Identifying Emerging Areas and Map Scientific Structure of Throbbing Headaches

Abstract

Introduction: New applications of studies to draw the structure of science include clustering concepts and identifying new fields of studies. This study was co-word analysis of intellectual structure of knowledge in the field of throbbing headaches. Methods: This was a scientometric study conducted through co-word and social network analysis techniques. The data consisted of the total scientific production of throbbing headaches indexed in the Web of Science from the year 2005 to 2017 with 35050 records. After unifying, the co-wording matrix was provided and through cluster analysis method, the data were analyzed. Results: The most often word was migraine keyword in the field of throbbing headaches. Moreover, the results of hierarchical clustering by the Ward method led to the formation of nine clusters in this area. The major clusters were “intracranial hypotension”, “headache and treatment”, “nervous stimulation and headache”, and “traumatic injury”. The density and degree centrality of the cluster ranking from the analysis of the co-word indicated that the vertigo cluster had the highest concentration and anxiety cluster of the highest density. Conclusion: The co-word analysis can uncover the intellectual structure of scientific disciplines. Due to the frequency of obtained keywords and clusters, the results of the two-dimensional scale showed that the matic areas of “tolerability” and “nervous stimulation and headache” were the most important emerging fields.

Keywords

• headache
• throbbing headaches
• knowledge discovery
• network meta-analysis