Bibliographic cartography of an emerging interdisciplinary discipline - the case of bioelectronics

A bibliometric analysis in the emerging field of bioelectronics, characterised by a high degree of interdisciplinarity, is carried out. Two different techniques - co-classification and co-word analysis - have been used and their results have been compared. The limitations and potentials of these techniques, especially concerning their use for analysing interdisciplinary scientific fields, are discussed. It is found that these techniques enable analysis gaining a first insight into the coarse structure of the field. The advantage of the technique is their relative simplicity, and the possibility to carry out trend analysis based on relatively constant classifications of research activities, so that maps of different time periods become comparable and changes within the structure of the field become visible.