J Nanopart Res (2014) 16:2194 DOI 10.1007/s11051-013-2194-0 PERSPECTIVES Measuring the development of a common scientific lexicon in nanotechnology Sanjay K. Arora • Jan Youtie • Stephen Carley • Alan L. Porter • Philip Shapira Received: 26 June 2013 / Accepted: 5 December 2013 / Published online: 24 December 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Over the last two decades, nanotechnology of nano-prefixed terms in response to broader policy or has not only grown considerably but also evolved in its societal influences, they do suggest that there are use of scientific terminology. This paper examines the intellectual and scientific underpinnings to the growth growth in nano-prefixed terms in a corpus of nano- of a collectively shared vocabulary. We consider technology scholarly publications over a 21-year time whether our findings signify the maturation of a period. The percentage of publications using a nano- scientific field and the extent to which this denotes the prefixed term has increased from \10 % in the early emergence of a shared scientific understanding regard- 1990s to nearly 80 % by 2010. A co-word analysis of ing nanotechnology. nano-prefixed terms indicates that the network of these terms has moved from being densely organized around Keywords Scientific lexicon Á Bibliometrics Á a few common nano-prefixed terms such as ‘‘nano- Science and technology policy structure’’ in 2000 to becoming less dense and more differentiated in using additional nano-prefixed terms while continuing to coalesce around the common nano-prefixed terms by 2010. We further observe that the share of nanotechnology papers oriented toward Introduction biomedical and clinical medicine applications has risen from just over 5 % to more than 11 %. While Growth in nanotechnology publication and patent these results cannot fully distinguish between the use production continues apace (Roco 2010; Arora et al. 2012). Yet debate persists about the extent to which terminology in nanotechnology is representative of a S. K. Arora (&) Á S. Carley Á A. L. Porter Á P. Shapira School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, distinct set of scientific phenomena or whether it is the Atlanta, GA 30332-0345, USA result of more sociological processes. On one hand, e-mail: [email protected] Kuhn (1996) posits that, in ‘‘normal science,’’ research generates a collectively shared and esoteric vocabu- J. Youtie Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Institute of lary that helps scientists describe phenomena and Technology, Atlanta, GA 30308, USA diffuse new insights. As fields develop, the trend toward increasing specialization produces an ever- P. Shapira more specialized and fragmented vocabulary. On the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, other hand, some science and technology scholars Manchester M13 9PL, UK maintain that nano-prefixed terminology represents a 123 2194 Page 2 of 11 J Nanopart Res (2014) 16:2194 ‘‘catchphrase’’ for a set of political, social, and Khushf (2004), whose research provides evidence economic dynamics which inform yet are still distinct for convergence of technologies at the nanoscale, also from the intellectual pursuit of knowledge. The debate acknowledges that some scientists may be using nano- is not only about the maturation of the nanotechnology prefixed terms to obtain funding for research that in the domain but, as we argue, also about the maturation of past has or could have received support from estab- the terminology used to distinguish the domain. lished grant programs. Restated, scientists may be This paper seeks to contribute to this debate by relabeling their research to make their work more providing bibliometric evidence of the growing use of attractive to the contemporary funding environment. nano-prefixed terminology in scientific articles. More recently, Hodge and colleagues point toward the Although we cannot ascertain nanotechnology potential for rebranding research as nanotechnology researchers’ motivations for using nanotechnology and the implications of this rebranding for discussions and related terms from this bibliometric approach, our about risk and regulatory approaches (Hodges et al. results do suggest that terms beginning with a nano 2013). Other authors wonder if there is a ‘‘nano-hype’’ prefix are used in an increasing share of research in overselling the distinctiveness of nanotechnology, articles’ title and abstract content. Moreover, these including its terminology. The use of the ‘‘nano-hype’’ nano-prefix terms are becoming more differentiated phraseology has occurred in both a discourse-theoret- and application-oriented. ical context, such as the Wullweber (2008) article that describes nanotechnology as an ‘‘empty signifier,’’ as well