Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Intellectual structure of stem cell research: a comprehensive author co-citation analysis of a highly collaborative and multidisciplinary field

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This study is an attempt to approach the intellectual structure of the stem cell research field 2004–2009 through a comprehensive author co-citation analysis (ACA), and to contribute to a better understanding of a field that has been brought to the forefront of research, therapy and political and public debates, which, hopefully, will in turn better inform research and policy. Based on a nearly complete and clean dataset of stem cell literature compiled from PubMed and Scopus, and using automatic author disambiguation to further improve results, we perform an exclusive all-author ACA of the 200 top-ranked researchers of the field by fractional citation count. We find that, despite the theoretically highly interdisciplinary nature of the field, stem cell research has been dominated by a few central medical research areas—cancer and regenerative medicine of the brain, the blood, the skin, and the heart—and a core of cell biologists trying to understand the nature and the molecular biology of stem cells along with biotechnology researchers investigating the practical identification, isolation, creation, and culturing of stem cells. It is also remarkably self-contained, drawing only on a few related areas of cell biology. This study also serves as a baseline against which the effectiveness of a range of author-based bibliometric methods and indicators can be tested, especially when based on less comprehensive datasets using less optimal analysis methods.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Scopus licensing forbids automated retrievals.

References

  • Ahlgren, P., Jarneving, B., & Rousseau, R. (2003). Requirements for a cocitation similarity measure, with special reference to Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 54, 550–560.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bordons, M., Gomez, I., Fernandes, M. T., Zulueta, M. A., & Mendez, A. (1996). Local, domestic and international scientific collaboration in biomedical research. Scientometrics, 37(2), 279–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borgman, C. L., & Furner, J. (2002). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 36, 3–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, C. (2010). Communication in the sciences. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 44, 287–316.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cronin, B. (2001). Hyperauthorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(7), 558–569.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Department of Health and Human Services. (2001). Stem cells: Scientific progress and future research directions. Retrieved May 21, 2010 from http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/2001report/2001report/.

  • Department of Health and Human Services. (2006). Regenerative medicine. Retrieved May 21, 2010 from http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/2006report/.

  • Hair, J. F., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L., & Black, W. C. (1998). Multivariate data analysis (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindsey, D. (1980). Production and citation measures in the sociology of science: The problem of multiple authorship. Social Studies of Science, 10, 145–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, S. A., & Van der Veer Martens, B. (2009). Mapping research specialties. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 42, 213–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman, M. E. J. (2001). The structure of scientific collaboration networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA, 98(2), 404–409.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Sonnenwald, D. H. (2008). Scientific collaboration. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 41, 643–681.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strotmann, A., Zhao, D., & Bubela, T. (2009). Author name disambiguation for collaboration network analysis and visualization. Proceedings of The American Society for Information Science and Technology 2009 Annual Meeting, November 6–11, 2009, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

  • Strotmann, A., Zhao, D., & Bubela, T. (2010). Combining commercial and open access citation databases to delimit highly interdisciplinary research fields for citation analysis studies. Journal of Informetrics, 4(2), 194–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Hooydonk, G. (1997). Fractional counting of multiauthored publications: Consequences for the impact of authors. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48, 944–945.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, H. D. (2003). Author cocitation analysis and Pearson’s r. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54, 1250–1259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, H. D., & McCain, K. W. (1989). Bibliometrics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 24, 119–186.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, H. D., & McCain, K. W. (1997). Visualization of literatures. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 32, 99–168.

    Google Scholar 

  • White, H. D., & McCain, K. W. (1998). Visualizing a discipline: An author co-citation analysis of information science, 1972–1995. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 49, 327–355.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, D. (2005). Challenges of scholarly publications on the web to the evaluation of science—A comparison of author visibility on the web and in print journals. Information Processing and Management, 41(6), 1403–1418.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, D. (2006a). Dispelling the myths behind straight citation counts. Information realities: Shaping the digital future for all—Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 2006 Annual Meeting, November 3–8, 2006, Austin, TX, USA.

  • Zhao, D. (2006b). Towards all-author co-citation analysis. Information Processing and Management, 42, 1578–1591.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, D., & Strotmann, A. (2008a). Comparing all-author and first-author co-citation analyses of information science. Journal of Informetrics, 2(3), 229–239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, D., & Strotmann, A. (2008b). Information science during the first decade of the web: An enriched author co-citation analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(6), 916–937.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, D., & Strotmann, A. (2008c). Evolution of research activities and intellectual influences in Information Science 1996–2005: Introducing author bibliographic coupling analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(13), 2070–2086.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This study was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada and by Genome Canada. The authors would like to thank Gencheng Guo for his assistance in the data collection process.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2J4, Canada

    Dangzhi Zhao & Andreas Strotmann

Authors
  1. Dangzhi Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Andreas Strotmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dangzhi Zhao.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Zhao, D., Strotmann, A. Intellectual structure of stem cell research: a comprehensive author co-citation analysis of a highly collaborative and multidisciplinary field. Scientometrics 87, 115–131 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0317-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0317-2

Keywords