The Outbreak of SARS Mirrored by Bibliometric Mapping: Combining Bibliographic Coupling with the Complete Link Cluster Method
The Outbreak of SARS Mirrored by Bibliometric Mapping: Combining Bibliographic Coupling with the Complete Link Cluster Method

Summary/Abstract: In this study a novel method of science mapping is presented which combines bibliographic coupling, as a measure of document-document similarity, with an agglomerative hierarchical cluster method. The focus in this study is on the mapping of so called 'core documents', a cncept presented fisrt in 1995 by Glanzel and Czerwon. The term 'core documents' denote documents that have a central position in the research front in terms of many and strong bibliographic coupling links. The identification and mapping of core documents usually requires a large multidisciplinary research setting and in this study the 2003 volume of the Science Citation Index was applied. from this database, a sub-set of core documents reporting on the outbreak of SARS in 2002 was chosen for the demonstration of the application of this mapping method. It was demonstrated that the method, in this case, successfully identified interpretable research themes and that iterative clustering on two subsequent levels of cluster agglomeration may provide with useful and current information.

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