Abstract
Over the last two decades the scientific community has witnessed unprecedented growth of nanotechnology research in Canada. Although recent studies have shown that Canada consistently maintains a position in the first tier of productive countries in terms of its share of the world’s nano-publications, a number of key questions remain unanswered. Using a unique nano-related publication dataset, this paper combines bibliometric analysis and science overlay mapping to visualize the ‘invisible college’ of Canadian nano research. The present analysis finds that the rapid growth of nanotechnology research in Canada is, for the most part, externally driven. In recent years, research content has shifted toward nanobiotechnology fields. The geographical distribution of Canadian domestic nanotechnology research is characterized by regional imbalance: most research hubs are located near US–Canadian borders. Canadian nanotechnology scientists have collaborated with a variety of countries, but Chinese scholars in particular play a leading role in Canada’s research exchange across national borders.
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Notes
Some articles include authors from more than one sector, thus the summation is greater than 100%.
In this article, a whole counting method is adopted to credit publications to countries and affiliations. For example, for a nano paper with four co-authors reporting two US affiliations and one Canadian affiliation, in counting authorship at the country level, the United States and Canada will be counted only once respectively. In terms of counting authorship at the organization level, in the above case, each unique affiliation will be also counted once each.
Here the most frequently cited articles refer to 61 Canadian internationally collaborated nanotechnology articles that have been cited more than 100 times from its publication until December 31, 2009.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank two anonymous referees and Al Link for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also wish to acknowledge the feedback from Christopher Kirkey and 2011 CONNECT seminar. Special thanks go to Philip Shapira, Jan Youtie, and Alan Porter for developing large-scale global nanotechnology publication dataset. This research is partially sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Award No. 0531194). The findings and observations contained in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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Hu, G., Carley, S. & Tang, L. Visualizing nanotechnology research in Canada: evidence from publication activities, 1990–2009. J Technol Transf 37, 550–562 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-011-9238-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-011-9238-3