Smart city research 1990–2016

Peter Ingwersen () and Antonio Eleazar Serrano-López
Additional contact information
Peter Ingwersen: Aalborg University
Antonio Eleazar Serrano-López: Carlos III University Madrid

Scientometrics, 2018, vol. 117, issue 2, No 24, 1205-1236

Abstract: Abstract This scientometric analysis of the area of ‘smart city(ies)’ research covers 1990–2016, divided into three nine year periods: 1990–1998; 1999–2007; and 2008–2016. The methodology is partly based on the ‘issue management’ approach by Lancaster and Lee (J Assoc Inf Sci Technol 36(6):389–397, 1985) partly on common publication and citation analysis of the set of source documents (n = 4725), the set of their references (n = 27,099) and the set of publications (n = 7863) citing the source documents. Median age analyses are included for the sets of references and citations to the source documents. DIVA-like diagrams (Database Information Visualization and Analysis system) are used to demonstrate the distribution of source documents over document types, time and volume of citations obtained. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is applied to topic modeling of the top-100 central WoS Categories of ‘smart city(ies)’ research and to the set of references. Findings show that the first mention of the concept ‘smart city(ies)’ in publication titles takes place in 1999. The research area demonstrates a strong multidisciplinary nature and an exponential growth of research publications (in WoS) 2008–2016 dominated by China, Italy, USA, Spain and England. The same five countries are also among the most citing and cited countries. Aside from a constantly strong ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and Electrical/Electronic Engineering presence ‘sustainability’ elements (Energy, Transport, Environment) are also vital, in particular during the first and third analysis period. The references from the source documents have more distinct topical clusters than the source documents. Artificial Intelligence (AI) appears as a novel field among the source documents 2008–2016, but disappears from the top-25 list in the citing documents. Instead Economics, Water Resources and Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences move into the list. Proceedings papers, as in many other engineering and technology based research fields, are the dominant document type (70%) but have small citation impact (0.6 c/p), thus decreasing the overall impact of the area to 3.6 c/p. Journal articles are the most cited type with 76% of all citations received (impact 2008–2016: 7.5 c/p). Most citations to journal articles derive from journal articles themselves (76%).

Keywords: Smart city research; Publication and citation analysis; Median age of references; Median age of citations; Topic modeling; Social network analysis; Clustering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-018-2901-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:117:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-018-2901-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-018-2901-9

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().