Abstract
Nanoscience and technology (NST) is a relatively new interdisciplinary scientific domain, and scholars from a broad range of different disciplines are contributing to it. However, there is an ambiguity in its structure and in the extent of multidisciplinary scientific collaboration of NST. This paper investigates the multidisciplinary patterns of Iranian research in NST based on a selection of 1,120 ISI—indexed articles published during 1974–2007. Using text mining techniques, 96 terms were identified as the main terms of the Iranian publications in NST. Then the scientific structure of the Iranian NST was mapped through multidimensional scaling, based upon the co-occurrence of the main terms in the academic publications. The results showed that the NST domain in Iranian publications has a multidisciplinary structure which is composed of different fields, such as pure physics, analytical chemistry, chemistry physics, material science and engineering, polymer science, biochemistry and new emerging topics.
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Notes
1974 was the first date that Nano term appear in texts.
A Self-made program with SQL server was used for keyword extraction and weighting the words.
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Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Dr. Kayvan Kousha, School of library and information science of Tehran university for his very useful comments and Dr. Jonathan Levitt for editing the text.
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Mohammadi, E. Knowledge mapping of the Iranian nanoscience and technology: a text mining approach. Scientometrics 92, 593–608 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0644-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0644-6