Buter, RK; Noyons, ECM; van Raan, AFJ. 2010. Identification of converging research areas using publication and citation data. RESEARCH EVALUATION 19 (1): 19-27

[Eugene Garfield]

Buter, RK; Noyons, ECM; van Raan, AFJ. 2010. Identification of converging 
research areas using publication and citation data. RESEARCH EVALUATION 19 
(1): 19-27..

Author Full Name(s): Buter, Reindert K.; Noyons, Ed C. M.; van Raan, Anthony 
F. J.

Language: English
Document Type: Article

Abstract: Converging research is the emergence of new interdisciplinary 
research from fields which showed limited mutual interdisciplinary connections 
before. We describe three search strategies to identify converging research 
using data extracted from the WoS, including the social sciences and 
humanities. The field-to-field references (FFR) strategy uses citations from one 
journal subject category (JSC), to another; the keyword sets (KWS) strategy 
tracks the co-occurrence of keywords from different JSCs; and the affiliation 
patterns (AFP) strategy traces the co-occurrence of fields of research in 
author affiliations of papers. Resulting publication sets were assessed using 
data such as journal names, titles of publications, and titles of cited 
publications. Experts validated nine converging research areas that were 
detected using the KWS and FFR strategies; none were found with AFT 
strategy.

Addresses: [Buter, Reindert K.; Noyons, Ed C. M.; van Raan, Anthony F. J.] 
Leiden Univ, Ctr Sci & Technol Studies CWTS, NL-2300 AX Leiden, Netherlands

Reprint Address: Buter, RK, Leiden Univ, Ctr Sci & Technol Studies CWTS, 
Wassenaarseweg 62A,POB 905, NL-2300 AX Leiden, Netherlands.

E-mail Address: buter at cwts.leidenuniv.nl

ISSN: 0958-2029
DOI: 10.3152/095820210X492503