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Exploring the Relationship between the Engineering and Physical Sciences and the Health and Life Sciences by Advanced Bibliometric Methods

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  • Ludo Waltman
  • Anthony F J van Raan
  • Sue Smart

Abstract

We investigate the extent to which advances in the health and life sciences (HLS) are dependent on research in the engineering and physical sciences (EPS), particularly physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering. The analysis combines two different bibliometric approaches. The first approach to analyze the ‘EPS-HLS interface’ is based on term map visualizations of HLS research fields. We consider 16 clinical fields and five life science fields. On the basis of expert judgment, EPS research in these fields is studied by identifying EPS-related terms in the term maps. In the second approach, a large-scale citation-based network analysis is applied to publications from all fields of science. We work with about 22,000 clusters of publications, each representing a topic in the scientific literature. Citation relations are used to identify topics at the EPS-HLS interface. The two approaches complement each other. The advantages of working with textual data compensate for the limitations of working with citation relations and the other way around. An important advantage of working with textual data is in the in-depth qualitative insights it provides. Working with citation relations, on the other hand, yields many relevant quantitative statistics. We find that EPS research contributes to HLS developments mainly in the following five ways: new materials and their properties; chemical methods for analysis and molecular synthesis; imaging of parts of the body as well as of biomaterial surfaces; medical engineering mainly related to imaging, radiation therapy, signal processing technology, and other medical instrumentation; mathematical and statistical methods for data analysis. In our analysis, about 10% of all EPS and HLS publications are classified as being at the EPS-HLS interface. This percentage has remained more or less constant during the past decade.

Suggested Citation

  • Ludo Waltman & Anthony F J van Raan & Sue Smart, 2014. "Exploring the Relationship between the Engineering and Physical Sciences and the Health and Life Sciences by Advanced Bibliometric Methods," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-16, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0111530
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111530
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras, 2010. "On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(1), pages 126-131, January.
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    10. Nees Jan van Eck & Ludo Waltman & Anthony F J van Raan & Robert J M Klautz & Wilco C Peul, 2013. "Citation Analysis May Severely Underestimate the Impact of Clinical Research as Compared to Basic Research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-6, April.
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    1. Anthony F J van Raan, 2015. "Dormitory of Physical and Engineering Sciences: Sleeping Beauties May Be Sleeping Innovations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(10), pages 1-38, October.

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