The past, present, and future of chemometrics worldwide: some etymological, linguistic, and bibliometric investigations

Abstract

Internet surfing for the word chemometrics in national languages and, in the Science Citation Index (SCI), searching for articles containing chemometr à were performed. The bibliometric, webometric, and country development descriptors from literature were then treated by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA). In total, 82 written and 127 pronunciation forms of chemometrics were found in 48 languages worldwide. The forms ending in '-y' (chemometry) and '-ics' (chemometrics) can be grouped into at least three groups (I, J, K). Scientific collaboration, country development, geography, history, and language were shown to be important determinants in creation of form(s) of chemometrics in a particular country or language. PCA and HCA show that tradition in chemometrics, level of country development, and its scientific production are important for the existence of chemometric societies and laboratories worldwide. Today, the world tends toward becoming more homogeneous with respect to chemometric activity, and will reach a corresponding normal distribution in about 70 years from now.

Multivariate concentration determination using principal component regression with residual analysis

“…Svante Wold first coined the term “kemometri” (“chemometrics” in English) in 1972 by combining the words kemo for chemistry and metri for measure [1]. Presently, the journal Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems defines chemometrics as: “the chemical discipline that uses mathematical and statistical methods to design or select optimal procedures and experiments, and to provide maximum chemical information by analyzing chemical data” [2].…”

Independent components in spectroscopic analysis of complex mixtures

“…In parallel, a representative arsenal of more than 20 alternative and competing methods for mixture analysis has been developed over past 30 years in chemometrics (see the reviews, e.g., in [1,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]). These methods are focused to seek a solution to the "black mixture" problem by resorting to an abstract mixture model as superposition of unknown components with no assumptions about their molecular structure or type of spectra.…”

The chemometrics revolution re‐examined

“…Kiralj and Ferreira report a mathematical study of the linguistic differences in the term "chemom*" and show that there are strong regional differences in what the field is called and in how the name is pronounced. 16 Those regional differences extend beyond mere pronunciation of the name. One is in the regionalization of the chemometrics society itself.…”

“…As others have noted, a similar trend seems to be present in the Nordic countries and in Benelux, although growth in chemometrics has occurred elsewhere, notably in Spain and the Middle East. 16 …”