Abstract
As in other fields of science, bibliometry has become the primary method of gaging progress in nanotechnology. In the United States in the late 1990s, a period when policy makers were preparing the groundwork for what would become the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), bibliometry largely replaced expert interviews, then the standard method of assessing nanotechnology. However, such analyses of this sector have tended not to account for productivity. We hope to correct this oversight by integrating economic input and output measurements calculating academic publications divided by the number of researchers, and accounting for government investment in nanotechnology. When nanotechnology journal publication is measured in these ways, the U.S. is not the leader, as has been widely assumed. Rather, it lags behind Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1174-1182 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Technological Forecasting and Social Change |
| Volume | 78 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| Early online date | 11 Apr 2011 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Sept 2011 |
Funding
We appreciate input from Mikael Johansson in an early brainstorming exercise, comments from John Mohr on an early draft, and suggestions by W. Patrick McCray. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their criticism. This research is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 0531184 . Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Center for Nanotechnology in Society. Appendix 1
Keywords
- bibliometry
- citation
- country comparison
- impact factor
- metric
- nanotechnology