50 years of space research in Europe: a bibliometric profile of the European Space Agency (ESA) Articles uri icon

authors

  • EITO BRUN, RICARDO
  • LEDESMA RODRÍGUEZ, MARÍA

publication date

  • October 2016

start page

  • 551

end page

  • 576

issue

  • 1

volume

  • 109

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0138-9130

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1588-2861

abstract

  • In 2014, the European Space Agency (ESA) celebrated its 50th anniversary. In this period, ESA has led European programs in space research, and has coordinated the efforts of the national industries through different, successful programs. This paper reports the conclusions of a bibliometric analysis of ESA's scientific and technical bibliographic production. Input data covering the period from 1964 to 2014 have been collected from the Elsevier Scopus database. Using these data, a set of bibliometric indicators have been obtained to obtain knowledge on different aspects: productivity, collaboration, impact of ESA's research on subsequent works, and information consumption patterns. The study has made use of the data analysis features provided by the Scopus database, and of two bibliometric software tools: BibExcel and VosViewer. These tools were used to complete complementary analysis (co-citation, bibliographic coupling and clustering) and generate visualizations that support the exploration of data.

keywords

  • space research; european space agency; bibliometric profile; institutional collaboration; h-index; indicators