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Historical scientometrics? Mapping over 70 years of biological safety research with coword analysis

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Abstract

This paper relates the results of a co-word analysis of over 70 years of biological safety literature. The database used in this project is theSonger Safety Bibliography (SSB) which lists around 17 000 references. The results show biological safety to be a very fragmented field, characterized by the existence of several relatively independent foci of interest, none of which has been able to structure the field into a tight network. Early periods of activity were marked by the construction of the basic tools of biological safety practices. Those tools became a “robust package” which, in more recent periods, was used routinely. While the safety problems related to recombinant DNA research have received much attention in the general press, they do not seem to occupy a prominent place within the biological safety literature, at least the one compiled in SSB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, (Canada)

    A. Cambrosio

  2. Centre de Recherche en Évaluation Sociale des Technologies (CREST), Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, (Canada)

    C. Limoges

  3. Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), École Nationale Supérieure des Mines, Paris, (France)

    J. P. Courtial

  4. Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques, Paris, (France)

    F. Laville

Authors
  1. A. Cambrosio
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  2. C. Limoges
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  3. J. P. Courtial
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  4. F. Laville
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Cambrosio, A., Limoges, C., Courtial, J.P. et al. Historical scientometrics? Mapping over 70 years of biological safety research with coword analysis. Scientometrics 27, 119–143 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016546

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02016546

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