ISSN 0147-6882, Scientific and Technical Information Processing, 2007, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 212–218. © Allerton Press, Inc., 2007.
Original Russian Text © L.F. Borisova, N.S. Bogacheva, V.A. Markusova, E.E. Suetina, 2007, published in Nauchno-Technicheskaya Informatsiya, Seriya 1, 2007, No. 8, pp. 7–13.
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Nanoscience and nanotechnology are among the
most urgent directions of research and development
(R&D) since the end of the 20th century. In the group
of so-called convergent technologies (also including
the informatics, communication science, cognitive sci-
ences, and some other), nanoscience and nanotechnol-
ogy are now commonly considered as a critical novel
tool determining the world development in the 21st
century, which must completely revolutionize the infor-
mation technologies, materials science, and medicine.
As long ago as in 1959, the Nobel Prize winner
R. Feynman predicted the possibility of manipulating
individual atoms. However, it was the futurist
K.E. Drexler who managed to attract the world atten-
tion to the nanotechnology: in 1981 he termed Feyn-
man’s concept as “molecular nanotechnology” and
described the physical principles of molecular produc-
tion systems capable of fabricating objects on atomic
precision level.
The end of the 20th century was marked by rapid
progress and considerable achievements in the new
field of science and technology. In 2000, President B.
Clinton initiated the allocation of $500 million for the
United States program called “National Nanotechnol-
ogy Initiative: Leading to the Next Industrial Revolu-
tion” [1]. In 2002, the annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science—the most
representative institution in the scientific community of
the United States—held a special Session on the nano-
science and nanotechnology as opening the new age of
research and influencing the development of nanoelec-
tronics and related device technology.
The level of activity in the R&D in these directions
is very high in all industrial countries: from United
States to Australia and Singapore. In 2001, the Govern-
ment of China declared nanotechnology the critical
R&D direction in Guidance for National Development.
In Russia, nanotechnology was also included in the
list of priority R&D directions, which was validated by
President V. Putin and RF Government in 2002 [2, 3].
The past decades featured considerable changes in
the geography of scientific research activity. As is
known, the level of development of a certain field of
knowledge and the state of scientific cooperation in this
field can by judged from variation in the amount of pub-
lications and the citation indices. Braun et al. [4]
revealed exponential growth in the number of publica-
tions on nanotechnology in the middle 1990s. Note that
the identification of publications in this field is not sim-
ple, since many of such papers belong not only to natu-
ral sciences, but to technical disciplines and multidisci-
plinary fields as well. According to the rating scheme
adopted in [4], Russia was the seventh in scientific
cooperation and the Russian Academy of Sciences
(RAS) was a leader in this cooperation.
An analysis of publications on nanoscience and nan-
otechnology in 1992–2002, which was carried out at
the U.S. Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) [5]
based on the Science Citation Index (SCI) database,
showed that RAS occupied the 14th place in the list of
25 most frequently cited institutions in these fields. The
recent investigation of Leydesdorff and Wagner [6]
showed that, despite a certain decrease in the fraction of
papers from the United States, mostly in view of the
emergence of publications from China and other Asian
Bionanotechnhology: A Bibliometric Analysis
Using Science Citation Index Database (1995–2006)
L. F. Borisova, N. S. Bogacheva, V. A. Markusova, and E. E. Suetina
Received May 14, 2007
Abstract—The development of nanotechnology and the growth of investment in this field are briefly surveyed
based on a bibliometric analysis using Science Citation Index (SCI) database entering into the Web of Science
(WOS) online academic database, with special emphasis on the positions of Russian researchers in modern
nano- and bionanotechnology (BNT). The flow of domestic BNT publications over a period from 1995 to 2006
has been analyzed at three-year intervals. The search in SCI over this period of time yielded more than 19.2
thousand articles pertaining to the field under consideration. Russia is still among 50 leading countries with
respect to a broad spectrum of research in nanoscience and nanotechnology. However, the growth rate of
domestic publications among those covered by the WOS database lags significantly behind that of the publica-
tions from United States and China. The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is a leader among the domestic
institutions engaged in nanoscience and BNT, despite some decrease in the proportion of RAS publications in
the total world flow. The results of domestic investigations in BNT are primarily published in the world leading
journals on the chemistry and materials science.
DOI: 10.3103/S0147688207040077