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The hot spot transformation in the research evolution of maker

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Abstract

The rapid development of digital technology together with the grassroots innovation has led to a new landmark of maker culture. Recently, a search with the query of ‘‘makerspace’’, ‘‘maker movement’’ and ‘‘maker culture’’ in Google Scholar found over 10,000 documents in total. As the volume of the literature grows rapidly, thus, a systematic review of maker research and its current challenges becomes essential. This study surveys the literature of maker between 1975 and 2016. The overall structure of its intellectual landscape is illustrated in terms of thematic concentrations of knowledge clusters of maker study, hot research categories and keywords, major contributing factors including contributing countries, organizations, and authors. Our review is based on 836 bibliographic records retrieved from the ISI Web of Science and visualized by the scientometric software of CiteSpace. This application results in comprehensive knowledge maps of maker research. The study identifies major intellectual cooperation network, co-occurrence keywords, research clusters and landmark articles, including: (1) the thematic clusters of ‘‘maker movement’’, ‘‘DIY culture and extended milieu’’, ‘‘craftsman hero’’ reflects the biggest knowledge base clusters of maker study. (2) “Physical computing”, “maker space”, “maker movement”, “3D printer” are the major frontiers of maker research based on analysis of citation burst. (3) In terms of contributing countries, institutions, authors, the major driving force of maker research is from the United States of America, England and Germany, with University of California Berkeley, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology being major contributing institutions. Paulo Blikstein from Stanford University USA, Vasilis Kostakis from Tallinn University of Technology Estonia, Hans-Joachim Böhme from Technische Universität Ilmenau German all have published three articles and rank at the top of the author list.

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Notes

  1. This is a comprehensive, user-maintained list of all active hackerspaces throughout the world. The website is https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_hackerspaces.

  2. See Xie (2016).

  3. Subject area terms in WoS: http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOKRS56B5/help/WOS/hp_subject_area_terms_easca.htm.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to give great thanks to Professor Michael Keane of Curtin University Australia for valuable discussions and suggestions throughout this research. This work is supported by Key Research Base of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Zhejiang Province (13JDCB02Z); State Scholarship Fund of China Scholarship Council (201508330629); 2015 High Education Research Project of High Education Association of Zhejiang Province (No.17); Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics High Education Research Project (No. JK201509); Hangzhou Dianzi University High Education Research Project (YB201620).

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  1. School of Business Administration, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, China

    Ying Chen

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, China

    Can Wu

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  1. Ying Chen
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  2. Can Wu
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Correspondence to Ying Chen.

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Chen, Y., Wu, C. The hot spot transformation in the research evolution of maker. Scientometrics 113, 1307–1324 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2542-4

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