Identifying Technology Evolution Pathways by Integrating Citation Network and Text Mining

摘要

Currently researches about technology evolution pathways pay more attention to core paths than alternative paths. Some promising technologies might be developed from these alternative paths. An approach integrating citation network and text mining is proposed to map the evolution pathways contained more information. [Method/Process] Firstly, documents are collected for constructing citation-networks. Secondly, a clustering algorithm is applied to networks. Thirdly, a text mining algorithm is applied to find out the topic of each community by clustering. Finally, transition relationships between different communities are found by matching intersection percentage to construct evolution pathways. Additive manufacturing is chosen as a case study. [Result/Conclusion] The result shows that liner pathways, crossed pathways and emerging pathways of additive manufacturing are identified for unfolding the alternative paths. According to the pattern of relationship between the core paths and the alternative paths, different kinds of technology evolution pathways would be identified.