title: Identification and visualization of the intellectual structure and the main research lines in nanoscience and nanotechnology at the worldwide level.
abstract: The aim of this paper is to make manifest the intellectual and cognitive structure of nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) by means of visualization techniques. To this end, we used data from the Web of Science (WoS), delimiting the data to the category NST during the period of 2000-2013, retrieving a total of 198,275 documents. Through direct author citation of these works, we identified their origins and the seminal papers, and through word co-occurrence extracted from the titles and abstracts, the main lines of research were identified. In view of both structures, we may affirm that NST is a young scientific discipline in constant expansion, needing time to establish its foundations but showing a strongly interdisciplinary character; its development is furthermore dependent upon knowledge from other disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, or material sciences. We believe that this information may be very useful for the NST scientific community, as it reflects a large-scale analysis of the research lines of NST and how research has changed over time in the diverse areas of NST. This study is moreover intended to offer a useful tool for the NST scientific community, revealing at a glance the main research lines and landmark papers. Finally, the methodology used in this study can be replicated in any other field of science to explore its intellectual and cognitive structure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Communication, Faculty of Communication and Documentation, SCImago Research Group, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Teresa
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1311-0471
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Muñoz-Écija
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Communication, Faculty of Communication and Documentation, SCImago Research Group, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: Benjamín
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5115-7460
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vargas-Quesada
authors.affiliation: CSIC, Institute of Public Goods and Policies (IPP), SCImago Research Group, Albasanz 26-28, 28037 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Zaida
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1608-4478
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chinchilla-Rodríguez
keywords: Co-words; Direct citation; Historical roots; Intellectual structure; Nanoscience & Nanotechnology; Research trends; Scientometrics