Capturing new developments in an emerging technology: an updated search strategy for identifying nanotechnology research outputs

Sanjay K. Arora, Alan L. Porter, Jan Youtie and Philip Shapira
Additional contact information
Sanjay K. Arora: Georgia Institute of Technology
Alan L. Porter: Georgia Institute of Technology

Scientometrics, 2013, vol. 95, issue 1, No 24, 370 pages

Abstract: Abstract Bibliometric analysis of publication metadata is an important tool for investigating emerging fields of technology. However, the application of field definitions to define an emerging technology is complicated by ongoing and at times rapid change in the underlying technology itself. There is limited prior work on adapting the bibliometric definitions of emerging technologies as these technologies change over time. The paper addresses this gap. We draw on the example of the modular keyword nanotechnology search strategy developed at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006. This search approach has seen extensive use in analyzing emerging trends in nanotechnology research and innovation. Yet with the growth of the nanotechnology field, novel materials, particles, technologies, and tools have appeared. We report on the process and results of reviewing and updating this nanotechnology search strategy. By employing structured text-mining software to profile keyword terms, and by soliciting input from domain experts, we identify new nanotechnology-related keywords. We retroactively apply the revised evolutionary lexical query to 20 years of publication data and analyze the results. Our findings indicate that the updated search approach offers an incremental improvement over the original strategy in terms of recall and precision. Additionally, the updated strategy reveals the importance for nanotechnology of several emerging cited-subject categories, particularly in the biomedical sciences, suggesting a further extension of the nanotechnology knowledge domain. The implications of the work for applying bibliometric definitions to emerging technologies are discussed.

Keywords: Nanotechnology; Bibliometrics; Publications; Search strategy; Cited subject categories; 91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C89 O30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-012-0903-6 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:95:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-012-0903-6

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-012-0903-6

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 ().