Identifying Quantitative Research Levels in Nanocarbons Using Semi-automatically Extracted Vocabularies

In natural science, research levels can be classified as “basic” or “applied.” Identifying transition processes from basic to applied research helps to understand the science and technology strategies of countries and companies. The field of nanocarbons has undergone a transformation phase whereby the technology has become matured after many years of basic research, and applied research is currently flourishing. However, the identification of research levels for a comprehensive understanding has only been done in the biomedical field. Here, we develop a novel method that quantitatively captures the macroscopic maturity of nanocarbon research. By statistically extracting nearly 7,000 technical terms based on a topic model, the method calculates continuous scores of technology maturity for each scientific paper. The transition of the scores over the past 50 years for the five countries shows that the research trend has been tending towards applied research with the passage of time. In China especially, research levels go to “applied’ faster than in other countries. In technological fields that require a long period of basic research, this method enables us to capture research maturity in a macroscopic and quantitative manner. Such a comprehensive perspective can provide a view on the commercialization of technologies. Therefore, comparing the index among countries and research institutions may help make investment decisions for technologies that require basic scientific research.