Person:
Porter,
Alan L.
Porter,
Alan L.
Permanent Link
Associated Organization(s)
Organizational Unit
ORCID
ArchiveSpace Name Record
Publication Search Results
Now showing
1 - 9 of 9
-
ItemUsing Global Maps of Science in Policy and Management(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-03) Leydesdorff, Loet ; Porter, Alan L. ; Rafols, Ismael
-
ItemA Systematic Technology Forecasting Approach for New and Emerging Science and Technology: Case Study of Nano-Enhanced Biosensors(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-02) Guo, Ying ; Huang, Lu ; Porter, Alan L.This paper addresses the topic of anticipating likely development paths for a particular "New and Emerging Science & Technology" (NES&T). Characteristics of NES&T -- technological uncertainty and contextual dynamics -- pose challenges for technology management and forecasting practices. Researchers, technologists, R&D managers, staff in funding agencies and policy makers "need to know" future prospects. This requires better ways to capture NES&T development patterns, within their socio-economic context, as well as likely innovation opportunities. A new technology forecasting framework for NES&Ts is presented, supported by a case study of nano-enhanced biosensors.
-
ItemProfiling Research Patterns for a New and Emerging Science and Technology: Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-02) Guo, Ying ; Huang, Lu ; Porter, Alan L.This paper explores a framework to profile research patterns for New and Emerging Science and Technology (NES&T), and applies it to Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC), a promising NES&T. Such work is done via "tech mining" to capture key technological attributes, leading actors, and networks. The result shows that DSSC research is an interdisciplinary field, with increasing cooperation among different levels. Japan is notable not only in the number of papers but also for considerable involvement of the corporate sector in research. In contrast, China, as the second country in quantity, shows an obvious imbalance with few industrially associated authors, limited international cooperation, and low citations. Research profiling, as illustrated here, can inform technology strategies, and science and technology policies.
-
ItemNanotechnology Aggregation or Integration: The Case of Kinesin(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-02) Meyer, Martin ; Porter, Alan L. ; Rafols, IsmaelSeveral studies have examined the multidisciplinary characteristics of nanotechnology. Most of these studies have drawn on data from publication or patent databases. These "top-down" approaches (which themselves reflect one approach to nanotechnology's development) have produced somewhat mixed results. This is in part because of the inability to examine linkages at the micro (i.e. individual researcher) or the meso (i.e. university laboratory or institute or department) level. But more importantly, taking nanotechnology as a whole can mask the effects of many of the individual research areas that it encompasses. In this study we propose to focus on one research area within the broad research domain of nanotechnology - kinesin. Kinesin is a category of motor proteins found in cells. We seek to observe the multidisciplinary characteristics of kinesin as it is revealed in nano publication patterns and relationships as well as in research activity of nanotechnology publications and an international laboratory in Japan. Research Question The research question addressed in this study is to what extent are multidisciplinary characteristics observed in the kinesin domain and how have these changed over time? We additionally seek to examine how these characteristics appear from a nano publication standpoint compared to how they appear when changing the focus of evidence to laboratory research interactions? Methods This study employs multiple methods to examine the multidisciplinary characteristics of kinesin. We use a database from the Web of Science (WOS) Science Citation Index (SCI) that was compiled using a multi-stage modular Boolean search strategy to extract nanotechnology publications (Porter et al, 2008). From this database, publications pertaining to kinesin are extracted. We then examine the distribution of these publications along a science overlay map using Pajek software for the research area over time and along its various dimensions. We also apply and compare several measures of multidisciplinarity including measures that reflect two aspects of the concept: disciplinary diversity and coherence. In addition to publication-based methods, we report results from observational and interview data on the research activities of two laboratories in Japan working on biomolecular motors (i.e., a subdomain of kinesin). Preliminary Results Early results suggest that kinesin is undergoing an evolution towards disciplinary diversity. Early articles focus on disciplines in the biomedical sciences, while later time periods demonstrate evidence of outreach to chemistry, materials sciences, and physics. There is also evidence of changes in network coherence over time. We see that the kinesin publication network becomes less dense but more specialized over time, with one central cluster articulating the field. Upon examination, this central cluster is also the one with the highest disciplinary diversity. Some of these areas of specialization (some of which are connected and some of which are not) are observed in plant science, cilia related research, chemistry, cellular functions, mechano-chemistry, and materials science. The laboratory studies reveal an additional layer of evidence about multidisciplinarity in kinesin. We observe two different research networks around the two laboratories: one focuses on bioenergetics and the other on linear molecular motors. We also see areas of overlap as key research papers and activities create a connection. These results suggest that nanotechnologies as a whole are disciplinary diverse but not necessarily coherent. By examining the disciplinary diversity and network coherence of each topic, we may spot the local areas wherein knowledge integration is occuring (2). In other words, nanotechnologies seem to be neither fully convergent nor fully divergent; rather they exhibit a modular structure with local integration articulating the convergence of the scattered subfields. 6) Email address: i.rafols@sussex.ac.uk 7) Schummer, Joachim (2004). Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and patterns of research collaboration in nanoscience and nanotechnology, Scientometrics, 59, 425-465; Meyer, M., 2006, What Do We Know About Innovation in Nanotechnology? Some Propositions About an Emerging Field Between Hype and Path-Dependency, Paper presented at the 2006 Technology Transfer Society Conference, September 27-29, Atlanta, Georgia; Porter, A.L., Rafols, I., and Meyer, M. 2008. The cognitive geography of nanotechnologies: locating nano-research in the Map of Science. Paper Presented at the NBER Conference on Nanotechnology and Nanoindicators Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 1-2, 2008. 8) Porter, A.L., Youtie, J., Shapira, P., and Schoeneck, D.J., Refining Search Terms for Nanotechnology, Journal of Nanoparticle Research, Vol. 10 (5), 715-728, 2008. 9) LEYDESDORFF, L. AND RAFOLS, I. (Forthcoming) A Global Map of Science Based on the ISI Subject Categories. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Preprint [http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/map06/texts/map06.pdf].
