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The emergence of social science research on nanotechnology

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Abstract

This article examines the development of social science literature focused on the emerging area of nanotechnology. It is guided by the exploratory proposition that early social science work on emerging technologies will draw on science and engineering literature on the technology in question to frame its investigative activities, but as the technologies and societal investments in them progress, social scientists will increasingly develop and draw on their own body of literature. To address this proposition the authors create a database of nanotechnology-social science literature by merging articles from the Web of Science’s Social Science Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index with articles from Scopus. The resulting database comprises 308 records. The findings suggest that there are multiple dimensions of cited literature and that social science citations of other social scientists’ works have increased since 2005.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies, http://www.thesnet.net. Accessed December 20, 2009, and an earlier organization, the International Nanotechnology and Society Network. http://www.nanoandsociety.com. Accessed December 20, 2009.

  2. See http://www.nanopolicy.gatech.edu

  3. The Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) indexes over 10,000 journals worldwide, including more than 2,400 in social sciences and nearly 1,400 in arts and humanities. See: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/web_of_science. Accessed December 20, 2009.

  4. Scopus (Elsevier B.V) indexes over 16,500 peer-reviewed journals including more than 6,400 titles in social sciences and about 2,300 in arts and humanities, see: http://info.scopus.com. Accessed December 20, 2009.

  5. Subject Categories are part of the Journal Citation Reports of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) of Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. These subject categories derive from a combination of inter-journal citation data and expert editorial perspective on what constitute research domains.

  6. The VantagePoint version 5.1 autocorrelation function was used to generate this map. VantagePoint software is described at: http://www.theVantagePoint.com.

  7. There are other maps of science based on more detailed data structures, see for example, Boyack et al. 2005; and Scitech Strategies, Inc., 2008.

  8. This reflects analysis of the SSCI cited references using thesauri that associate journal names to the Subject Categories. This was enhanced by manual assignment of Scopus reference source names, and consolidation with the SSCI tallies.

  9. For more information on Pajek network analysis software, see http://pajek.imfm.si/doku.php?id=pajek.

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Acknowledgments

This research was partly supported by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (National Science Foundation Award 0531194), the National Partnership for Managing Upstream Innovation: The Case of Nanoscience and Technology (North Carolina State University, National Science Foundation Award EEC-0438684), and the Representations of Active Nanostructures project (NSF SES-0708413). The findings and observations contained in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Significant assistance in database development was provided by Ashley Rivera, Jue Wang, and Heming Zhang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK

    Philip Shapira

  2. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Philip Shapira

  3. Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Jan Youtie

  4. Technology Policy & Assessment Center, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Alan L. Porter

  5. Search Technology, Inc., Atlanta, GA, USA

    Alan L. Porter

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Correspondence to Philip Shapira.

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Shapira, P., Youtie, J. & Porter, A.L. The emergence of social science research on nanotechnology. Scientometrics 85, 595–611 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0204-x

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