The geography of science: disciplinary and national mappings

Abstract

Each year ISI undertakes an analysis of a database which is derived from a combination of the Science Citation Index ( SCI ) and the Socwl SCiences CitatIOn Index ( SSCI ). The purpose of this analysis is to create what we call maps of science which show the topography of science at various levels of aggregation. These range in scale from a global perspective down to the level of the individual investigator's key papers. It is fair to say that the science and technology for creating such maps is in its infancy. Earlier work by Garfield, Sher and Torpie [1] on historiographs and Price on networks of scientific papers [2] showed the longitudinal structure of science by exploiting citation links across time. More recent co-citation methods emphasize the cross-sectional structure of science by using co-occurrence of references [3] at a specific point in time, and hence suggest the analogy to geographic maps. The notion that science can be mapped was first clearly stated by Derek Price [4] during the 1960s, though we are sure that a thorough search of the literature of information science, history, sociology and philosophy of science would reveal significant precursors. For example, in 1948 Samuel Bradford [5], the famous British bibliographer. wrote:&dquo;... if x represents any class, as men, its individuals will have many different qualities. We may separate those Individuals, which are distinguishable from one another as hamng different yualmes, in sub-classes. The symbols of all sub-classes will have only the possible numencal values 0 and 1. So let us

Collaboration in Iranian Scientific Publications

“…In addition, papers by Iranian scientists appear to receive (on average) more citations in the last 6.5 years than in the earlier years. Table 4 shows the top ranking journal titles in which Iranian authors published their papers from 1985to 1994versus 1995to 1999. In 1985to 1994 there are 21 journals with 11 to 39 papers in each.…”

Mapping Australian geophysics: A co-heading analysis

“…SEG (see Fig. 4) is represented by five clusters: seismology (3, 21); geophysical aspects of geology and mineralogy (4,5,8,24); instrumentation and techniques in explosion seismology (2,42); coastal studies (6,11,28,37); and climatology related to the Pacific Ocean (1,7,18).…”

“…5) includes also five clusters: ocean dynamics (9, 15, 34, 47); coastal oceanography (6,7,28); sea-air exchange (12,13,44); boundary layerr. structure and processes (25, 31); and rivers and flows (1,19,32,45,46).…”

“…1 The results of such analysis in terms of highly-cited (core) documents and their links (as reflected in a set of recent journal articles) have been first considered for science structure representation and further as tools for research management and evaluation. 2 At the same time criticisms have been expressed concerning theoretical conceptions and techniques applied.…”

“…6. As mentioned above instrumentation and techniques are largely used in all geophysics subdivisions: atmospheric research (1,13,14,16); hydrospheric research (6,7,9,12,15); solid Earth geophysics (3,4,5,8,21,24); rivers and flows research (19,22,46); and especially meteorology (2, 17, …”