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Eto, Hajime

doi:10.1023/a:1025423406643

Cited by 28 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This is no different from the difficulties in establishing quantitative relationships in human and social sciences 1 . In this paper we quantified the interdisciplinarity 2 of scientific journals and science fields by using an entropy measurement 3, 4 based on the diversity of the subject categories of journals citing a specific journal.…”

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confidence: 90%

“…Not surprisingly, in recent years new areas have been established with this interdisciplinary character, as is the case of nanoscience and nanotechnology, in addition to new disciplines arising from the merging of two or more areas, such as computational biology and biomolecular physics. The interdisciplinary global structure of knowledge has not received much attention in the literature, probably due to the difficulty in quantifying how interdisciplinary a given topic or piece of work is 1,2,9 . A possible approach to deal with such intricate relationships is to treat large systems as complex networks 6,10 , which are convenient to represent complex system structures where subsystems are the vertices and their interactions are represented by edges in a graph.…”

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Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields

Silva

Rodrigues²,

Oliveira

et al. 2013

Journal of Informetrics

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There is an overall perception of increased interdisciplinarity in science, but this is difficult to confirm quantitatively owing to the lack of adequate methods to evaluate subjective phenomena. This is no different from the difficulties in establishing quantitative relationships in human and social sciences 1 . In this paper we quantified the interdisciplinarity 2 of scientific journals and science fields by using an entropy measurement 3, 4 based on the diversity of the subject categories of journals citing a specific journal. The methodology consisted in building citation networks using the Journal Citation Reports database, in which the nodes were journals and edges were established based on citations among journals. The overall network for the 11-year period (1999-2009) studied was small-world 5 and scale free 6 with regard to the in-strength. Upon visualizing the network topology an overall structure of the various science fields could be inferred, especially their interconnections. We confirmed quantitatively that science fields are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, with the degree of interdisplinarity (i.e. entropy) correlating strongly with the in-strength of journals and with the impact factor. The tremendous advances in scientific methods and increase in computational power in the last few decades have allowed increasingly complex problems to be addressed and solved 7,8 . Because such types of problems are intrinsically interdisciplinary, this has reinforced the pan-multidisciplinary nature of many naturally-occurring phenomena and man-made systems. In a sense, this movement brought science closer to the paradigm adopted by Greek philosophers who treated Nature as a landscape of knowledge glued together in an indivisible discipline. Not surprisingly, in recent years new areas have been established with this interdisciplinary character, as is the case of nanoscience and nanotechnology, in addition to new disciplines arising from the merging of two or more areas, such as computational biology and biomolecular physics. The interdisciplinary global structure of knowledge has not received much attention in the literature, probably due to the difficulty in quantifying how interdisciplinary a given topic or piece of work is 1, 2, 9 . A possible approach to deal with such intricate relationships is to treat large systems as complex networks 6, 10 , which are convenient to represent complex system structures where subsystems are the vertices and their interactions are represented by edges in a graph. Though built from simple elements, these networks may present high complexity both in size and in topology 11 , thus providing an adequate framework to capture the complex behavior of systems without narrowing the study to simple, isolated systems.In this paper we used concepts from complex networks to evaluate quantitatively 2 the interdisciplinarity of science fields and journals. The citation networks were built in a different manner from the conventional one employed in the literature. Rather than taki...

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confidence: 90%

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confidence: 99%

Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields

Silva

Rodrigues²,

Oliveira

et al. 2013

Journal of Informetrics

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“…It is possible to study the citations received by a given country from the country itself (country self-citations), those received by a given institution from its own scientists (institution self-citation) (Eto 2003; Iribarren-Maestro 2006; Hellsten et al 2007) or we can study how often a journal is cited by its own publications (journal self-citations) (Leydesdorff 2008), being an important issue as it can be used to manipulate the impact factor of journals (Krauss 2007; Frandsen 2007). …”

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confidence: 99%

Self-citations at the meso and individual levels: effects of different calculation methods

2010

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This paper focuses on the study of self-citations at the meso and micro (individual) levels, on the basis of an analysis of the production (1994–2004) of individual researchers working at the Spanish CSIC in the areas of Biology and Biomedicine and Material Sciences. Two different types of self-citations are described: author self-citations (citations received from the author him/herself) and co-author self-citations (citations received from the researchers’ co-authors but without his/her participation). Self-citations do not play a decisive role in the high citation scores of documents either at the individual or at the meso level, which are mainly due to external citations. At micro-level, the percentage of self-citations does not change by professional rank or age, but differences in the relative weight of author and co-author self-citations have been found. The percentage of co-author self-citations tends to decrease with age and professional rank while the percentage of author self-citations shows the opposite trend. Suppressing author self-citations from citation counts to prevent overblown self-citation practices may result in a higher reduction of citation numbers of old scientists and, particularly, of those in the highest categories. Author and co-author self-citations provide valuable information on the scientific communication process, but external citations are the most relevant for evaluative purposes. As a final recommendation, studies considering self-citations at the individual level should make clear whether author or total self-citations are used as these can affect researchers differently.

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“…The authors find that the “nanobiotechnology” keyword activity is growing to a greater extent than that of either of the parent nanotechnology or of the biotechnology fields. Eto (2003) supplements a national evaluation of Japanese nanotechnology government-sponsored projects with bibliometric analysis of journals, citations, and authorship patterns. He finds evidence of multidisciplinarity in nanotechnology centered on chemistry and extending to physics and material sciences and, to a lesser extent, biology and instrument technology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How interdisciplinary is nanotechnology?

2009

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Facilitating cross-disciplinary research has attracted much attention in recent years, with special concerns in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Although policy discourse has emphasized that nanotechnology is substantively integrative, some analysts have countered that it is really a loose amalgam of relatively traditional pockets of physics, chemistry, and other disciplines that interrelate only weakly. We are developing empirical measures to gauge and visualize the extent and nature of interdisciplinary interchange. Such results speak to research organization, funding, and mechanisms to bolster knowledge transfer. In this study, we address the nature of cross-disciplinary linkages using “science overlay maps” of articles, and their references, that have been categorized into subject categories. We find signs that the rate of increase in nano research is slowing, and that its composition is changing (for one, increasing chemistry-related activity). Our results suggest that nanotechnology research encompasses multiple disciplines that draw knowledge from disciplinarily diverse knowledge sources. Nano research is highly, and increasingly, integrative—but so is much of science these days. Tabulating and mapping nano research activity show a dominant core in materials sciences, broadly defined. Additional analyses and maps show that nano research draws extensively upon knowledge presented in other areas; it is not constricted within narrow silos.

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Cited by 28 publications

References 38 publications

Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields

Quantifying the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals and fields

Self-citations at the meso and individual levels: effects of different calculation methods

How interdisciplinary is nanotechnology?

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