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A new territory and its pioneer: opening up a dominant research stream for a translational research area

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Abstract

An academic pioneer makes many trials to find relations and results that were unknown before. The verified relations and repeatable results the pioneer finds guide followers to create a new subject area. We investigated how a pioneer opened up a research stream for a translational research area by systemic mapping and clustering of all available publications on Her-2 and of this pioneer’s work. Characteristics of clusters in both maps were largely similar, but we also identified differences, indicating that the pioneer opened a dominant research stream for the whole area. We show how different clusters representing TR stages took shape. Strong links and the terms connected by these strong links made it possible to deduce the roles of these clusters in the translational process. The strong links between clusters build a broad and solid bridge between the clusters in the pioneer’s term map, realizing the translational process. We discuss and then conclude that verified relations and repeatable results strengthen links between terms that reflect main relations found by the pioneer. Further investigations of the relations between linkage strength and the translational process might lead to interesting information about the process of translational research.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81972914, 81573023 and 71173154). EB was supported by Krebsliga Schweiz, BIL KFS 4261-08-2017. We are grateful for the comments of reviewers which improved this article a lot. We thank Ronald Rousseau and Shiyan Tang from the University College London for the linguistic polish. Yuxian Liu thank Michael Hopkins and Ismael Rafols for the discussion in the early stage of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tongji University Library, Tongji University, Siping Road 1239, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Yuxian Liu

  2. Institute of Higher Education, Tongji University, Siping Road 1239, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Yuxian Liu

  3. School of History and Archives, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Yuxian Liu

  4. Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Zhouzhu Hwy 279, Shanghai, 201318, China

    Ewelina Biskup

  5. Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital of Basel, Petersgraben 4, 4051, Basel, Switzerland

    Ewelina Biskup

  6. School of Life Science and Technology, Tongji University, Siping Road 1239, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Yueqian Wang

  7. Department of Breast Surgery, Yangpu Hospital, Tongji University, Tengyue Road 450, Shanghai, 200090, China

    Fengfeng Cai

  8. Research Center for Translational Medicine, School of Life Sciences and Technology, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University, Siping Road 1239, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Xiaoyan Zhang

Authors
  1. Yuxian Liu
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  2. Ewelina Biskup
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  3. Yueqian Wang
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  4. Fengfeng Cai
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  5. Xiaoyan Zhang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yuxian Liu or Xiaoyan Zhang.

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Liu, Y., Biskup, E., Wang, Y. et al. A new territory and its pioneer: opening up a dominant research stream for a translational research area. Scientometrics 125, 1213–1228 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03638-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03638-8

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