Exploring Promising Research Frontiers Based on Knowledge Maps in the Solar Cell Technology Field

Inchae Park,Keeeun Lee,Byungun Yoon

doi:10.3390/su71013660

Abstract

Given the challenging environmental issues in the energy sector, the importance of strategic research and development (R&D) planning has been emphasized to manage a turbulent business situation. This study aims to propose a methodology for exploring promising research frontiers in the energy sector. To this end, first, core documents are collected from scientific documents such as patents and academic papers. Second, the research frontiers are extracted by clustering the core documents based on the bibliographic relations. Third, a knowledge map is generated by mapping the relations between research frontiers. Finally, the promising research frontiers (RFs) are identified by conducting dynamic analyses and the contents of promising RFs are suggested. As an illustration of the method, the field of solar cell technology is chosen and analyzed As a result, the promising research frontiers from the patent knowledge map are related to development (D) themes and promising research frontiers from scientific paper knowledge map are related to the research (R) themes. The proposed method and results can be utilized by researchers, R&D policy makers, and administrations in practice.

Highlights

Many challenging environmental issues such as the increase in energy demands, the exhaustion of fossil fuel and climate change have emerged, making many countries pay attentions on Sustainability 2015, 7 various influential policies and research and development (R&D) efforts
A technology classification related to the solar cell technology is utilized in order to collect the relevant patent data
The present research proposes a methodology for identifying promising research frontiers and their keywords by generating knowledge maps based on scientific documents such as patents and academic articles

Summary

Introduction

Many challenging environmental issues such as the increase in energy demands, the exhaustion of fossil fuel and climate change have emerged, making many countries pay attentions on Sustainability 2015, 7 various influential policies and R&D efforts. New sources of energy cannot be extracted and developed with traditional technologies that are unable to meet totally different technological needs of them. To this end, detection of promising and emerging research themes in energy technology is regarded as a priority task. Most of the strategies for development of energy technology have relied on the consideration of national policies and qualitative analyses without a systematic process or methodology. Such R&D processes are subject to yield rough research themes based on intuitions of policy-makers and technologists

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Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion