[Sigmetrics] Citation algorithms for identifying research milestones driving biomedical innovation

[Loet Leydesdorff]

Scientific activity plays a major role in innovation for biomedicine and
healthcare. For instance, fundamental research on disease pathologies and
mechanisms can generate potential targets for drug therapy. This
co-evolution is punctuated by papers which provide new perspectives and open
new domains. Despite the relationship between scientific discovery and
biomedical advancement, identifying these research milestones that truly
impact biomedical innovation can be difficult and is largely based solely on
the opinions of subject matter experts. 

 

Here, we consider whether a new class of citation algorithms that identify
seminal scientific works in a field. Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy
(RPYS) and multi-RPYS can identify the connections between innovation (e.g.,
therapeutic treatments) and the foundational research underlying them.
Specifically, we assess whether the results of these analytic techniques
converge with expert opinions on research milestones driving biomedical
innovation in the treatment of Basal Cell Carcinoma. 

 

Our results show that the algorithms successfully identify the majority of
milestone papers detailed by experts (Wong and Dlugosz in J Investig
Dermatol 134(e1):E18-E22, 2014
<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-016-2238-1#CR28> )-thereby
validating the power of these algorithms to converge on independent opinions
of seminal scientific works derived by subject matter experts. These
advances offer an opportunity to identify scientific activities enabling
innovation in biomedicine.

 

Comins, J.A. & Leydesdorff, L. Scientometrics (2017).
doi:10.1007/s11192-016-2238-1 

Available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-016-2238-1 

Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01658 

 

** apologies for cross-postings

 

  _____  

Loet Leydesdorff 

Professor, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

 <mailto:loet at leydesdorff.net> loet at leydesdorff.net ;
<http://www.leydesdorff.net/> http://www.leydesdorff.net/ 
Associate Faculty,  <http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/> SPRU, University of
Sussex; 

Guest Professor  <http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/> Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou;
Visiting Professor,  <http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html> ISTIC,
Beijing;

Visiting Professor,  <http://www.bbk.ac.uk/> Birkbeck, University of London;


 <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en>
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en

 

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