شناسایی جبهه‌های پژوهشی در حوزه علم‌سنجی

Purpose: Identifying research fronts and hot topics in scientific fields is of interest to policymakers and researchers. Scientometrics is one of the active research fields to quantitatively analyze scientific productions. Therefore, the present study aims to identify research fronts and hot topics in scientometrics.
Methodology: This research was applied one and has been carried out with a scientometric approach. The population of this research consisted of 5,226 articles in the subject area of scientometrics, published in 6 core journals of scientometrics and indexed in the Scopus citation database between the years 2015 and 2024. The study used SciVal, an analytical tool for analyzing Scopus data, to analyze collected data as well as to identify research fronts.
Findings: Based on the analysis of research data, 20 top research fronts and three hot research fronts were identified along with indicators of Prominence percentile, Views Count, Citation Count, Average CiteScore and Scholarly Output in the subject area of scientometrics. The first top and hottest research front in the field of scientometrics was the “Bibliometrics Insights into Research Development Trends”. This research front had a Prominence percentile of 99.522, a Citation Count of 3372, a Views Count of 21178, and an Average CiteScore of 4.3. The second research front was “University-Industry Collaboration for Innovation Growth” which had a Prominence percentile of 99.257, a Citation Count of 1681, a Views Count of 19478, and an Average CiteScore of 6.8. The third research front was “Innovative Approaches in Subject Modeling Techniques”, which had a Prominence percentile of 99.039, a Citation Count of 2022, a Views Count of 11938, and an Average CiteScore of 5.5. China was at the top of the list of countries with the 579 documents in the top 20 research fronts of scientometrics. The United States and Spain with 362 and 251 documents in the top 20 research fronts ranked ranked second and third, respectively. The Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society in Germany was at the top of the list of institutions and universities with 77 documents in 20 top research fronts. Following it, Wuhan University in China was in second place having 74 documents in the top 20 research fronts. The National Research Council of Italy was in the third place 64 documents in the top 20 research fronts of scientometrics. Regarding the most productive authors, Lutz Bornmann from the Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society in the Germany was at the top of the list with 77 documents in the top 20 research fronts, followed by Giovanni Abramo and Ciriaco Andrea D’Angelo from the Italy, and Mike Thelwall from the University of Wolverhampton in the UK with 48 documents in the identified research fronts. Yi Zhang from the University of Technology Sydney in Australia was in the third place with 28 documents in the 20 top research fronts.
Conclusion: The results of the study showed that bibliometric analysis is recognized as a powerful research method for identifying research development trends in all scientific and research fields. The findings from bibliometrics are very influential and necessary at all scientific levels, from researchers to decision-making and policy-making institutions, in the development of science and research in each country and even regionally and internationally. The second prominent topic in scientometrics refers to the participation of universities and industry in the growth of innovation, which, in addition to bridging the gap between basic and applied research, leads to the flourishing of the Dash-based economy at the national and international levels, and this issue has been of interest to scientometrics researchers. The third identified topic was “Innovative approaches in subject modeling techniques”. Subject modeling has evolved as a key methodology for analyzing bibliometric data on a large scale.
The research findings have multiple applications in scientific policy-making and the development of research collaborations: countries aiming to strengthen their position in scientometrics can utilize the model of leading research fronts and the identified hot topics in this study. Additionally, to participate in research fronts, it is recommended that countries and institutions focus on multiple subject areas, while researchers concentrate on a single subject area. Researchers and institutions can leverage the findings to select suitable scientific collaborators and strengthen international connections.
This study had some limitations. The research data were only extracted from Scopus and were limited to six core scientometric journals, and the SciVal database, which is specific to Scopus, was used, so it may not provide a complete picture of the research fronts in this field. Also, the data analysis was limited to the years 2015-2024, and the findings of this study cannot be generalized to a wider period. Finally, the data analysis method was based on a quantitative approach and did not consider an in-depth examination of the content of the articles and the research impacts.