Delimitation of scientific subfields using cognitive words from corporate addresses in scientific publications

A new method is explored, which is based on cognitive words from addresses (corporate sources) in scientific publications, which will be applied to a multidisciplinary set of articles extracted from the journals Science andNature.

Abstract

An appropriate delimitation of scientific subfields constitutes one of the key problems in bibliometrics. Several methods have been explored for this task. The main ones are co-citation analysis, co-word analysis, the use of indexing systems based on controlled or uncontrolled keywords, and finally the use of a classification of scientific journals into subfields or categories. In our contribution we will explore a new method, which is based on cognitive words from addresses (corporate sources) in scientific publications. Cognitive address words are words referring to scientific (sub)fields, methods or objects of research, that appear in the institutional affiliations of the publishing authors (e.g., 'Department of Pharmacology', AIDS Research Center'). We will focus on theScience Citation Index (SCI), published by the Institute for Scientific Information. Our methods will be applied to a multidisciplinary set of articles extracted from the journalsScience andNature.