Abstract
The aim of this article is to assess China’s R&D position and status on salt lake resources with a method combining bibliometrics with social network analysis. Patent data about the mining and usage of salt lake resources harvested from the SciFinder database and ranging from 1991 to 2010 is analyzed in this paper. The results show that there has been a rapid growth in patent publications regarding salt lake resources in the last 20 years, both at home and abroad. This is especially true with regard to the extraction and application of magnesium and potassium. China’s R&D in this field is worthy of attention, because China owns considerable salt lake reserves. The status of R&D groups in China is assessed via network analysis, through both Ucinet software and NetDraw software. We use separate records from the China Academic Journal Network Publishing Database (CAJD) and the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), covering the time span from 2001 to 2010. A collaboration network is established, and its structure and attributes are analyzed with a view to assessing the R&D groups in this field. Results from these analysis demonstrated that China stands in a disadvantaged position in the implementation of related research and technology; several research groups have been formed to explore the mining of salt lake resources; Collaboration is mostly still confined to the domestic scene; cross-national collaboration has not yet started to grow. Finally, proposals are put forward for the formulation of an R&D strategy and for cultivating R&D groups.
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Yan, Sm., Sun, Jq. Assessing China’s salt lake resources R&D based on bibliometrics analysis. Scientometrics 105, 1141–1155 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1721-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-015-1721-4