3. Data Analysis
In order to obtain answers to the research questions assigned to current research objective in the field of technological megatrends and their societal manifestation, with reference to the evolution of the research interest in this topic over time (Q1), the main research areas in which the subject has been researched (Q2), the countries where more attention is paid to research in this field (Q3), the main publications in this field (Q4), and the main papers and authors in the field of megatrends (Q5), researchers organized the analysis of the data from the refined results up to this stage into the following sections: year of publication, scientific category, corresponding authors’ countries, most relevant sources/journals, and most cited articles and authors.
3.1. Year of Publication
This section is dedicated to obtaining an overview of the dynamic evolution of the research direction between 1982 and 31 October 2021. This clarification is necessary in order to ensure the replication of the research, with explicit reference to the possibility that additional papers will appear after 31 October 2021, due to the prepublication (online version) and postpublication gaps, to which the indexing delays are added. The graphical situation of the dynamic evolution of the number of papers per year is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Dynamic evolution of Scopus (left) and WoS (right) publications between 1982 and 2021.
In Scopus, researchers noticed that the first papers on this topic were issued in 1983, when two papers were published; that until 2001, a maximum of eight papers per year were published, provided that there were years with one paper only (see 1995) but also years without any publications (see 1997); that, between 2002 and 2010, the annual number of papers on this topic ranged between 10 and 13, except for the years 2003 and 2004, when there were 4 and 8 papers, respectively; that since 2011, there has been a continuous increasing trend from 15 to 60 papers per year; and that in the first ten months of 2021, there have been 42 papers, which indicates that this year will not exceed the maximum value of 60 papers in 2020. researchers can acknowledge that 2010 was the year when the volume of papers on the megatrends topic expanded and that, after 2016, the threshold of 30 papers per year was crossed.
In WoS, researchers noticed that the first issuance of a paper on this topic was in 1984, i.e., two years after the concept was proposed; that in the period of 1984–1998 one paper per year was published or even none at all (see 1985, 1986, and 1993), except in 1996, when two papers were published; that from 1999 to 2007, three or four papers were published per year, with the specification that in 2004 only one was published and in 2006 only two; that since 2008, there has been a continuous upward trend from 8 papers to 43 papers, except in 2009, when there were only 4 papers; that after 2018, there was a slow decrease towards 36 papers in 2020, with only 19 papers in the first ten months of 2021. In addition, concerning the data in WoS, researchers can acknowledge that 2010 was the year when the volume of papers on the topic of megatrends increased, and that after 2015 the threshold of 10 articles per year was crossed.
3.2. Scientific Categories
From the perspective of the analysis by scientific categories, in Figure 2 researchers identified that the following fields in Scopus contained over 100 papers: engineering (241), computer science (136), and social science (133). These were followed by business management and accounting (83) and environmental science (51).
Figure 2. Scopus (right) and WoS (left) scientific categories between 1982 and 2021.
Between 20 and 50 papers were represented by the fields of mathematics (46), energy (40), economics, econometrics and finance (29), arts and humanities (28), materials science (27), decision sciences (26), medicine (26), and physics and astronomy (23). Between 10 and 19 papers were listed in such fields as Earth and planetary sciences (19), agriculture and biological sciences (15), chemical engineering (14), and psychology (11). Less than 9 papers were itemized in the fields of chemistry (9) and biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology (4). The studies that were poorly represented in this field, in other words, those included in fewer than three papers, were: nursing (3); health professions (3); multidisciplinary (3); veterinary (1); pharmacology, toxicology, and pharmaceutics (1); and neuroscience (1).
The analysis by category for the WoS database showed the fact that the fields were much more detailed compared to the Scopus database, and that no field exceeded the limit of 30 papers. Thus, with 30 papers researchers had the field of business; with 28 papers, the field of electrical and electronic engineering; with 26 papers each, the fields of economics and management; with 20 papers, the field of regional urban planning; with 17 papers each, the fields of education, educational research, and computer science information systems; with 16 papers, the field of environmental studies; with 15 papers, the field of transportation science technology; with 14 papers, the field of computer science—interdisciplinary applications; with 13 papers, the field of computer science—artificial intelligence; with 12 papers, the field of industrial engineering; with 11 papers each, the fields of green sustainable science technology, engineering manufacturing, and computer science theory and methods; and with 10 papers, the field of energy fuels. The other 35 fields, each comprising less than 10 papers, were represented by: civil engineering (9), communication (9), environmental sciences (8), mechanical engineering (8), telecommunications (7), applied physics (7), multidisciplinary materials science (7), multidisciplinary engineering (7), business finance (7), sociology (6), international relations (6), information science—library science (6), and computer science—software engineering (6).
3.3. Corresponding Authors’ Countries
researchers acknowledge that obtaining an overview of the countries where more attention is paid to research in the field of technological megatrends at the societal level, based on the metadata provided by the two databases, Scopus and WoS, was possible by targeting the research using the criterion of the country of origin of the corresponding author. Of course, there may be changes in the affiliation of the corresponding author over time, including the country of affiliation, but current research had as a reference date the date on which the paper was submitted and/or accepted for publication, which was mostly related to the funding of that research.
Therefore, from the perspective of analyzing the country of the corresponding author criterion (Figure 3), researchers noticed that in Scopus, the ranking of the first 15 countries was led by the United States of America with 116 papers, followed by Germany (87), Italy (30), the United Kingdom (29), Australia (20), and Finland (20). With less than 20 papers were: South Korea (19), China (19), Canada (17), Austria (16), the Netherlands (16), the Russian Federation (16), France (15), Spain (15), and Poland (11).
