chinchilla Rodríguez, Zaida

Abstract

Proper field delineation plays an important role in scientometric studies, although it is a tough task. Based on an emerging and interdisciplinary field nanoscience and nanotechnology– this paper highlights the problem of field delineation. First we review the related literature. Then, three different approaches to delineate a field of knowledge were applied at three different levels of aggregation: subject category, publication level, and journal level. Expert opinion interviews served to assess the data, and precision and recall of each approach were calculated for comparison. Our findings confirm that field delineation is a complicated issue at both the quantitative and the qualitative level, even when experts validate results.

Suggested Citation

  • Muñoz-Écija, Teresa & Vargas-Quesada, Benjamín & Chinchilla Rodríguez, Zaida, 2019. "Coping with methods for delineating emerging fields: Nanoscience and nanotechnology as a case study," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:13:y:2019:i:4:s1751157718305030
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2019.100976
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157718305030
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joi.2019.100976?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klavans, Richard & Boyack, Kevin W., 2017. "Research portfolio analysis and topic prominence," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 1158-1174.
    2. Philippe Mongeon & Adèle Paul-Hus, 2016. "The journal coverage of Web of Science and Scopus: a comparative analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(1), pages 213-228, January.
    3. Morteza Maghrebi & Ali Abbasi & Saeid Amiri & Reza Monsefi & Ahad Harati, 2011. "A collective and abridged lexical query for delineation of nanotechnology publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(1), pages 15-25, January.
    4. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck, 2012. "A new methodology for constructing a publication‐level classification system of science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2378-2392, December.
    5. Kevin W. Boyack & Richard Klavans, 2010. "Co‐citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and direct citation: Which citation approach represents the research front most accurately?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(12), pages 2389-2404, December.
    6. Antonio J. Gómez-Núñez & Benjamín Vargas-Quesada & Félix Moya-Anegón & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2011. "Improving SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) subject classification through reference analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(3), pages 741-758, December.
    7. Gómez-Núñez, Antonio J. & Batagelj, Vladimir & Vargas-Quesada, Benjamín & Moya-Anegón, Félix & Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Zaida, 2014. "Optimizing SCImago Journal & Country Rank classification by community detection," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 369-383.
    8. Joachim Schummer, 2004. "Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and patterns of research collaboration in nanoscience and nanotechnology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 59(3), pages 425-465, March.
    9. Can Huang & Ad Notten & Nico Rasters, 2011. "Nanoscience and technology publications and patents: a review of social science studies and search strategies," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 145-172, April.
    10. Michel Zitt, 2015. "Meso-level retrieval: IR-bibliometrics interplay and hybrid citation-words methods in scientific fields delineation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2223-2245, March.
    11. Loet Leydesdorff & Ping Zhou, 2007. "Nanotechnology as a field of science: Its delineation in terms of journals and patents," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 70(3), pages 693-713, March.
    12. Elise Bassecoulard & Alain Lelu & Michel Zitt, 2007. "Mapping nanosciences by citation flows: A preliminary analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 70(3), pages 859-880, March.
    13. Daniele Fanelli & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2013. "Bibliometric Evidence for a Hierarchy of the Sciences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-11, June.
    14. Nees Jan Eck & Ludo Waltman, 2010. "Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 84(2), pages 523-538, August.
    15. Andrews, Donald W K, 1993. "Tests for Parameter Instability and Structural Change with Unknown Change Point," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 821-856, July.
    16. Kevin W. Boyack & Richard Klavans, 2010. "Co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and direct citation: Which citation approach represents the research front most accurately?," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(12), pages 2389-2404, December.
    17. Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan Eck, 2012. "A new methodology for constructing a publication-level classification system of science," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(12), pages 2378-2392, December.
    18. Bruce E. Hansen, 2017. "Regression Kink With an Unknown Threshold," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(2), pages 228-240, April.
    19. Zucker, Lynne G. & Darby, Michael R. & Furner, Jonathan & Liu, Robert C. & Ma, Hongyan, 2007. "Minerva unbound: Knowledge stocks, knowledge flows and new knowledge production," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 850-863, July.
    20. Han Woo Park & Jungwon Yoon & Loet Leydesdorff, 2016. "The normalization of co-authorship networks in the bibliometric evaluation: the government stimulation programs of China and Korea," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1017-1036, November.
    21. Alexander I. Pudovkin & Eugene Garfield, 2002. "Algorithmic procedure for finding semantically related journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 53(13), pages 1113-1119, November.
    22. Shu, Fei & Julien, Charles-Antoine & Zhang, Lin & Qiu, Junping & Zhang, Jing & Larivière, Vincent, 2019. "Comparing journal and paper level classifications of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 202-225.
    23. Mogoutov, Andrei & Kahane, Bernard, 2007. "Data search strategy for science and technology emergence: A scalable and evolutionary query for nanotechnology tracking," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 893-903, July.
