Science Mapping of Management of Technology in Iran: A Tool for Knowledge Policy Making

Management of technology (MOT) has a strategic role in the national development of science and technology. Having a bird’s-eyes view of the current MOT knowledge through a science map is of crucial importance to the applicability of science policy and research management support. Such visual representations of very large scientific fields are intended to contribute to an understanding of the current knowledge and to inform the development of the future science policies. However، they neither offer policy options nor make policy recommendations by themselves. This study discusses the acquisition of documents، mapping concepts and exploration of relationships among them and visualizing the concepts on a two dimensional map by using VOSviewer software. Results are explored based on the keyword co-occurrence analysis of more than 1600 articles، books and university theses in the field of management of technology over the period of 2001-2011، all in Farsi langauge. In a distance-based map، the relations between concepts and the importance of each one can be seen; since a smaller distance generally indicates a stronger relation and the area of the concept’s circle depend on the weight of that concept. Also the density view is particularly useful to get an overview of the important areas of a map. Based on the last map R&D، innovation، knowledge management، industrial policy، technology commercialization and S&T policy are the most important concepts in Iran.