Language Trends In Nanoscience And Technology: The Case Of Chinese-language Publications

摘要

Nanoscience and technology (NST) is a young scientific and technological field that has generated great worldwide interest in Che past two decades. Previous bibliometric analyses have unmistakably demonstrated the remarkable growth of the global NST literature. While almost all published research articles in NST are in English, increasingly a larger share of NST publications is published in the Chinese language. Perplexingly, Chinese is the only language - apart from English - that displays an ascendant trend in the NST literature. In this brief note, we explore and evaluate three arguments that could explain this phenomenon: coverage bias, language preference, and community formation.