A bibliometric study on a new subject field: Energy analysis

Scientometries, VoL 2. No. 3 (1980) 227-237

A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY ON A NEW SUBJECT FIELD: ENERGY ANALYSIS

JULIA LAWSON, BARBARA KOSTREWSKI,* C. OPPENHEIM

Centre for Information Science, The City University, Northampton Square, London EC1 (England)

(Received June 25, 1979)

A bibliometric study on energy analysis literature is reported. The literature is characterised by heavy emphasis on English-language journal articles and reports, and, after an initial exponential growth rate, it is now growing more slowly. Examination of the titles of articles demonstrated that even after ten years there is no standard terminology in the area. This casts doubt on the value of searching by title terms for new interdisciplinary subjects. On the other hand, secondary services employing controlled-language indexing were found to index the articles under a variety of headings. In any case, coverage of the subject by secondary services is generally poor. There are no clear core journals for this subject area. Some recommendations are made on how both authors of papers in the field and secondary services can ensure better retrieval of energy analysis articles.

Introduction

Bibl iometr ic studies are used to ident i fy the pa t t e rn o f publ icat ion, authorship,

c i ta t ions and /or secondary journal coverage in the hope that such regularities can

give an insight in to the dynamics o f the area under considera t ion and consequent ly

lead to a be t t e r organizat ion o f the l i terature. In mos t cases, b ib l iometr ic studies

have been carried ou t on well established subject areas. We decided to carry out

such a s tudy on a new and current ly fashionable interdiscipl inary subject , energy '~

analysis. Our aim was to investigate the disseminat ion o f such interdiscipl inary

mater ial through convent ional organs o f dissemination, bo th pr imary and secondary

and to assess h o w pr imary and secondary services respond to such a new subject

area.

*To whom all correspondence should be addressed.

Scientometrics, Vol. 2. No. 3 (1980) 227

J. LAWSON et aL: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

Energy analysis

Energy analysis has been defined I as a 'systematic way of tracing the flow of

energy through an industrial system so as to apportion a fraction of primar:~ energy input to . . . each of the goods and services which are the outputs of the system'. It is a method of costing goods and services in terms of fuel units rather than monetary units. The technique was first employed around 1970, and when this research was started, no bibliography of the literature had appeared. One parti- cular problem in identifying relevant papers is the variability of terminology.

"Energy Analysis" is a widely accepted term, but so too are such terms as "energy input", "energy budget", "energy cost" and "energy requirement". Some of these terms are also used in other subject areas to describe completely different con- cepts.

Methodology

A bibliography of the energy analysis literature was prepared. This was based on an unpublished bibliography which covered the literature up till 1975 and had been prepared by one of us (CO) for other purposes. The bibliography was up- dated using the citation indexes in Science Oration Index and Social Sciences Cita-

tion Index for the years 1976 and 1977. Various authors who had contributed

three or more articles in the earlier bibliography were used as entries for the citation search. In addition, various sections of Current Contents for the year 1977 were scanned, and recent issues of all journals identified from the first bibliography

as containing a substantial number of energy analysis items were also scanned. This method of creating a bibliography is obviously imperfect, but there is no

abstracting journal which covers the field adequately. Moreover in terms of analysis of secondary services this approach would have been experimentally wrong.

Having obtained as complete a bibliography as possible, the references were sorted by type of publication (journal articles, reports, conference papers, books and theses)and also into chronological order. We noted that the subject is characterised by literature duplication; and item which appeared first as, e.g., a report would then appear as a journal article. Journal articles were distinguished from letters to the editor.

We also looked at the authorship of articles. Such figures can give some idea as to how the concept of energy analysis spread from just a few interested persons to large-scale interest. In the case of multiple authorship, each author was accredited with a publication.

We looked at the titles of the papers in the bibliography. One of the most com- monly stated advantages of Science Citation Index is said to be the fact that its

228 Scientometrics, Vol. 2. No. 3 (1980)

J. LAWSON et al.: A BIBLIOMETRIC STUDY

Permuterm Subject Index, relying as it does on papers' titles, will pick up novel terminology well before traditional secondary services have absorbed such terms into their thesauri. Our collection of papers could be used to test this out.

