Journal co-citation analysis of semiconductor literature

The purpose of this study is to map semiconductor literature using journal co-citation analysis. The journal sample was gathered from the INSPEC database from 1978 to 1997. In the co-citation analysis, the data compiled were counts of the number of times two journal titles were jointly cited in later publications. It is assumed that the more two journals are cited together, the closer the relationship between them. The journal set used was the 30 most productive journals in the field of semiconductors. Counts of co-citations to the set of semiconductor journals were retrieved from SciSearch database, accessed through Dialog. Cluster analysis and multi-dimensional scaling were employed to create two-dimensional maps of journal relationships in the cross-citation networks. The following results were obtained through this co-citation study: The 30 journals fall fairly clearly into three clusters. The major cluster of journals, containing 17 titles, is in the subject of physics. The second cluster, consisting of 9 journals, includes journals primarily on material science. The remaining cluster represents research areas in the discipline of electrical and electronic engineering. All co-cited journals share similar co-citation profiles, reflected in high positive Pearson correlation. Two hundred and ninety-six pairs (68%) correlate at greater than 0.70. This shows that there is strong relationship between semiconductor journals. Five individual journals in five paired sets with co-citation frequency over 100,000 times include Physical Review B, Condensed Matter; Physical Review Letters; Applied Physics Letters; Journal of Applied Physics; and Solid State Communications.