Identifying Emerging Topics in the Field of Genetics: A Scientometrics Analysis

Genetics is a broad issue which is associated with diversity and inheritance in all the living beings. Numerous researches have been implemented in this sphere. Meanwhile, significant steps have been taken during the past few years including identification of active research fields of the area as well as recognition of scientific literature in the sphere. This study, therefore, seeks to identify core and frequently-taken subjects as well as newly-emerged or emerging subjects in the area.
The current research has focused on researches on thematic evolutions in the genetics area with a scientometric approach. As many as 79,593 articles on genetics on PubMed were analyzed over the base period (1909-2004) using Premap, Excel, and SPSS, while the figures are 40,184 and 97,512 for the five-year period (2005-2009) and ten-year period (2005-2014), respectively.
Findings: The findings revealed that growth rate for the number of articles on genetics has demonstrated an upward trend while genomics, proteomics, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and pharmacogenetics have been the most active research fields in the area. Moreover, based on inclusion index, it has been demonstrated that evolution has been abundantly seen and new subjects were born in the genetics area on a daily basis.
It is a complicated process to discover conceptual relationships between the documents of a scientific area. Hence, the resulting conclusions naturally require a deep understanding. Quantitative approaches, despite having shortcomings and being unable to comprehensively analyze different aspects of the issue, are not entirely futile and inaccurate. But they can enable the policymakers to acquire a general knowledge of the current situation so that they can make more realistic decisions and operate more efficiently. Continuance of such researches, aimed at assessing a discipline, will eventually empower the managers in those disciplines and scientific areas.