Finally we selected a subset of the bibliography in a deafly defined area, i.e. journal articles on the energy analysis of nuclear power, to assess the coverage of some secondary services of this new subject area.

Results

Growth o f the literature

The bibliography covered 354 items. These comprised 169 journal articles, 96 reports, 68 conference papers, 16 books and five theses. The first mention in the literature was at a World Energy Conference in 1968. A plot of the log c-f the cumulative total of publications against year of publication demonstrated that the peak growth of the literature was in the period 1970-1974. However, it should be borne in mind that reports represent a major source of energy analysis literature, but were particularly hard to identify as the subject is badly covered by secondary services. Details of the results are shown in Table 1.

Analysis of the bibliography by topic (Table 2) shows that the biggest single area of use of the technique was in the analysis of agricultural procedures. Publi- cations on conventions and methodology were also an important area. This is not surprising in view of the novelty of the subject area and the fact that conventions on the use of energy analysis are still being worked out.

Analysis of the journal items demonstrated that of 169 such items, 108 were original articles, 23 were articles repeating material that had first appeared as a report, book or conference paper, seven were duplicate journal articles and 31 were letters to the editor or editorials.

Ranking of journals

Energy analysis was characterised in its early years by the wide range of journals in which articles appeared. By half way through 1977, 169 items had appeared in 72 journals. With such small numbers it would be unreasonable to carry out a Bradford-Zipf type of analysis, but the most important sources were found to be Science (25 items), Energy Policy (21), New Scientist (13), Nuclear Technology (6) and Energy (5). The Fig. 1 demonstrates that these five journals do appear to form the core of the literature. Two of these journals (Energy Policy [1973] and Energy [1976]) appear to have been founded at least in part in response to the need for "core" journals in the Energy Analysis field and is certainly true that

Seientometrics, Vol. 2. No. 3 (1980) 229


Table 1 Growth o f energy analysis l i terature

Theses Year

Books

1968 0 1969 0 1970 1 1971 0 1972 1 1973 3 1974 4 1975 3 1976 4 1977" 0

Totals 16

*F~st six mon ths

Conference papers

i 0 0 0 1 7 9

24 24

2

68

Type o f publicat ion

Journal Rep~ ~rts

publications

0 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 5 4

19 12 28 28 34 55

6 49 0 20

96 169

Total

1 0 1 5

11 43 70

117 83 23

354

Table 2 Subject mat te r of energy analysis papers

Type of publicat ion Years - -

Methodology Agriculture

1 3

10 23 14

8

60

0 0 0 1 2

15 23 35 29

3

108

1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977"

Totals

Fuels Indu~

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 6 4 10

10 12 34 11 29 3

7 2

85 46

try Services

0 0 0 1 1 6 7 5 4 1

25

* First six mon t hs

Misc.

25

230 Seientometries, VoL 2, No. 3 (1980)

160

~ 12o

~ loo E

8G

60

40


/ o o

e �9

0

I I I I I I I J [ I I I I 1 1 t l L 2 4 6 8 10 2 /-, 6 8 10 2

]~r rml rtat~

F~. 1. Bradford-Zipfgraph of the journals

as soon as Energy Policy began publicat ion it became the core journal of the sub-

ject . Nonetheless, it has never published more than 20% of the papers appearing

in any year. One reason for the f luctuation in rank of journals over the years

(noted in Table 3) is the immaturi ty of the subject. Articles tend to be published

in energy analysis journals, general science journals and in specialist jourrials con-

centrating on the subject of the energy analysis paper, such as Nuclear Technology.

