Mapping Evolution Of Scientometrics

Scientometrics is one of the important sub-disciplines of science studies based on quantitative measures. In 1990s, scientometrics entered into a stage of rethinking and reviewing. Scientometricians all over the world put forward serials of disputed issues about evolution of the intellectual structure, the main research fields, and collaboration and communication. In order to clarify these issues, it is important to investigate the whole situation of scientometrics to reveal the skeleton the development of scientometrics.Based on the integrated methods of mapping knowledge domains, social network analysis and frequency analysis of title words, the author try to reveal the structure and evolution of the main sub-fields and representative scientists, research fronts and collaboration networks in the field of scientometrics.The author co-citation map formed by the top 52 most cited authors reveals that there are 3 main sub-disciplines in scientometrics: evaluative scientometric, structural scientometrics, and dynamic scientometrics. Scientometrics is the bridge of science and technology policy and management and social studies of science in the field of science studies. Moreover, scientometrics is also the bridge of information science and other sub-disciplines of science studies. The relative disciplines of scientometrics are sociology of science, history of science, science and technology policy and management, and library and information science, etc. Among these relative disciplines, scientometrics mainly serves for science and technology policy and management.The document co-citation map of scientometrics indicates that the 7 main research fronts of scientometrics are citation theory, science communication, basic research assessment;mapping of science, webometrics;collaboration in science and technology;scientometric distribution, bibliometric law, informetrics;scientific indicator and evaluation of national research performance;new production of knowledge: dynamics of science and technology;Linkage between science and technology. From 1978, the theoretical and methodological oriented research in scientometrics dominate all the time, but during the last 9 years, the theoretical and methodological oriented research began to blend with the application oriented research, which indicates that scientometrics begin to put attention to use the theory and methods in application fields, especially in the field of science and technology policy and management.The author constructs and visualizes the microstructure of the scientific collaboration network in scientometrics at the level of scientists. We find that, from 1978, the scientific collaboration network in scientometrics has become a complicated big network connected with each other from few separated small sub-networks, and it will become an international collaborative network in the near future. The main collaborative field of scientometrics is science and scientific activity and the main methods include scientometric and bibliometric analysis, especially citation analysis and mapping knowledge domains. Although during 1978-2004, the collaboration network in the field of scientometrics has become more and more centralized and the size of the network has also increased greatly, through correlation analysis, we find that scientific collaboration as a special production relation can promote the development of productivity of science on the onehand and it can also bind up the productivity of science on the other hand.To sum up, the results of the thesis make some issues clear and the serials of maps show clearly that scientometrics developed so well during the past 30 years. Mature sub-disciplines have been formed in which Lots of influential scientometricians are active. Durinjg each sub-period, new research fronts derived from traditional ones and the communication and collaboration has increased very fast and it will become an international collaboration network in the near future.The main innovations of the present study includes:(1) Using integrated methods in scientometrics to perform mapping of knowledge domains to do scientometrics studies of scientometrics and draw serials of the newest maps of scientometrics;(2) Using mapping of knowledge domains and visualization display the the potential intellectual structure of scientometrics, and tracing the development and dynamics of the research fronts of scientometrics in different periods, which provide the scientific gist for tracing the most active issues for study in the field of scientometrics;(3) Using combined analysis of social network analysis and frequency analysis of title words to reveal the microstructure and dynamics of the collaboration network on scientists' aspects of scientometrics and reveal the essence and fuction of scientific collaboration in terms of the relativity of the model of collaboration and the output of papers.