as in a bibliometric context, such as the Meyer Literature review (2007) article which shows little integration between various nanotechnology subfields (see Porter and The debate about the nomenclature of nanotechnology Youtie 2009a, b for an alternative finding showing begins from questions about the definition of nano- increased integration of nanotechnology articles). In technology. Although nanotechnology has a specific sum, this set of works questions the validity of definition related to size, novelty, and engineering and terminology associated with nanotechnology as being manipulation (NSET 2007), intricacies in the defini- representative of a new wave of scientific inquiry but tion occur. The classic work by Wood et al. (2003) instead sees it as a manifestation of societal factors. highlights these intricacies by acknowledging that Perspectives that maintain and describe the distinc- field definitions based on scientific size boundaries tive scientific phenomenon behind various nano- have blurred lines in part because of scale variability prefixed terms are in contrast. For example, even as in the materials themselves. The authors go on to they suggest that it is difficult to distinguish terms such underscore the importance of taking sociological as as nanobiotechnology and bionanotechnology, Ba- well as scientific considerations into account in neyx and Park (2013) go on to provide the scientific defining nanotechnology. This perspective is echoed underpinning for differences between these two terms. by Grieneisen and Zhang (2011) who observe that They indicate that nanobiotechnology refers to tools definitions of nanotechnology are evolving from size- and devices for biotechnology research, while bio- dependent definitions to characterizations that enable nanotechnology reflects self-assembly of biological journal editor flexibility in accepting articles that do matter for nano-enabled products. Grieneisen (2010) not specifically mention size dimensions (see also shows that the number of journals with nanotechnol- Braun et al. (2007) on the gatekeeping function of ogy in their title has grown exponentially, especially editors of nanotechnology journals). after 1997; more than 90 % of these journals are not This debate is furthered through a set of articles open access, meaning that they may use peer review to concerning the extent to which nanotechnology relates ensure that articles are scientifically relevant to the to something distinctive, or whether it is a renaming of nanotechnology domain and use appropriate method- existing scholarly work. The article by Macnaghten ologies. The article further observes that more recent et al. (2005) about social values embedded in nano- journals with nanotechnology in their title use more technology raises issues as to whether the science qualifying and modifying terms alongside the nano- behind nanotechnology is really distinctly novel prefixed field term and demonstrate greater levels of compared to previous scientific work. Likewise, specialization. An update to this work demonstrates 123 J Nanopart Res (2014) 16:2194 Page 3 of 11 2194 that the ever-increasing ranks of nanotechnology Data and methods journals also have higher citation rates (Grieneisen and Zhang 2012). Broadly concluding from the To examine how nano-prefixed terminology has initiatives of Nano2’s workshops and synthesis of changed over time, we use article metadata extracted nanotechnology scientific developments and applica- from the Science Citation Index through a multi-term tions (Roco et al. 2011), Hersm (2011) describes and multi-stage Boolean search strategy. The search nanotechnology as moving into a ‘‘posthype era’’ in terms in this strategy include both nano-prefixed terms which its applications are widely pervasive throughout and a large array of non-nano-prefixed terms indicated scientific and industrial sectors. to be of relevance to nanotechnology research based While the evidence is mixed as to whether the on expert interviews and surveys, a review of search growth of nano-prefixed terms arises out of sociolog- terms used in prior bibliometric research, an applica- ical drivers or the emergence of distinctive scientific tion of precision and recall measures, and a compar- phenomena (or both), many studies continue to use ison of ‘‘hits’’ from the various search strategies nano-prefixed and related content in bibliometric (Porter et al. 2008; Arora et al. 2012). This approach analyses of patents and publications to understand results in a nanotechnology domain composed of more the dynamics of nanotechnology research and inno- than 800,000 publications and was tested by Huang vation systems. The set of works that use bibliometric et al. (2010), who found that the search strategy was