Table 3 Three most productive journals in energy

analysi~ for each year

Year Journals

1973 1974 1975 1976 1977

Ambio, New Scientist, Science Energy Policy, Metals and Materials, Science Energy Policy, New Scientist, Science Science, Nuclear Technology, Energy Policy Energy Policy, Energy, Science

Scientometrics, Vol. 2. No. 3 (1980) 2,31 4*


Authorship of papers

Over the period of t ime studied, a total o f 281 authors made a contr ibut ion

to the subject. 248 o f these only published one or two items, and there is no

small core crf authors who published a majori ty of the papers. 14 authors publish-

ed five or more publications, and studying these, it is possible to see when a par-

ticular author became interested in the subject. I t is clear that the initiating author

in this field was H. T. Odum, whose book 2 is the most widely cited tex t on the

subject. However, energy analysis is really a side issue o f his work. In 1973, the

most productive of all authors in this area (Peter Chapman) started publishing on

energy analysis. All the other highly productive authors had begun publishing by

1974. It was also clear that there are no centres of excellence in this subject area.

:The most productive authors come from a variety of institutions, and have a variety

of backgrounds, including physics, agriculture and medicine. One major author in

' the field (GeraM Leach] was at one time science correspondent for a national paper.

Table 4 Title terms in all the energy analysis papers

Title terms Items

Energy Energy analysis Energy cost? Energy requirement? Energy use Energy balance? Energy input? Energy account? Energy (W) analysis Energy budget? Other energy terms No energy in title

97 50 28 20 17 10 10 10 8 6

24 59

Titles of the papers

Analysis of the titles of the papers demonstrated that there is no clear use of

terminology. Therefore the argument that a free language index based on titles

(such as the Permuterm Subject Index) will pick up fashionable new research areas

faster than a controlled-language system seems incorrect. Table 4 summarises the

results on the 349 non-thesis items in our bibliography. Tables 5 to 8 break these



results down according to type of publication. The meanings of the ? and (W)

in these tables is analogous to that used when searching Lockheed DIALOG on-line.

? is a truncation symbol and (W) indicates the two terms appeared in the title, but not next to each other. On the other hand, either term may have appeared first.

Thus, for example, Energy account? refers to titles with such terms as Energy account,

Energy accounts and Energy accounting. Examination of Tables 4 to 8 demons-

trates that the search term "Energy analysis" would pick up only about 15% of

relevant references, and to get even a reasonable coverage of the literature we

identified would require a complex search strategy, and one that would be bound

to pick up a large proportion of false drops. The fact that the most popular term

in energy analysis papers is the single word "Energy" makes this false drops prob-

lem clear. Even using this single broad search term, a searcher would still miss 17% of the relevant literature. Analysis of our study on titles also demonstrated

that the vast majority of papers were English-language. (Foreign titles were trans-

Table 5 Title terms in energy analysis journal articles

Title terms Items

Energy Energy analysis Energy cost? Energy requirement? Energy balance? Energy use Energy account? Energy needs Energy (W) analysis Energy budget? Energy consumption Energy investment Energy input Energy (W) budget Energy subsidy Energy thrift Energy economics Energy debt Energy allocation Energy expended Energy outlay No energy in title

44 17 11 11 7 6 5 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

32

Scientometrics, Vol. 2. No. 3 (1980) 233


Table 6 Title terms in energy analysis reports

Title terms Items

Energy Energy analysis Energy cost? Energy use Energy requirement? Energy input? Energy (W) analysis Energy balance Energy budget? Energy accounting Energy expenditires Energy subsidy Energy intensiveness Energy consumption Energy investment Energy economics No energy in title

28 11 11 8 6 5 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1

12

Table 7 Title terms in energy analysis conference papers

Title terms Items

Energy analysis Energy Energy input? Energy cost? Energy requirement? Energy use Energy accounting Energy (W) analysis Energy demand Energy budget? Energy flow Energy utilisation Energy consumption No energy in title

19 17 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1

12



lated by us for the titles analysis). We found three French and four German jour-

nal articles; four French, one Dutch and one German report; and no non-English

conference papers in this subject area.

