Identification and Visualization of the Intellectual Structure in Graphene Research

Benjamín Vargas-Quesada,Zaida Chinchilla-Rodríguez,Noel Rodriguez

doi:10.3389/frma.2017.00007

Abstract

After discovering the promising properties of graphene, the research in the field is attracting large grants and sponsors with an exponential rise in the number of papers and applications. This paper presents a global map of graphene research and its intellectual structure through the terms of more than 50,000 documents extracted from Scopus database from 1998 to 2015. The unit of analysis has been the descriptors (including Authors keywords and Indexed keywords) and its co-occurrence, using fractional counting, as unit of measure. The main research lines identified are: Fundamental Research, Functionalization and Biomedical Applications, Technology and Devices, Material Sciences, Energy Storage, Optics and Chemical Properties and Sensors. Using overlay maps we show the graphen research of USA, Europe-28, China and their evolution through longitudinal maps, comparing them. USA begins leading the world output in graphene, but is surpassed by China in 2011 and Europe in 2014, as a result of stimulus policies and financial support. The output of China is so intense from that year on, that it is difficult to understand the recent world scientific production in graphene without its participation, marking the research trends in some cases. We believe that this information may be very useful for the scientific community involved in this field as it reflects a large-scale analysis how research has changed over time, and for helping policimakers in research planning. This study is moreover intended to offer a useful tool for the graphene scientific community, revealing at a glance the main research lines. The methodology can be replicated in any other field of science to explore its intellectual structure and its evolution.

Highlights

New carbon nanostructures—fullerenes, nanotubes and, above all, graphene—have aroused great interest in recent years, making the field of graphene research undergo phenomenal growth that comes to light in publications.Graphene is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon with exceptional physical and chemical properties and a potential for revolutionary applications in a wide variety of fields: strong lightweight materials, Visualizing Graphene Research new-generation electronic units, specialized coatings, novel biomaterials and sensors, and innovative medical applications (Novoselov et al, 2012)
Information visualization emerged at the beginning of this century as a discipline of great interest at the crossroads of bibliometrics and scientometrics, providing multiple visual representations known as scientograms (Moya-Anegón et al, 2007a)
In light of the results in this table, the goals of this paper as well as the recent programs and funding implemented by the European Commission to support graphene research efforts (Graphene Flagship, 2013), we believe that it may be of great interest both to researchers and decision-makers alike to put together all European countries so as to be able to compare the three world regions of highest production—the United States, the European Union (EU), and China, leaving out of the comparison the scholarly production by other countries worldwide for future research

Summary

Introduction

New carbon nanostructures—fullerenes, nanotubes and, above all, graphene—have aroused great interest in recent years, making the field of graphene research undergo phenomenal growth that comes to light in publications.Graphene is a one-atom-thick layer of carbon with exceptional physical and chemical properties and a potential for revolutionary applications in a wide variety of fields: strong lightweight materials, Visualizing Graphene Research new-generation electronic units, specialized coatings, novel biomaterials and sensors, and innovative medical applications (Novoselov et al, 2012). With the experimental discovery of graphene by Novoselov et al (2004), a rapidly growing stream of scientific literature became fertile land for bibliometric studies: Barth and Marx (2008), Wan and Pan (2010), Shapira et al (2010), Lv et al (2011), Munoz-Sandoval (2014), Small et al (2014), Terekhov (2015), Klincewicz (2016), and Shapira et al (2016) As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and the notion behind information visualization is to create a mental pic ture of that which is invisible to our eyes. They enable one to explore the sequential evolution of research, identify research fronts, detect emerging or decadent topics, and locate areas of interdisciplinary efforts (Gómez-Núñez et al, 2016)

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