Delineating complex scientific fields by an hybrid lexical-citation method: An application to nanosciences

Zitt, Michel; Bassecoulard, Elise

doi:10.1016/j.ipm.2006.03.016

Cited by 117 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…This is different from the analysis of the scientometric literature presented in Subsection 3.2, where for instance the clustering functionality of CitNetExplorer plays an important role. The idea of first searching for publications and then expanding the search results based on citation relations has been employed in earlier studies, some of them with an information retrieval focus (e.g., Cawkell, 1974;Larsen, 2002) and others with a scientometric focus (e.g., Zitt & Bassecoulard, 2006). Using CitNetExplorer, identifying publications in this way can be done without much effort.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

CitNetExplorer: A new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks

Eck¹,

Waltman²

2014

Journal of Informetrics

524

303

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We present CitNetExplorer, a new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks of scientific publications. CitNetExplorer can for instance be used to study the development of a research field, to delineate the literature on a research topic, and to support literature reviewing. We first introduce the main concepts that need to be understood when working with CitNetExplorer. We then demonstrate CitNetExplorer by using the tool to analyze the scientometric literature and the literature on community detection in networks. Finally, we discuss some technical details on the construction, visualization, and analysis of citation networks in CitNetExplorer.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

CitNetExplorer: A new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks

Eck¹,

Waltman²

2014

Journal of Informetrics

524

303

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Research topics often overlap and the vocabulary they use is in flux. Recently developed methods for retrieval rely on combining lexical search and clustering citation methods (Zitt and Bassecoulard, 2006), yet these approaches would be time-consuming for the analyst. We therefore deemed more suitable to use keyword-based searches given the parsimony and timeliness of the approach.…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientometric Mapping as a Strategic Intelligence Tool for the Governance of Emerging Technologies.

et al. 2014

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How can scientometric mapping function as a tool of 'strategic intelligence' to aid the governance of emerging technologies? The present paper aims to address this question by focusing on a set of recently developed scientometric techniques, namely overlay mapping. We examine the potential these techniques have to inform, in a timely manner, analysts and decision-makers about relevant dynamics of technical emergence. We investigate the capability of overlay mapping in generating informed perspectives about emergence across three spaces: geographical, social, and cognitive. Our analysis relies on three empirical studies of emerging technologies in the biomedical domain: RNA interference (RNAi), Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) testing technologies for cervical cancer, and Thiopurine Methyltransferase (TPMT) genetic testing. The case-studies are analysed and mapped longitudinally by using publication and patent data. Results show the variety of 'intelligence' inputs overlay mapping can produce for the governance of emerging technologies. Overlay mapping also confers to the investigation of emergence flexibility and granularity in terms of adaptability to different sources of data and selection of the levels of the analysis, respectively. These features make possible the integration and comparison of results from different contexts and cases, thus providing possibilities for a potentially more 'distributed' strategic intelligence. The generated perspectives allow triangulation of findings, which is important given the complexity featuring in technical emergence and the limitations associated with the use of single scientometric approaches.

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“…Sophisticated hybrid approaches have been developed to delineate and monitor such fields. They start from a high precision and low recall seed of publications generated by a lexical query, and extend this seed either through citation coupling (Laurens et al, 2010;Zitt & Bassecoulard, 2006) or keyword-based retrieval (Mogoutov & Kahane, 2007). The quality of the field delineation is further affected by the coverage of databases available to the analyst, the extent of access to those databases, and the quality and granularity of the data.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because of economic restrictions in access to the complete WoS, we could not use the hybrid approach developed by Zitt and Bassecoulard (2006) that requires access to the "cited by" links from a cited publication to the citing publication, a restriction pointed out by Huang et al (2011) and Mogoutov and Kahane (2007). Instead we start from a lexical query and then use heuristic network analytic methods to improve recall and precision.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, the decision whether to exclude certain terms in the lexical query to increase precision is ambiguous. However, in contrast to approaches to field delineation that require the ad-hoc setting of numerical cut-off parameters (e.g., Zitt & Bassecoulard, 2006), the decision is supported by the ability to trace back and link the antagonism between topic areas in a data set to those topic areas' topical focus and hence to terms included in the lexical query. Hence, the field delineation is guided by the social topology of the field that emerges from researchers' choices to cross field boundaries with their research and publication activities.…”

Section: Challenges Of Field Delineationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The extraction of community structures from publication networks to support ethnographic observations of field differences in scientific communication

Velden

Lagoze

2013

J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec

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The scientific community of researchers in a research specialty is an important unit of analysis for understanding the field-specific shaping of scientific communication practices. These scientific communities are, however, a challenging unit of analysis to capture and compare because they overlap, have fuzzy boundaries, and evolve over time. We describe a network analytic approach that reveals the complexities of these communities through the examination of their publication networks in combination with insights from ethnographic field studies. We suggest that the structures revealed indicate overlapping subcommunities within a research specialty, and we provide evidence that they differ in disciplinary orientation and research practices. By mapping the community structures of scientific fields we increase confidence about the domain of validity of ethnographic observations as well as of collaborative patterns extracted from publication networks thereby enabling the systematic study of field differences. The network analytic methods presented include methods to optimize the delineation of a bibliographic data set to adequately represent a research specialty and methods to extract community structures from this data. We demonstrate the application of these methods in a case study of two research specialties in the physical and chemical sciences.

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Delineating complex scientific fields by an hybrid lexical-citation method: An application to nanosciences

Cited by 117 publications

References 32 publications

CitNetExplorer: A new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks

CitNetExplorer: A new software tool for analyzing and visualizing citation networks

Scientometric Mapping as a Strategic Intelligence Tool for the Governance of Emerging Technologies.

The extraction of community structures from publication networks to support ethnographic observations of field differences in scientific communication

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