Presented at SLA MD's Nebulous Connections April 2017. Discusses techniques for doing environmental scans and mapping a technology landscape

1. Using
Bibliometrics
to Keep Up with
the Joneses
Christina K. Pikas, BS, MLS, PhD
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Nebulous Connections, April 4, 2017

2. How do you
know what’s
going on in
the world?

3. How do you
understand a
technology
landscape outside
your own?

4. You could interview
lots of people, make
site visits, and/or …
use bibliometrics!wocintechchat.com

5. Agenda
◎Questions to answer
◎General approach
◎Tips and techniques
◎Verification & validation

6. 1.
Questions to Answer

7. Given a topic
What is the volume of work and how is it
trending?
What are the top venues?
Where is the work being done?
Countries?
Organizations?

8. Who funds this work?
What methods, models, etc. are used?
How is this field related to other
fields?
Who are the top researchers/ groups?
How well connected are they?

9. Given an organization
Over what distribution of topics
do they publish?
With whom do they collaborate?
Who funds their work?
How well cited is their work?
Is it taught in schools?
Does it have clinical applications?

10. Are there clinical or practical
implications/spin-offs/products?
Are there regulatory or policy implications?
Is the work discussed in the news? By
Congress?

11. 2.
General Approach

12. Define topic
Search
CleanAnalyze
Report

13. Define Topic
◎Not too big, not too small
◎Best to do this with the end user of the
report
◎Work iteratively with a subject matter
expert if possible
◎Reference interview!

14. Search
◎Citation databases
BUT ALSO
◎Domain databases with high quality metadata
◎Technical report servers
◎Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic
◎Funding databases (NSF, Reporter,
URED if you are DoD)
Document
your searches
as you go!

15. Clean

16. Validity & Reliability
◎Count all the things
◎Associate correct
terms
◎Show accurate
trends
Tool Selection
◎Correct input for the tool
◎Be able to answer the
desired question with the
tool
◎Merge multiple sources
Note: This slide is from Monday’s talk about data preparation

17. Analyze
Relevant to the questions you are answering,
not what your favorite tool can do 

18. Report
◎Sometimes tables are better than
visualizations
◎Include narrative with results
◎Take time to include a backup section with a
clear description of what methods you used and
searches you performed

19. 3.
Tips & Techniques

20. Geography
Geocoding correspondence address is
actually doable!
Sci2 and R are two paths.

21. Done with R

22. VantagePoint ($)

23. Text
◎VOS viewer does co-word graphing using
the abstract – free!
◎Can do in Gephi, but need to do pre-
processing elsewhere
◎R
Remember to
remove copyright
statements from
abstracts first to
avoid publisher
names being your
top result!

24. PNNL In-Spire (free to US Government & contractors)

25. PNNL In-Spire (free to US Government & contractors)

26. Networks
Co-authorship
Nodes as: authors, groups, organizations, countries
Citation
Citing/Cited, co-citation, bibliographic coupling
Funder – Researcher
Supplier – Builder
Co-word, semantic, topic, etc.
Gephi, Pajek, VOS viewer, Sci2, CitNetExplorer
And more…

27. A.Q. Rogers et al. (2015) You get what you pay for: examining the true cost of
delivering utility with small satellites. 31st Space Symposium. Colorado Springs,
CO
Done in R

28. Patent network with 1528 patents. Colored by clusters. Sized by degree. Labeled by clusters.
Done in Quid ($$$)
Data Cleaning
Enterprise Resource Planning
Data Acquisition
Data Integration & Transmission
Image & Visual Data
Vehicle Data
Signal Processing
Printing Applications
Data Cleansing (records)
Power Grid Applications
Multi-Dimensional Data
Multi-Media Data
Data Production & Metadata
Equipment Control
Mobile Devices
Test Data Integration
Data Enrichment
Sensor Networks
Electronic Payments
Sewing and Embroidery
Data Integration Management
Data Preparation Assistance
Medical Applications
Data Integration (business processes)
Mask Data Preparation (electronics manufacturing)

29. VantagePoint ($$)

30. 4.
Verification &
Validation

31. Sounds more official than it probably is!
◎ Check with subject matter experts:
○ What is missing?
○ Does anything look amiss?
◎ For results, check for competing
hypotheses
◎ Put it in to Google
◎ Re-check for citing articles (recent or other)
◎ Carefully review all visualizations for
weirdness

32. Conclusions

33. ◎Bibliometrics can provide a useful tool for
looking at a research landscape
◎Best done iteratively with subject matter
experts
◎Librarians can provide this service best
because of the searching and analyses
required
◎Be sure to not overstate results!

34. Questions?
You can find me at:
@cpikas
Christina.Pikas@jhuapl.edu
https://www.slideshare.net/cpikas
http://christinaslisrant.scientopia.org/

35. Credits
Special thanks to all the people who made and released
these awesome resources for free:
◎ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
◎ Photographs by Unsplash & Death to the Stock Photo
(license)