Análisis de la interdisciplinariedad en la ingeniería química universitaria española

Abstract

An analysis is made of interdisciplinarity in the chemical engineering (CE) field. It includes a detailed description of the occurrence of papers and journals in each of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) categories in order to gain insight into the structure of knowledge in CE research, its patterns and associated trends. Bibliometric methods are used to analyse the multi-assignment of papers and/or journals to the various JCR categories. The total of journals (598) is distributed among 115 categories, with 54% of them (324) and 56% of the documents assigned to more than one category. The results of a co-occurrence analysis of the data corresponding to the different categories are mapped using the Visualization of Similarities (VOS) technique. The co-occurrences are plotted on a two-dimensional representation revealing the distinct clusters formed by their proximities. The result was 13 clusters. The categories that stand out as most central and most interconnected were "Engineering, Chemical", "Chemistry, Physical", and "Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology". No relationship was found between the co-authorship index and multi-assignment into categories. The 14 categories selected as the most productive represented, in 2006, 39.7% of the journals in the JCR's 1st quartile. © 2014 CSIC.