Relation of seminal nanotechnology document production to total nanotechnology document production — South Korea

• Published in: Scientometrics 2008-07, Vol.76 (1), p.43-67
• Main Authors: Kostoff, Ronald N., Barth, Ryan B., Lau, Clifford G. Y.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bibliometrics. Scientometrics; Bibliometrics. Scientometrics. Evaluation; Computer Science; Exact sciences and technology; Information and communication sciences; Information science. Documentation; Information Storage and Retrieval; Library and information science. General aspects; Library Science; Sciences and techniques of general use
• ISSN: 0138-9130; 1588-2861
• DOI: 10.1007/s11192-007-1891-9

This study evaluates trends in quality of nanotechnology and nanoscience papers produced by South Korean authors. The metric used to gauge quality is ratio of highly cited nanotechnology papers to total nanotechnology papers produced in sequential time frames. In the first part of this paper, citations (and publications) for nanotechnology documents published by major producing nations and major producing global institutions in four uneven time frames are examined. All nanotechnology documents in the Science Citation Index [SCI, 2006] for 1998, 1999–2000, 2001–2002, 2003 were retrieved and analyzed in March 2007. In the second part of this paper, all the nanotechnology documents produced by South Korean institutions were retrieved and examined. All nanotechnology documents produced in South Korea (each document had at least one author with a South Korea address) in each of the above time frames were retrieved and analyzed. The South Korean institutions were extracted, and their fraction of total highly cited documents was compared to their fraction of total published documents. Non-Korean institutions that co-authored papers were included as well, to offer some perspective on the value of collaboration.