Coverage by abstracting journals

Using the subset of energy analysis papers which were concerned with nuclear

power, we carried out a test of coverage of the literature by Nuclear Science Ab- stracts, 1NIS Atomindex, Engineering Index, Fuel Abstracts, Energy Index, Energy

Table 8 Title terms in energy analysis books

Title t e rms I t e m s

Energy Energy analysis Energy cost No energy in title

Information Abstracts, Environment Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Economic Ab- stracts and Key to Economic Abstracts. The last three secondary services didn't

pick up any of the papers under study. Between them, Nuclear Science Abstracts and INIS Atomindex noted 18 out of the 23 papers. The papers were indexed

under "Nuclear Power Plant Economics" and "Nuclear Power Economics" respec-

tively. Engineering Index has a nuclear energy section, but only four of the 23

papers were noted by it under the heading "Nuclear Power Plants". We noted in

passing that Engineering Index noted one',or two other energy analysis papers

under a variety of headings, confirming the problems of a new subject area for a service using controlled language indexing terms.

We hoped that both Fuel Abstracts and Energy Index would provide good coverage, both of our subset and of the complete collection of papers. In fact,

Fuel Abstracts only picked up three of the subset, but Energy Index picked up eleven of them and we also noted that it indexed a large number of energy anal-

ysis papers. These were scattered about a large number of headings. The nuclear subset items were mainly indexed under "Nuclear Resources and Power".

Environment Abstracts, not surprisingly, had low coverage of the material under the heading "Energy".

Scientometries, VoL 2. No. 3 (1980) 235 5


We were intrigued by the very poor coverage by economics abstracting services of this field. It appears that either they restrict their coverage to traditional economics journals, or they simply do not recognise energy analysis, a new field which challenges some of the most fundamental assumptions of traditional economics, to be a valid part of economics.

. Overall, we found that Nuclear Science Abstracts/INIS Atomindex covered the nuclear subset best, but that Energy Index covered the topic as a whole best. However, the latter service has an indexing policy such as to make searching dif- ficult. We did not investigate the timeliness of the secondary services.

Conclusions and recommendations

In the ten years since the idea of energy analysis was first published, the topic has generated considerable interest, although few clear characteristics of the litera- ~ re have evolved. The growth of the literature is no longer exponential as it was

the early years of the subject. The major forms of publication are reports and journal articles, and items fre-

quently appear in more than one form. Core journals are beginning to emerge, and af least two of these journals appear to have been founded in response to the need for a journal which concentrates on energy matters. However, when this study was carried out there was no "Journal of Energy Analysis Studies" and we feel the time is ripe for such a journal to come on the market.

The subject is not covered well by secondary services, although Energy Index g~ees reasoriable coverage. It is virtually impossible to search for energy analysis papers in secondary services which use controlled language indexing in view of their inconsistent indexing patterns. Equally, services which rely on terms from th6 titles of papers will miss a large proportion of the relevant literature because, contrary to conventional wisdom, the language employed in titles of papers has a0t settled down to any consistent pattern. Economics secondary services have Vl~tually ignored the energy analysis literature.

We recommend that authors of energy analysis papers make the titles of their papers more informative by including the term "energy analysis". In that way retrieval by on-line systems ana by printed services relying on titles will be im- proved. We also feel that secondary services using controlled language indexing and which cover this area should introduce the term "energy analysis" as an indexing term as soon as possible. We also would recommend that secondary services in the fields of economics, engineering and chemistry should improve their

236 Scientometrics, VoL 2. No. 3 (1980]


coverage of this important new discipline. Our study has also cast doubt on the

assumption that a new interdisciplinary subject rapidly adopts set terminology in

the titles of its papers. The idea obviously needs to be tested out on a number

of new subject fields.

References

1. P. CHAPMAN, Conventions, Methods and Implications of Energy Analysis, Milton Keynes, Open University, 1975.

2. H. T. ODUM, Environment, Power and Society Wiley, 1970.

Scientometrics, Vol. 2. No. 3 (1980) 237 5"

Documents

A bibliometric study on a new subject field: Energy analysis