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Intellectual structure of stem cell research: a comprehensive author co-citation analysis of a highly collaborative and multidisciplinary field

Author

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  • Dangzhi Zhao

    (University of Alberta)

  • Andreas Strotmann

    (University of Alberta)

Abstract

This study is an attempt to approach the intellectual structure of the stem cell research field 2004–2009 through a comprehensive author co-citation analysis (ACA), and to contribute to a better understanding of a field that has been brought to the forefront of research, therapy and political and public debates, which, hopefully, will in turn better inform research and policy. Based on a nearly complete and clean dataset of stem cell literature compiled from PubMed and Scopus, and using automatic author disambiguation to further improve results, we perform an exclusive all-author ACA of the 200 top-ranked researchers of the field by fractional citation count. We find that, despite the theoretically highly interdisciplinary nature of the field, stem cell research has been dominated by a few central medical research areas—cancer and regenerative medicine of the brain, the blood, the skin, and the heart—and a core of cell biologists trying to understand the nature and the molecular biology of stem cells along with biotechnology researchers investigating the practical identification, isolation, creation, and culturing of stem cells. It is also remarkably self-contained, drawing only on a few related areas of cell biology. This study also serves as a baseline against which the effectiveness of a range of author-based bibliometric methods and indicators can be tested, especially when based on less comprehensive datasets using less optimal analysis methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2011. "Intellectual structure of stem cell research: a comprehensive author co-citation analysis of a highly collaborative and multidisciplinary field," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 115-131, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:87:y:2011:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-010-0317-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-010-0317-2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Per Ahlgren & Bo Jarneving & Ronald Rousseau, 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, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 54(6), pages 550-560, April.
    2. Zhao, Dangzhi & Strotmann, Andreas, 2008. "Comparing all-author and first-author co-citation analyses of information science," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 229-239.
    3. Blaise Cronin, 2001. "Hyperauthorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(7), pages 558-569.
    4. Strotmann, Andreas & Zhao, Dangzhi, 2010. "Combining commercial citation indexes and open-access bibliographic databases to delimit highly interdisciplinary research fields for citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 194-200.
    5. G. Van Hooydonk, 1997. "Fractional counting of multiauthored publications: Consequences for the impact of authors," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 48(10), pages 944-945, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. García-Lillo, Francisco & Seva-Larrosa, Pedro & Sánchez-García, Eduardo, 2023. "What is going on in entrepreneurship research? A bibliometric and SNA analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    2. Xuezhao Wang & Yajuan Zhao & Rui Liu & Jing Zhang, 2013. "Knowledge-transfer analysis based on co-citation clustering," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 97(3), pages 859-869, December.
    3. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Deep and narrow impact: introducing location filtered citation counting," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 503-517, January.
    4. Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann, 2020. "Telescopic and panoramic views of library and information science research 2011–2018: a comparison of four weighting schemes for author co-citation analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(1), pages 255-270, July.
    5. Liang-Chu Chen & Yen-Hsuan Lien, 2011. "Using author co-citation analysis to examine the intellectual structure of e-learning: A MIS perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 89(3), pages 867-886, December.
    6. Raymundo das Neves Machado & Benjamín Vargas-Quesada & Jacqueline Leta, 2016. "Intellectual structure in stem cell research: exploring Brazilian scientific articles from 2001 to 2010," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 106(2), pages 525-537, February.

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