Figure 3. Distribution of publications by country, Scopus (left) and WoS (right), between 1982 and 2021.
The analysis of the country of the corresponding author criterion detected that in WoS, the ranking of the first 15 countries was also led by the United States of America with 62 papers, followed by Germany (55), the United Kingdom (20), and Italy (20). The ranking continued with the Netherlands (15), Spain (13), South Korea (11), Australia (11), Finland (10), Poland (9), Hungary (8), India (7), China (7), Austria (6), and Sweden (6).
3.4. The Most Relevant Sources
The criteria established through the selection and filtering of the results helped us to establish the most relevant journals in which articles on the topic of megatrends were published. In order to obtain an overview of the journals with a high degree of relevance to current research topic, researchers proceeded to make a top-10 list of the journals with the most numerous publications in the field. The top 10 journals indexed in Scopus and WoS are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Top 10 most relevant sources between 1982 and 2021.
Scopus |
|
Web of Science |
SAE Technical Papers |
11 |
VDI Berichte |
7 |
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing |
10 |
Technological Forecasting and Social Change |
6 |
VDI Berichte |
9 |
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing |
4 |
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, including the subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics |
5 |
International Conference on Traffic and Transport Engineering (ICTTE) 2018 |
3 |
Technological Forecasting and Social Change |
5 |
Lecture Notes in Computer Science |
3 |
Campus-Wide Information Systems |
4 |
Procedia CIRP |
3 |
Sustainability |
4 |
Sustainability |
3 |
AIP Conference Proceedings |
3 |
2019 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Intelligent Engineering Systems (INES) 2019 |
2 |
Aistech Iron and Steel Technology Conference Proceedings |
3 |
Acta Horticulturae |
2 |
Communications in Computer and Information Science |
3 |
Communications in Computer and Information Science |
2 |
Current analysis highlighted that in Scopus, the first position was held by SAE Technical Papers with 11 papers, followed by Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing with 10 papers and VDI Berichte with 9 papers. Additionally, with 5 papers each, researchers acknowledge the journals Lecture Notes in Computer Science, including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. The journals Campus-Wide Information Systems and Sustainability were also included in the Scopus top 10, with 4 papers each. The next group was formed by AIP Conference Proceedings, Aistech Iron and Steel Technology Conference Proceedings, and Communications in Computer and Information Science, with 3 papers each.
Regarding the top 10 journals in WoS, the first position was held by VDI Berichte, with 7 papers, followed by Technological Forecasting and Social Change with 6 papers and Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing with 4 papers. The top 10 was continued by International Conference on Traffic and Transport Engineering (ICTTE) 2018, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Procedia CIRP, and Sustainability, with 3 papers each. Finally, with 2 papers each, the last group was formed by the 2019 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Intelligent Engineering Systems (INES) 2019, Acta Horticulturae, and Communications in Computer and Information Science.
3.5. Most Cited Articles and Authors
The credibility and prestige of the journals have a considerable impact on how researchers appreciate and use articles published in a particular field
[35]. Thus, in order to carry out this component of the bibliometric analysis, researchers created a top-15 list of the most cited articles for each of the databases: Scopus and Web of Science.
From current queries in the Scopus database using the criteria established in consensus with the objective of current research, as previously defined, on the topic of technological megatrends at the societal level, researchers notice that the first three positions in the top 15 presented in
Table A1 were held by the paper Environment and policy factors shaping global e-commerce diffusion: A cross-country comparison by J. Gibbs, K.L. Kraemer, and J. Dedrick
[36] in Information Society (2003), with 234 citations, followed by Cloud computing: Today and Tomorrow by W. Kim
[37], in The Journal of Object Technology (2009) with 212 citations and Towards exact molecular dynamics simulations with machine-learned force fields by S. Chmiela, H.E. Sauceda, K.R. Müller, and A. Tkatchenko
[38], in Nature Communications (2018), with 195 citations. In this list of the top 15 most cited papers and authors, researchers discovered that the most cited sources were Information Society (234), The Journal of Object Technology (212), and Nature Communications (195). From the perspective of corroborating the importance of the journals included in the top 15 most cited papers in Scopus, researchers detected that only two journals appeared in the top 10 most relevant sources, namely, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, with five papers, and Sustainability, with four papers.
From current queries in the WoS database using the criteria established in consensus with the objective of current research, as previously defined, on the topic of technological megatrends at the societal level, researchers noticed that the first two positions in the top 15 presented in
Table A2, were held by the paper The implications of megatrends in information and communication technology and transportation for changes in global physical activity by M. Pratt, O.L. Sarmiento, F. Montes, D. Ogilvie, B.H. Marcus, L.G. Perez, and R.C. Brownson
[39], in The Lancet (2012), with 165 citations, followed by Environment and policy factors shaping global e-commerce diffusion: A cross-country comparison by J. Gibbs, K.L. Kraemer, and J. Dedrick
[36] in Information Society (2003), with 157 citations, and by Simulation in Manufacturing: Review and Challenges by D. Mourtzis, M. Doukas, and D. Bernidaki
[40], in Procedia CIRP (2014), with 124 citations. In this top-15 list of the most cited papers and authors, researchers discovered that the most cited sources were The Lancet (165), Information Society (157), and Procedia CIRP (124). From the perspective of corroborating the importance of the journals included in the top 15 most cited papers in WoS, researchers detected that only two journals appeared in the top 10 most relevant sources, namely, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, with 6 papers, and Procedia CIRP, with 3 papers.