Citation analysis and mapping of nanoscience and nanotechnology: identifying the scope and interdisciplinarity of research

Diversification and fragmentation of scientific exploration brings an increasing need for integration, for example through interdisciplinary research. The field of nanoscience and nanotechnology appears to exhibit strong interdisciplinary characteristics. Our objective was to explore the structure of the field and ascertain how different research areas within this field reflect interdisciplinarity through citation patterns. The complex relations between the citing and cited articles were examined through schematic visualization. Examination of WOS categories assigned to journals shows the scatter of nano studies across a wide range of research topics. We identified four distinctive groups of categories each showing some detectable shared characteristics. Three alternative measures of similarity were employed to delineate these groups. These distinct groups enabled us to assess interdisciplinarity within the groups and relationships between the groups. Some measurable levels of interdi...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: SCIENTOMETRICS
• Authors: Karmen Stopar, Damjana Drobne, Klemen Eler, Tomaz Bartol
• Keywords: SCIENTOMETRICS 2016