Knowledge Structure of Korean Medical Informatics: A Social Network Analysis of Articles in Journal and Proceedings

Abstract

ObjectivesThis study aimed at exploring the knowledge structure of Korean medical informatics.MethodsWe utilized the keywords, as the main variables, of the research papers that were presented in the journal and symposia of the Korean Society of Medical Informatics, and we used, as cases, the English titles and abstracts of the papers (n = 915) published from 1995 through 2008. N-grams (bigram to 5-gram) were extracted from the corpora using the BiKE Text Analyzer, and their cooccurrence networks were generated via a cosine correlation coefficient, and then the networks were analyzed and visualized using Pajek.ResultsWith the hub and authority measures, the most important research topics in Korean medical informatics were identified. Newly emerging topics by three-year period units were observed as research trends.ConclusionsThis study provides a systematic overview on the knowledge structure of Korean medical informatics.

Keywords

• medical informatics
• knowledge structure
• social network analysis
• co-word analysis