Quantitative Definitions of Collaborative Research Fields in Science and Engineering

Abstract

Practical methodology for categorizing collaborative disciplines or research in a quantitative manner is presented by developing a Correlation Matrix of Major Disciplines (CMMD) using bibliometric data collected between 2009 and 2014. First, 21 major disciplines in science and engineering are defined based on journal publication frequency. Second, major disciplines using a comparing discipline correlation matrix is created and correlation score using CMMD is calculated based on an analyzer function that is given to the matrix elements. Third, a correlation between the major disciplines and 14 research fields using CMMD is calculated for validation. Collaborative researches are classified into three groups by partially accepting the definition of pluri-discipline from peer review manual, European Science Foundation, inner-discipline, inter-discipline and cross-discipline. Applying simple categorization criteria identifies three groups of collaborative research and also those results can be visualized. Overall, the proposed methodology supports the categorization for each research field.