    24. Loet Leydesdorff, 2007. "Betweenness centrality as an indicator of the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 58(9), pages 1303-1319, July.
    25. Ying Huang & Jannik Schuehle & Alan L. Porter & Jan Youtie, 2015. "A systematic method to create search strategies for emerging technologies based on the Web of Science: illustrated for ‘Big Data’," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 105(3), pages 2005-2022, December.
    26. Sanjay K. Arora & Alan L. Porter & Jan Youtie & Philip Shapira, 2013. "Capturing new developments in an emerging technology: an updated search strategy for identifying nanotechnology research outputs," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 95(1), pages 351-370, April.
    27. Wolfgang Glänzel & András Schubert, 2003. "A new classification scheme of science fields and subfields designed for scientometric evaluation purposes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 56(3), pages 357-367, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xinyuan Zhang & Qing Xie & Chaemin Song & Min Song, 2022. "Mining the evolutionary process of knowledge through multiple relationships between keywords," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 2023-2053, April.
    2. Na Liu & Philip Shapira & Xiaoxu Yue, 2021. "Tracking developments in artificial intelligence research: constructing and applying a new search strategy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3153-3192, April.
    3. Kang, Inje & Yang, Jiseong & Lee, Wonjae & Seo, Eun-Yeong & Lee, Duk Hee, 2023. "Delineating development trends of nanotechnology in the semiconductor industry: Focusing on the relationship between science and technology by employing structural topic model," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Qi & Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "Large-scale analysis of the accuracy of the journal classification systems of Web of Science and Scopus," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 347-364.
    2. Leydesdorff, Loet & Bornmann, Lutz & Zhou, Ping, 2016. "Construction of a pragmatic base line for journal classifications and maps based on aggregated journal-journal citation relations," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 902-918.
    3. Sjögårde, Peter & Ahlgren, Per, 2018. "Granularity of algorithmically constructed publication-level classifications of research publications: Identification of topics," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 133-152.
    4. Shu, Fei & Julien, Charles-Antoine & Zhang, Lin & Qiu, Junping & Zhang, Jing & Larivière, Vincent, 2019. "Comparing journal and paper level classifications of science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 202-225.
    5. Gómez-Núñez, Antonio J. & Batagelj, Vladimir & Vargas-Quesada, Benjamín & Moya-Anegón, Félix & Chinchilla-Rodríguez, Zaida, 2014. "Optimizing SCImago Journal & Country Rank classification by community detection," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 369-383.
    6. Ugo Moschini & Elena Fenialdi & Cinzia Daraio & Giancarlo Ruocco & Elisa Molinari, 2020. "A comparison of three multidisciplinarity indices based on the diversity of Scopus subject areas of authors’ documents, their bibliography and their citing papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(2), pages 1145-1158, November.
    7. Ignacio Rodríguez-Rodríguez & José-Víctor Rodríguez & Niloofar Shirvanizadeh & Andrés Ortiz & Domingo-Javier Pardo-Quiles, 2021. "Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data and the Internet of Things to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scientometric Review Using Text Mining," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-29, August.
    8. Gabriele Sampagnaro, 2023. "Keyword occurrences and journal specialization," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(10), pages 5629-5645, October.
    9. Urdiales, Cristina & Guzmán, Eduardo, 2024. "An automatic and association-based procedure for hierarchical publication subject categorization," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    10. Fei Shu & Yue Ma & Junping Qiu & Vincent Larivière, 2020. "Classifications of science and their effects on bibliometric evaluations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2727-2744, December.
    11. Ying Huang & Wolfgang Glänzel & Lin Zhang, 2021. "Tracing the development of mapping knowledge domains," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6201-6224, July.
    12. Michel Zitt, 2015. "Meso-level retrieval: IR-bibliometrics interplay and hybrid citation-words methods in scientific fields delineation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2223-2245, March.
    13. Matthias Held & Grit Laudel & Jochen Gläser, 2021. "Challenges to the validity of topic reconstruction," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(5), pages 4511-4536, May.
    14. Yu-Wei Chang, 2019. "Are articles in library and information science (LIS) journals primarily contributed to by LIS authors?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 81-104, October.
    15. Wolfram, Dietmar & Zhao, Yuehua, 2014. "A comparison of journal similarity across six disciplines using citing discipline analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 840-853.
    16. Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge & Rosa Lidia Vega-Almeida & José Luis Jiménez-Andrade & Humberto Carrillo-Calvet, 2022. "Evolutionary stages and multidisciplinary nature of artificial intelligence research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(9), pages 5139-5158, September.
    17. Na Liu & Philip Shapira & Xiaoxu Yue, 2021. "Tracking developments in artificial intelligence research: constructing and applying a new search strategy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 3153-3192, April.
    18. Can Huang & Ad Notten & Nico Rasters, 2011. "Nanoscience and technology publications and patents: a review of social science studies and search strategies," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 145-172, April.
    19. Nees Jan Eck & Ludo Waltman, 2017. "Citation-based clustering of publications using CitNetExplorer and VOSviewer," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(2), pages 1053-1070, May.
    20. Sitaram Devarakonda & Dmitriy Korobskiy & Tandy Warnow & George Chacko, 2020. "Viewing computer science through citation analysis: Salton and Bergmark Redux," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 271-287, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:infome:v:13:y:2019:i:4:s1751157718305030. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.