Neuroethics 1995-2012. A Bibliometric Analysis of the Guiding Themes of an Emerging Research Field - PubMed (original) (raw)
Neuroethics 1995-2012. A Bibliometric Analysis of the Guiding Themes of an Emerging Research Field
Jon Leefmann et al. Front Hum Neurosci. 2016.
Abstract
In bioethics, the first decade of the twenty-first century was characterized by the emergence of interest in the ethical, legal, and social aspects of neuroscience research. At the same time an ongoing extension of the topics and phenomena addressed by neuroscientists was observed alongside its rise as one of the leading disciplines in the biomedical science. One of these phenomena addressed by neuroscientists and moral psychologists was the neural processes involved in moral decision-making. Today both strands of research are often addressed under the label of neuroethics. To understand this development we recalled literature from 1995 to 2012 stored in the Mainz Neuroethics Database (i) to investigate the quantitative development of scientific publications in neuroethics; (ii) to explore changes in the topics of neuroethics research within the defined time interval; (iii) to illustrate the interdependence of different research topics within the neuroethics literature; (iv) to show the development of the distribution of neuroethics research on peer-reviewed journals; and (v) to display the academic background and affiliations of neuroethics researchers. Our analysis exposes that there has been a demonstrative increase of neuroethics research while the issues addressed under this label had mostly been present before the establishment of the field. We show that the research on the ethical, legal and social aspects of neuroscience research is hardly related to neuroscience research on moral decision-making and that the academic backgrounds and affiliations of many neuroethics researchers speak for a very close entanglement of neuroscience and neuroethics. As our article suggests that after more than one decade there still is no dominant agenda for the future of neuroethics research, it calls for more reflection about the theoretical underpinnings and prospects to establish neuroethics as a marked-off research field distinct from neuroscience and the diverse branches of bioethics.
Keywords: Mainz Neuroethics Database; bibliography; history of neuroethics; neuroethics; science studies; scientometrics.
Figures
Figure 1
Development of the number of annual publications in neuroethics according to MND and Worlds of Science (WoS). It is apparent that publications in neuroethics have rapidly increased in number particularly after the year 2002. The x-axis describes the year in which the publications appeared the y-axis describes the number of papers published each year. The blue line describes the development according to the dataset retrieved from the MND, the brown line according to the dataset retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database.
Figure 2
Size of thematic subject-categories in the MND. The pie chart illustrates the size of the different thematic categories that form the research field of neuroethics. The categories were derived from headlines, abstracts and keywords of the publications via an intersubjective and iterative coding procedure. The size of the slices and the corresponding numbers indicate the number of publications that were tagged as belonging to the respective category.
Figure 3
Development of annual publications within thematic subject-categories. The diagram displays the growth of the number of publication per subject-category relative to the overall number of publications per subject-category in the interval 1995–2012 (baseline = 100%). The dashed lines indicate variation of growth between different subject-categories. Whilst 20% of all publications in the category Neuroimaging (NIma, dark red line) appeared before 2005, it took until 2008 for 20% of all publications in the category of Brain Stimulation (BSt, flesh tinted line) to appear.
Figure 4
Thematic map of neuroethics as a research field. The figure maps the relation of the different subject-categories measured by pointwise mutual information (PMI). Only relations of subject-categories with a PMI of 0.7 or higher are displayed. The thicker a connecting line, the higher the PMI. The length of the connecting lines is irrelevant.
Figure 5
Influence of the journals Neuroethics and AJOB Neuroscience on publication pattern in neuroethics. (A) The diagram displays the increasing number of publications in neuroethics and the increasing number of journals publishing articles belonging to the field between 2004 and 2012. While the number of publications increased, the ratio of publications per journal remained relatively constant over the years. (B) Diagram shows the influence of the two journals Neuroethics and AJOB-N for the development of neuroethics as a field. After the first appearance of these journals in 2008 and 2010 respectively, there can be observed a slight decrease in the overall number of publications. In this time interval, a share of 29.9–82.6% of all publications appeared only in Neuroethics and AJOB-N. Between 2008 and 2012 on average 32.6% of all neuroethics publications were published in these two journals.
Figure 6
Academic education of relevant researchers in neuroethics. The chart visualizes the size of different groups of researchers engaging in neuroethics as represented by their discipline of initial academic education. To describe the distribution of the academic background of neuroethics researchers we used the 20 researchers with the highest publication output in each of the subject-categories as a measure.
Figure 7
Departmental affiliation of relevant neuroethics researchers. The chart shows the size of different groups of neuroethics researchers as represented by their current academic affiliation (as of autumn 2014). To describe the distribution of the academic background of neuroethics researchers we refer to the 20 researchers with the highest publication output in each of the subject-categories as a measure.
References
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