In this post, we highlight how we used the software tool VOSviewer to construct and visualize bibliometric networks for the field of technology and innovation management. This post was produced by Christine Pitt and based on our research article with Andrew Park: "A bibliographic analysis of 20 years of research on innovation and new product development in technology and innovation management (TIM) journals".
Bibliometric reviews can be used to measure and map an area of research by looking at the articles that are published in relevant journals, the authors that research in this area and the popularity of certain keywords that are used. It is useful for researchers conducting a literature review to get a quick overview of the research area of a period of time, how it has evolved and what trends have emerged. Bibliometric reviews can be helpful for journal editors to understand a research area and if there are any sub-areas that are under-researched or especially popular.
VOS (Visualization of Similarities) Viewer is a free tool developed out of the University of Leiden that can be used to analyze bibliometric data and produce visualizations of the data through bibliometric maps. These maps are easy to interpret as entities such as keywords, authors or institutions are represented as colored circles in the network. The size of the circle indicates the size of the entity and the closer two circles or entities are on the map, the closer they are related to each other.
We applied VOSViewer to the Technology and Innovation Management research (TIM) area. We used specific search terms and used the Web of Science database to analyze the top ten TIM journals. The search terms used were “new product” or “new product management” or “innovation” or “new product development” or “innovation management” from the period 2000-2019. Using these search terms during the specified period resulted in 7,612 papers to be analyzed by VOSViewer.
Below are some of the visualizations produced by our bibliographic review of the TIM field.
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| Author Network |
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| Institution Network |
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| Journal Network |
This is just a small look into the insights that VOSViewer can reveal about an area of research when used in a bibliometric study. Bibliometric reviews are useful for both authors and journal editors for various reasons, but they are only useful when they are kept relevant.
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