摘要
Facilitating cross-disciplinary research
has attracted much attention in recent years, with
special concerns in nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Although policy discourse has emphasized that nano technology is substantively integrative, some analysts
have countered that it is really a loose amalgam of
relatively traditional pockets of physics, chemistry,
and other disciplines that interrelate only weakly. We
are developing empirical measures to gauge and
visualize the extent and nature of interdisciplinary
interchange. Such results speak to research organiza tion, funding, and mechanisms to bolster knowledge
transfer. In this study, we address the nature of cross disciplinary linkages using ‘‘science overlay maps’’ of
articles, and their references, that have been catego rized into subject categories. We find signs that the
rate of increase in nano research is slowing, and that
its composition is changing (for one, increasing
chemistry-related activity). Our results suggest that
nanotechnology research encompasses multiple dis ciplines that draw knowledge from disciplinarily
diverse knowledge sources. Nano research is highly,
and increasingly, integrative—but so is much of
science these days. Tabulating and mapping nano
research activity show a dominant core in materials
sciences, broadly defined. Additional analyses and
maps show that nano research draws extensively upon
knowledge presented in other areas; it is not con stricted within narrow silos.
