Prior to the designed survey questionnaire, bibliometric
analysis was used to identify research domains and
converging technologies to combat emerging infectious
diseases (EID) and have been analyzing electronic
R&D publications, particularly bibliographic abstracts
to extract useful and worthwhile information for detect
interesting correlation and patterns among the search
results.
From the flowchart above, the data
consisted of Compendex and INSPEC in
which focused on technology oriented database. The searches
yielded 3,472 papers related to Technologies for EIDs
during 2000 – 2006. The data combined with complementary
of bibliometric results from National Institute of Science
and Technology Policy (NISTEP), Japan.
Criteria of the searched results derived from the database
(NSTDA vs. NISTEP) combined with
- Technology vs. Scientific research oriented database
- Co-word analysis vs. Co-citation analysis
Method to Identify Converging Technologies
1. Co-occurrence Matrix between topics 
-
Certain terms in different technological
areas tending to appear together in records is taken
as evidence of possible convergence.
-
For example, there are 36 records
mentioning polymers and polymer science together
with biotechnology. Hence, possible convergence
of material science and biotechnology
2. Topic Mapping based on co-word analysis
Grouping technique - Principal Components
Analysis
Visualization technique - multidimensional
scaling and path erasing algorithms
(Each node (or concept) represents several terms that
are combined based on how frequently they occur together.
Proximity and links show higher correlation among concepts.)
Identified Research Domains
Three main research domains are identified,
along with technologies relevant to the each
domain (omitted here)
1. Bioterrorism and Surveillance System
2. Earth and Climate Observation
3. Detection Diagnosis and Identification
Together with an earlier
result of seven research areas from NISTEP, Japan, these
are synthesized into a questionnaire to communicate
and verify the results with a wider group of APEC experts.
Go
straight to the Survey Questionnaire
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