John S. Liu

Introduction. This paper applies a unique citation-based method to analyse the development trajectory of bibliographic coupling research from 1963 to 2020. Method. Main path analysis is applied to a citation network created based on bibliographic data retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index of the Web of Science. Analysis. The analysis incorporated two major phases of basic bibliometrics (publication and citation trends, highly cited authors and core journals) and main path analysis. Results. A total of 223 papers on bibliographic coupling by 461 authors were identified. The papers were cited 5,575 times across ninety-three journals. The main paths, consisting of twenty-six documents, were further divided into emergence, opening, and consolidation periods on the basis of their publication date. Conclusions. This paper is the first to present the development trajectory of bibliographic coupling research. It not only emphasises how current state-of-the-art bibliographic coupling developed but also highlights critical studies in the field.

In this article we proposes a method to quantitatively explore a patent's essentiality to a standard based on a given set of already claimed standard-essential patents (SEPs). The method begins by creating an expanded patent set through a citation-based process and then clustering the expanded patent set into groups within which patents have similar technologies. It then applies main path analysis to a selected technology group to uncover a critical potential SEP within the selected technology area. To demonstrate the proposed method, we take the case of SEPs related to the high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard, utilizing the given SEP data from the HEVC patent pool of MPEG LA and use patent data in the ITU declaration database to verify the results of the proposed method, which show that our method is able to explore a patent's essentiality. In practice, four contingent analyses can be conducted to further confirm the results: main path analysis upon each group, branch analysis on specific patents, supplementary patent information analysis, and claim analysis on critical potential SEPs. The proposed method can assist practitioners who are developing future standards or who are trying to identify SEPs for the purpose of business strategy and patent deployment.

Scholars all over the world have produced a large body of COVID-19 literature in an exceptionally short period after the outbreak of this rapidly-spreading virus. An analysis of the literature accumulated in the first 150 days hints that the rapid knowledge accumulation in its early-stage development was expedited through a wide variety of journal platforms, a sense and pressure of national urgency, and inspiration from journal editorials.

Autonomous vehicles have been widely discussed recently due to the rapid advancement of related technologies and high growth potential in many markets around the world. To take a strategic position for coping with their fast development, business strategists have to find out the key players and how these players share technological information in the knowledge network. This research particularly explores the main technologies that have been developed and applied in this field by conducting a systematic and quantitative analysis to answer these questions. We analyse U.S. patents related to autonomous driving technology in a systematic manner through cross-citation analysis (CCA) and main path analysis (MPA). The former reveals knowledge flow among major players, while the latter uncovers the technology development trajectory and the associated players. The results of CCA indicate that several companies (e.g. Google and GM) in the U.S. utilise locational advantage to build an industrial chain and to facilitate knowledge exchange. MPA results reveal a development trajectory and the key players at different development phases. Our analysis infers four trends. First, more solutions in communication systems will be patented in the future as communication is crucial to realise vehicle-to-everything. Second, perception technologies are integrating with artificial intelligence to enhance vehicle autonomy. Third, players with roles as “technology developer”, “technology integrator”, and “technology implementer” in different development phases are together advancing autonomous driving technologies. Fourth, traditional vehicle makers are expected to strengthen their cooperation with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies for the purpose of obtaining communication and data technologies.

The body of literature addressing the phenomenon related to social networking services (SNSs) has grown rather fast recently. Through a systematic and quantitative approach, this study identifies the recent SNS research themes, which are the issues discussed by a coherent and growing subset of this literature. A set of academic articles retrieved from the Web of Science database is used as the basis for uncovering the recent themes. We begin the analysis by constructing a citation network which is further separated into groups after applying a widely used clustering method. The resulting clusters all consist of articles coherent in citation relationships. This study suggests eight fast growing recent themes. They span widely encompassing politics, romantic relationships, public relations, journalism, and health. Among them, four focus their issues largely on Twitter, three on Facebook, and one generally on both. While discussions on traditional issues in SNSs such as personality, motivations, self-disclosure, narcissism, etc. continue to lead the pack, the proliferation of the highlighted recent themes in the near future is very likely to happen.

Drawing from the tourism and hospitality literature, this paper highlights the main research trajectories and themes in the context of eTourism. We use main path analysis to investigate the development trend of the synergistic relationship between innovative tourism applications and the new technologies. Further, the literature is classified into six groups through discovering the coherence structure in a citation network. The analyses show that research on websites, blogs, and social media on tourism is experiencing accelerated growth, which hints that there is a pendulum shift whereby the information and negotiation power asymmetry between the supply and demand sides are moving from provider-centric to consumer-centric. This study also elucidates the associated market disintermediation phenomenon and long tail effects on the distribution of destinations.