Neologisms and affiliation name: a bibliometric perspective on the institutionalization of interventional radiology
Résumé
Delimitation of scientific subfields constitutes one of the key problems in scientometrics. De Bruin and Moed (1993) suggested that “corporate address words” or word co-occurrence in affiliation field could be used. In science, researchers construct knowledge through neologisms. Studies of new scientific concepts indicated us new trends on naming institutions with neologisms. Therefore, one can postulate that neologisms are markers of emerging scientific field, and naming institution after neologisms could be part of a legitimation process. The aim of this paper is to explore this hypothesis through the bibliometric analysis of one case study related to the diffusion process of the concept of "interventional radiology" (IR). The study of the history of IR concept and its trends using affiliation addresses allows us to better understand how IR field has attempted to institutionalize and to gain its autonomy. Several institutions publishing in the field of IR have undertaken a legitimization process by entitling department "interventional radiology", but the specialty has partially or internationally failed to gain its scientific autonomy. In conclusion, measuring the trend of newly named institutions after a neologism can be used to assess the degree of institutionalization for a new medical or scientific field.