A Bibliometric Approach towards Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology

DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology , Vol. 24, No.1, January 2004, pp. 3-8 © 2004, DESIDOC A Bibliometric Approach towards Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology B M Gupta & Sujit Bhattacharya Abstract This paper attempts to highlight the role of bibliometrics in studying the dynamics of science and technology. Tools and techniques available in bibliometrics to address and understand the complexities of scientific fields are explored. The paper concludes that for wider acceptance among academicians and policy makers, bibliometric approach should ingrain itself within sociology and philosophy of science in studying the different facets of science and technology. 1. BACKGROUND Science and technology studies are in a state of continuous flux. Research areas/sectors once strategic become stagnant or obsolete, while new and promising fields appear. In these new fields, research communities develop, new journals are created to address research problems, new areas compete with established fields for funding support, and other related developments occur. Policy makers and academicians are often confronted with these ever increasing and changing demands of science and technology. Studying the dynamics of science and technology is thus important as it provides the necessary clues to understand how the fields are changing and the inception and subsequent growth of new fields. Well-constructed studies can provide the necessary clarity to academicians and policy makers to get a more informed judgment of a research field. This helps in decision-making or in proper formulation of research themes and programmes. There has been a long tradition of studying scientific disciplines in philosophy of science based on discourses and debates (see for instance Popper 1; Lakatos 2 ; Toulmin3; and 4 Hesse ). Emergence of a discipline, origins of DESIDOC Bulletin of Inf Technol, 2004, 24(1) problems therein, and how problems are solved have been some of the major issues investigated by scholars in philosophy of science. Research in sociology of science, by embedding a particular social structure in context, focused on growth of disciplines (e.g. 5 6 Mullins ) scientific controversies (e.g. Collins 7 and Mackenzie ); work in scientific laboratories (e.g. Latour and Woolgar 8). Historians of science (e.g. Kuhn 9; Shapin10; 11 and Thackray ) have tried to understand the changes in a field by analyzing the developments over long time-periods. Writers on science policy and political dimensions of 12 science (Weingart and members of the Starnberg School; Rip13; Bohme, Van Den Daele, Hohlfeld, Krohn and Schafer 14) have used these debates to highlight the current concerns. In each period, various problems and objects were at the center of science investigation and new models of development were discussed. By the second half of 20th century, methodological conceptions and models were more actively discussed in the philosophy of science, where even greater importance was attached to such concepts, as scientific specialty, science paradigm, research programme, and social group. 3 Parallel to this, some important research works appeared on the horizon focusing on the problems in the formulation and development of new scientific directions and producing maps of scientific disciplines, as well as studying scientific knowledge and scientific activity in their sociological aspects, leaning upon various forms of scientific publications or studying group of scientists and types of communication in science. At the same time, one also started witnessing convergence and interaction between the philosophical and sociological approaches in science (Marshakova15). science views scientific knowledge and its development through the presentation of objects described in a scientific publication. Scientific publication is by no means an invariable piece of information that can be published, stored, retrieved and delivered on request. A scientific publication is a kind of written material containing information with respect of scientific activities—either in its physical form, or its electronic equivalent in a computerized database (Tijssen 20). Social scientists consider scientific publication as a web of science, produced under social conditions. A new approach in studying scientific disciplines emerged when scholars started substantiating their debates with quantitative investigations of research publications, and using other codified attributes within these research publications like authors, affiliations, citations in papers, etc. Quantitative studies based on research publications became commonly known as ‘bibliometric’ studies. Under, bibliometric approach, a series of new methods and techniques were developed and used by scholars such as D. de Solla Price,1 6 Eugene Garfield, 17 Belvith Griffith,18 Diana 19 Crane. New concepts and terms like exponential growth of science, invisible college, gatekeepers, etc., emerged and became popular over a wider scientific domain. Using the bibliometric approach, knowledge representation at the level of scientific specialty, intellectual structures, informal and formal networks in both natural and social science were investigated. A scientific paper or text not only reveals the world-building strategy of its authors, but also the nature and force of the building blocks derived from the domain of science from which it draws and to which it contributes. Thus, it provides access to the dynamics of science to the shared worlds that constitutes a means of mutual (or evolving) control (Callon et. al.21). Each publication is uniquely represented by the bibliographical information it contains. In addition, each distinct type of publication has its own set of common characteristics and attributes. Two basic units of bibliographic information are generally used: (a) items, which refer to information in or about publications. The principle items of analysis are author names, addresses, citations, and keywords, as well selected words from the title, abstract, or the full text. Abstracting and indexing services often add further bibliographical information such as type of publication, language, one or more controlled terms (keywords given by data producers), subject classification terms or codes and (b) entities, which refer to (aggregates of) publications. These entities represent a set of publications, starting from the micro-level (a single author) via meso-levels (varying in size from university departments, scientific journals to research specialties) to macro-level entities (scientific sub-fields or countries). The information required for bibliometric analysis is derived not only from primary scientific journals, but also from indexing and abstracting journals and databases. 2. BIBLIOMETRIC APPROACH IN STUDY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY The bibliometric approach to science and technology is primarily based in quantitative characteristics; attributes of research pub (...truncated)