In collaboration with Alan Porter at the Georgia Institute of Technology, we are carrying out two projects:
1- Methods for mapping interdisciplinary research (2008-2012, ~$392,000)
This project developed mapping techniques and measures in order to assess the degree of interdisciplinarity of scientific organisations or emerging research fields.
The most important contribution were to devise new measure of interdisciplinarity that take into account the cognitive distance between fields, and to produce freely available global maps of science. The most relevant articles are:
- Rafols, I., Porter, A.L. and Leydesdorff, L. (2010) Science overlay maps: A new tool for research policy and library management. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 61(9), 871–1887. PDF. Interactive Maps. Overlay toolkit.
- Rafols, I. and Meyer, M. (2010) Diversity and Network Coherence as indicators of interdisciplinarity: case studies in bionanoscience. Scientometrics 82(2), 263-287. PDF
- Porter, A.L. and Rafols, I. (2009) Is Science Becoming more Interdisciplinary? Measuring and Mapping Six Research Fields over Time. Scientometrics. 81(3), 719-745. PDF, Supplement & Data
2- Revealing Innovation Pathways (2011-2014, , ~$390,000)
This project aims to develop a methodological framework and associated tools (metrics; maps) to help analyze emerging technologies to help policy makers and R&D managers make decisions regarding innovation pathways. Our goal is to devise tools towards a multi-perspective mapping methodology that capture the various cognitive and social ‘landscape’ of an emergent technology alongside the visions and expectations that drive the emergence. The methodology includes: (i) qualitative investigations of the innovation system. (ii) profile and linking actors using extensive mapping tools, both classic Tech mining techniques (bibliometrics maps) and exploratory hybrid qual-quant tools (iii) Project and assess innovation pathways, via stakeholders’ workshops.
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Robinson, D.K.R., Huang, L., Guo, Y., Porter, A.L. (2013). Forecasting Innovation Pathways (FIP) for new and emerging science and technologies. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 80, 267–285.
- Leydesdorff L., Rotolo D., Rafols I. (2012). Interactive Overlay Maps of Medical Innovation using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of PubMed. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. In press.
- Kay, L., Newman, N., Youtie, J., Porter, A.L., Rafols, I., 2012. Patent Overlay Mapping: Visualizing Technological Distance. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Submitted.
