A bibliometric-based technique to identify emerging photovoltaic technologies in a comparative assessment with expert review

Alberto Moro, Elisa Boelman, Geraldine Joanny and Juan Lopez Garcia

Renewable Energy, 2018, vol. 123, issue C, 407-416

Abstract: This paper compares the results of technology mapping from bibliometric analysis and results from expert review to identify emerging solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The bibliometric analysis is based on “Tools for Innovation Monitoring” (TIM), a new software code developed by the Joint Research Centre. With this text-mining software a set of relevant keywords is extracted through frequency analysis from a corpus of pertinent scientific publications. Keywords obtained by quantitative analysis by TIM are tested against results from qualitative cognitive analysis by an international panel of PV technology experts by means of a set of proposed indicators. The technologies identified by the PV experts are well represented amongst the most frequently occurring (highest ranked) keywords retrieved by TIM. The more salient keywords tend to correspond to the relatively more established technologies such as dye sensitised solar cells, organic PV and more recently-developed technologies such as perovskites. These high rated/developed keywords/technologies can be relatively straightforwardly detected through bibliometric analysis. Contrary to that, keywords designating the most emerging technologies like ferroelectric PV, hot carriers and multiple exciton generation solar cells tend to occur much less frequently and therefore provide weaker signals. These weak signals can be important in foresight.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Technology mining; Emerging technologies; Photovoltaics; Horizon scanning; Policy support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:123:y:2018:i:c:p:407-416

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2018.02.016

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