-
ItemLocating Nanotechnology Among the Disciplines(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-10-02) Porter, Alan L. ; Youtie, Jan L.Nanoscience and nanotechnology ("nano") has been described as the ultimate interdisciplinary research area. Mihail Roco and others have set forth policy discourse through their notion that nano enables the convergence of disciplines under the rubric of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive sciences ("NBIC"). However, some observers are more skeptical, suggesting that nano serves as a term for multiple, but perhaps unconnected, research endeavors. For example Schummer's (2004) analysis of 600 nanotechnology publications in 2002 and 2003 finds that research collaboration patterns in nanotechnology do not significantly differ from those of traditional disciplinary research and concludes that nanotechnology appears to be an aggregate of unconnected mono-disciplines.[2] Despite these polar positions, it is widely believed that understanding the nature and characteristics of disciplinary relationships within nano research is important, with the potential to influence science policy, research management, and the conduct of research. Research Question This paper will address two questions: (1) how broadly does nano engage various disciplines or research areas? And (2) to what extent does nanotechnology research integrate research knowledge from multiple disciplines? Methods This analysis is based on a bibliometric analysis of the journal subject categories (SCs) provided by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The data source used in this analysis draws on a set of nano publications that were identified using a multi-stage modular Boolean search strategy of Web of Science (WOS) Science Citation Index (SCI) publications from 1990 to 2008. This strategy is described in Porter et al (2008). [3] The multidisciplinary aspects of these publications are assessed through three approaches: (1) by placing them in an overlay map to the map of science developed by Leydesdorff and Rafols (2008) [4]; (2) by examining the SCs in the cited references of these articles, and (3) by examining how the multidisciplinary attributes of these nano publications compare to those of other traditional disciplines by using a measure of disciplinary integration which ranges from 0 (stand alone discipline that does not cite work from other disciplines) to 1 (highly integrated discipline that fully cites work from other disciplines). Preliminary Results A preliminary analysis of a sample of nano papers yields findings that both support and cast uncertainty on conventional beliefs about the interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology. Initial results suggest that nano papers do in fact encompass a wide range of disciplines as measured by the journal SC. Moreover, we do find evidence of a considerable presence of multiple SCs in the cited references of samples of nano publications in our nano dataset. This finding suggests that nano researchers do possess considerable knowledge of research activities in multiple disciplines, and the findings of these activities inform and move their research forward. This conclusion is limited by the use of journal publications as the database, but it does indicate a future research direction in that qualitative and ethnographic studies of laboratory behavior could use multidisciplinary behaviors as a lense for examining nanoscientists' research activity. When we compare the multidisciplinary activity of nano to that of more traditional disciplines, using an integration score, we find that nano is highly multidisciplinary but so are other comparator disciplines. The exception is mathematics which appears to be more of a stand alone discipline that tends to cite other work in mathematics. In summary the results suggest that nano does possess multidisciplinary characteristics. However so many fields in science writ large. Recognizing and fostering these characteristics will be important for continued development of nanotechnology. [1] Roco, M. C., and Bainbridge, W.S. Converging technologies for improving human performance: Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2003); Roco, M. C. Journal of Nanoparticle Research 10 (1), 11-29 (2008). [2] Schummer, J., Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and patterns of research collaboration in nanoscience and nanotechnology, Scientometrics, 59, 425-465 (2004). [3] Porter, A.L., Youtie, J., Shapira, P., and Schoeneck, D.J., Refining Search Terms for Nanotechnology, Journal of Nanoparticle Research, Vol. 10 (5), 715-728, 2008. [4] LEYDESDORFF, L. AND RAFOLS, I. (Forthcoming) A Global Map of Science Based on the ISI Subject Categories. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Preprint [http://users.fmg.uva.nl/lleydesdorff/map06/texts/map06.pdf].
-
ItemHow Interdisciplinary is Nano?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009-08-25) Porter, Alan L.Nanotechnology is commonly viewed as being multidisciplinary, although several studies of the multidisciplinary characteristics of nanotechnology find the term to be an umbrella expression for what in fact are unconnected fields. Alan Porter will present results from his recent work which draws on a database of nearly 500,000 nanoscience and engineering publications. His results locate nanotechnology amidst materials science, physics, and chemistry. By focusing on the cited references in these articles, he shows that nanotechnology articles cite on a diverse range of disciplinary areas.
-
ItemNational science and technology monitoring and alerting systems(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-09-30) Cozzens, Susan E. ; Kim, Kyung-Sup ; Ordóñez, Gonzalo ; Porter, Alan L.
-
ItemHigh tech indicators: technology-based competitiveness of 33 nations(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-09-04) Porter, Alan L. ; Roessner, J. David ; Newman, Nils ; Jin, Xiao-Yin ; Johnson, David M.
-
ItemKISTI: Emerging technology assessment and training(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-10-29) Cozzens, Susan E. ; Porter, Alan L. ; Hicks, Diana ; Gatchair, Sonia ; Kim, Kyung-Sup ; Ordonez, Gonzalo