How interdisciplinary is nanotechnology?

Abstract

Facilitating cross-disciplinary research has attracted much attention in recent years, with special concerns in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Although policy discourse has emphasized that nanotechnology is substantively integrative, some analysts have countered that it is really a loose amalgam of relatively traditional pockets of physics, chemistry, and other disciplines that interrelate only weakly. We are developing empirical measures to gauge and visualize the extent and nature of interdisciplinary interchange. Such results speak to research organization, funding, and mechanisms to bolster knowledge transfer. In this study, we address the nature of cross-disciplinary linkages using "science overlay maps" of articles, and their references, that have been categorized into subject categories. We find signs that the rate of increase in nano research is slowing, and that its composition is changing (for one, increasing chemistry-related activity). Our results suggest that nanotechnology research encompasses multiple disciplines that draw knowledge from disciplinarily diverse knowledge sources. Nano research is highly, and increasingly, integrative-but so is much of science these days. Tabulating and mapping nano research activity show a dominant core in materials sciences, broadly defined. Additional analyses and maps show that nano research draws extensively upon knowledge presented in other areas; it is not constricted within narrow silos.

Fig. 1

Nanoscience/nanotechnology publications. Source: database extracted from the Web of Science, Science Citation Index, Summer 2008 based on Porter et al. (2008b)

Fig. 2

Research areas active in nano in 1991. Note: See text for details on the mapping. Thanks to Ismael Rafols, SPRU, for making these maps

Fig. 3

Research areas active in nano in 2005. Note: See text for details on the mapping. Thanks to Ismael Rafols, SPRU, for making these maps

Fig. 4

Top 12 most commonly cited subject categories by nano articles published in applied physics journals

Fig. 5

Top 12 most commonly cited subject categories by nano articles published in physical chemistry journals

Fig. 6

Average integration scores for samples of nano articles. Note: On the basis of randomized samples of nano-related articles from SCI; the number of articles in each yearly sample ranges from 796 to 872 articles. Source: Samples from nano-database described in Porter et al. (2008b)